In this shot of Chris Vesper’s shop, you can see three – no, four! – rubbish bins. This helps him keep things tidy.
Kara Gebhart-Uhl, Christopher Schwarz and I have selected a few of our favorites from “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years” – some have already been posted; there are some still to come. Chris wrote about the project that “these columns during the Hayward years are like nothing we’ve ever read in a woodworking magazine. They are filled with poetry, historical characters and observations on nature. And yet they all speak to our work at the bench, providing us a place and a reason to exist in modern society.”
Our hope is that the columns – selected by Kara from among Hayward’s 30 years of “Chips from the Chisel” editor’s notes – will not only entertain you with the storied editor’s deep insight and stellar writing, but make you think about woodworking, your own shop practices and why we are driven to make. When Australian toolmaker Chris Vesper (vespertools.com) read “A Kind of Order” it prompted him to write a few responses – read the first, “Everything in its Place,” here; another is below.
— Fitz
Time Saved is Time Gained
One thing I’ve observed from many years of visiting all types of workshops all over the world: Everyone does it a bit different. There is no right or wrong; it’s what works for you with as little judgement as one can muster. But I have found that certain things can increase shop efficiency and personal enjoyment quite remarkably. Like stepping back once a year for a really good clean up and a think outside the box to re-organise things. Buying or making new storage for your tools (not some latest plastic storage gadget that promises to upend your life with happiness, but genuinely practical ideas like robust drawers, shelving, cupboards, racks etc.). Maybe move the workbench or a couple of machines to suit you better. Chances are if you’ve been thinking for 12 months that you really should move that material rack but haven’t, you probably should have moved it 18 months ago.
One extreme of a workspace is a floor you could eat off during work hours and barely a tool out of place – because everything has a place, and all is organised just so. The other is what appears as mess and utter chaos to the casual observer (hopefully not on the level of compulsive hoarding – that’s not healthy for anyone). But the keeper of said chaos will likely know exactly where everything is, able to reach into the darkness of a dusty corner shelf or bottom drawer and procure quickly any requested item, no matter how obscure. Many people who operate at both extremes (and everything in between) are perfectly capable of producing beautiful work in a reasonable time frame. Some work in an eternal mess; some simply cannot do this. The manners of the brain are an interesting thing.
I prefer the cleaner and more organised end of the shop spectrum – especially working as a one-man business in a very poly-technic workshop (woodworking and metal working, along with a few other tricks like laser marking in house, metrology and some hobby welding, restoring an antique machine). Forget pride or satisfaction – I genuinely find much efficiency is gained from knowing EXACTLY where a certain tool or device is, and being able to lay hands on it immediately – no rummaging through the sedimentary geological layering that sometimes happens.
I ponder my early struggle to separate the precision metal working stuff from the ravages of woodworking dust. Apart from the obvious of using better extraction than in my early toolmaking days, I’ve now overcome this problem completely by simply putting things away and keeping the things that are not like the other separated. This is relevant no matter your shop size. Small shops need to keep ahead on organising lest conditions degrade to the point where one could have difficulty getting in the door due to the goat track having suffered an overnight avalanche (not to mention fire risks and other more serious safety matters). In larger shops it’s also critical as one does not want to waste time walking to the other side of a shop only to realise the item required is somewhere else.
One method I’ve found to be immensely convenient is to have many smallish rubbish bins (trash cans, y’all) placed strategically and unobtrusively around the workshop, sometimes grouped around a specific work area. Nothing fancy. Old paint buckets or similar receptacles mean I am never more than one step – or at best an easy lob – away from a bin. I’ve found it best to have several per area, including one at either end of my benches. So with two benches in my work area and a table in between them, that means I have four bins there alone to cover two benches. Works a treat.
It saves so much time and eliminates double handling when cleaning up your own mess, even in a small workshop.
Another work area, another two bins.
This ethos was hatched one day whilst I was absorbed in a job and needed to chuck something in the bin. I had to walk several steps to chuck it, walk back and make a second trip (and I likely dropped something along the way).
Think on how many steps you walk to throw out a rag, or the packaging of something you just opened. Consider if you can turf it with little care or precision into a bucket probably less than one meter (about one yard, y’all) away from your body, then not give it a thought until you empty all the smaller bins into your main bin (which I do perhaps once a month). Sure that part takes a little time, but is a small investment in your own time compared to what you’ve already gained.
In-progress stocks for Vesper Tools sliding bevels…as photographed for Instagram.
Kara Gebhart-Uhl, Christopher Schwarz and I have selected a few of our favorites from “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years” – some have already been posted; there are some still to come. Chris wrote about the project that “these columns during the Hayward years are like nothing we’ve ever read in a woodworking magazine. They are filled with poetry, historical characters and observations on nature. And yet they all speak to our work at the bench, providing us a place and a reason to exist in modern society.”
Our hope is that the columns – selected by Kara from among Hayward’s 30 years of “Chips from the Chisel” editor’s notes – will not only entertain you with the storied editor’s deep insight and stellar writing, but make you think about woodworking, your own shop practices and why we are driven to make. When Australian toolmaker Chris Vesper (vespertools.com) read “A Kind of Order” it prompted him to write a few responses, one of which we give you below.
— Fitz
Everything in its Place
Hands and mind work as one to create when a maker is in the zone – be it woodwork, making furniture, fixing the lawnmower, working on an old car, or machining some gizmo in the sanctity of space that is your workshop on a lathe and milling machine.
When working on a project or even just tinkering the excitement can be palpable, especially when the finish is in sight among the setbacks (and occasional oopsies). The bench is a mess, with tools everywhere, things lost under piles of wood shavings and no cares given. And we all know this one: “That 10mm socket has got to be somewhere,” then many minutes later: “HOW the heck did it get there??!” Clearly too much fun is being had! Time lost equals the inverse of size be it chisels, sockets or even spanners. Big ones are easy to find – but small ones?
In our education as makers we refer to glossy mags or online tutorials that show impeccable workshops with perfect lighting. You may even feel some shame at your own space, so you set personal goals; you dream of what could be. But you can’t see that great pile of crud just out of their camera shots.
As for some professional work, with undersides of tabletops and backs of drawers sanded and polished to within an inch of their lives (not to mention the bits you actually see): this way of work is not for everyone, be it from lack of desire or a skill set not quite up to it. We see this perfection and perhaps gaze over our own work, and wonder at our own pleasing sanctuary of shavings piled up knee-high from attacking tear-out in a board. Perhaps we observe the results of a slightly wonky glue up. We see tools not stored properly and perhaps deteriorating from rust or being banged about – all that work to get those tools shiny the first time is lost.
In the intensity of enjoyable work, things will inevitably slip and chaos creep in. In machining work, the tool cart empties as the bench and floor fill with tools, grease and some strange black goop that gets on everything one touches. In woodworking, the tool cabinet and workbench are similarly affected (minus the black goop, hopefully). After a good, all-absorbing session of work I find it therapeutic to tidy and clean as I think back over the job, the tools used and why, the mistakes and the triumphs. Be it a daily ritual or an end-of-job ritual it’s a nice one to have.
The plier drawer – after my tidying ritual.
Everything in its place.
But always keep this in mind: When I take a photo for social media you don’t know about the unsightly pile of freaky colored rags or glue encrusted ice-cream containers I just flicked out of the way to make the shot a little better.
In-progress stocks for Vesper Tools sliding bevels on the bench…with rags, glue bottles and Shibee the Shiba Inu pushed out of the close-up.
Katherine Schwarz was born in April 2001. She grew up in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, with her sister, Maddy (five years older), her mom, Lucy May, and her dad, Christopher Schwarz.
“Both of my parents have just been the best ever when it comes to raising us,” Katherine says. “My dad worked at the magazine for a while and those were long-ass days and so my mom, during the summer, she was the one who drove us to camp or whatever. She was just always there whenever we needed her. She’s always been the strong woman in my life.”
Katherine and her dad
Maddy (left), Lucy, Katherine and Chris
Formerly a print, TV and digital reporter, Lucy is now the host of “Cincinnati Edition” on 91.7, WVXU.
“She’s also very artistic,” Katherine says. “She sewed some rabbits for us and she would draw with us. I love her little drawings.”
Katherine says she’s always enjoyed art. Her favorite class in elementary school was art.
“My teacher, Ms. Mitchell, was kind of a badass,” Katherine says. “She’d yell at the other kids because they weren’t paying attention. But I was focused. I was like, ‘No, I need to do art.’ So she liked me.”
At home, Katherine enjoyed doing whatever her sister was doing.
Katherine (left) and her sister Maddy
“I looked up to her,” Katherine says. “We were really into Breyer Horses, these little plastic horses, and we’d make home movies with them. She would direct me and I would be the camera person. It was really fun. Being creative with her was a huge part of my childhood.”
Roy Underhill (left), Maddy and Katherine
She also has fond memories of working with her dad in his basement shop.
“I’d come down and be like, ‘What are you doing?’ and I’d drop a hammer on a piece of wood – definitely dented it – and he’d be like, ‘It’s fine.’ I think he enjoyed me being in the shop.”
Katherine working in her dad’s home shop in Fort Mitchell.
Chris never demanded or even asked Katherine or Maddy to help him in his home shop. Instead, he’d tell them what he was up to and let me know they were more than welcome to come down and learn.
Often, Katherine would take him up on the offer. She loved holding a saw at a young age. She carved a wax block into a duck (a duck her dad still has, all these years later). Her first dovetail was perfect.
“I remember him telling this story a couple times,” she says. “He’s like, ‘You cut a perfect dovetail the first time because you just weren’t nervous about it because you didn’t know it was something you should be nervous about.’”
Maddy (left), Chris and Katherine
In high school, Katherine took AP art classes, including painting and drawing, and a ceramics class. She loved working with clay, and took ceramics classes during the summer months, too.
“Pottery and clay traveled through high school with me,” she says.
She graduated in 2019.
Studying Art at Spalding
“To be honest, I did not want to go to college at all,” Katherine says. “But my parents, God bless them, helped me find Spalding.”
Spalding University, in Louisville, offered a class schedule Katherine liked – two classes for six weeks, then a week off, repeated. It was the only college Katherine applied to. During her senior year of high school, she got a call from Spalding in the middle of class. It was a personal call to let her know she had been accepted, with a scholarship.
Katherine took in this information and then asked, “Can I take a gap year?”
Surprised, the person on the phone told her they’d have to check. They called back and said yes.
“I told my parents that and they’re like, ‘What the hell?’ First, colleges never call you. That’s crazy. Second, you’re bold for asking for a gap year – you go, girl.’”
She didn’t take a gap year (“thank God,” she says). She accepted Spalding’s offer in 2019 with a major in art.
She lived in a dorm room during the week, and at her parents’ house on weekends. She met friends, people who she’s still close to today. She also navigated learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, which meant a year of only virtual classes, with professors mirroring their screens to teach drawing techniques and art critiques over Zoom.
Spalding’s art program is small, but she had professors who were smart and challenging.
“Josh was the one who challenged us the most and had deep conversations,” she says. “And then Sarah, she was awesome. She was an art history teacher and I actually hate history, but I learned from her because she made it interesting. She showed us so many controversial things in art.”
Documentaries, like the 1990 film “Paris Is Burning,” will stick with her for life, Katherine says.
“And then there was my painting and drawing teacher, Aaron. He was pretty cool. He was a really positive guy all the time, which was exhausting, but it was nice to be around that and he could still critique you while being a nice guy.’”
In 2023, Aaron convinced her to submit a painting for consideration in an exhibit at Spalding’s gallery. It was accepted. Chris and Lucy went to the exhibit and were surprised to find “Dad’s Work” – a still-life of some of Chris’s books, Crucible tools, and a Lost Art Press hat and apron. Today, the painting hangs in the Lost Art Press shop on Willard Street.
“For my senior year, I had to do a senior thesis that was a series of connected art pieces that you worked on for a whole year,” she says. “I did skeleton paintings on mirrors. It was really fun.”
This, too, was exhibited at Spalding.
“That was pretty crazy,” she says. “I had some friends that came. It felt like the real deal.”
Throughout college. Katherine earned money making, selling, packaging, labeling and shipping Soft Wax to Lost Art Press customers. Two batches would make about 60 jars of Soft Wax.
“That was something to keep me busy for sure,” she says. “But I’m glad it migrated into Lost Art Press because it was becoming a lot.”
She also began dating Gabe Gavre (who now works in the Lost Art Press warehouse along with Mark Gilsdorf). The two met on Tinder. At the time, he lived in Bradfordsville, Kentucky, about 2-1/2 hours south of Covington. She drove down to meet him, first at a local Walmart. Then they went fishing.
“It stuck,” she says.
And it has stuck, for the past six years. Today, Gabe lives in Covington with Katherine, along with Katherine’s two cats: Bean and Billy Butt Cheeks.
Gabe Gavre (right) and Mark Gilsdorf (left)
Working together hasn’t been an issue at all, she says.
“It’s really nice,” she says. “He’s such a goofball at home and quiet at work, but he’s slowly opening up at work.”
And yet, they never run out of things to talk about, she says, even if they spend time working together during the day.
Rookwood Pottery to Lost Art Press
After graduating from Spalding in 2023, Katherine moved out of her parents’ house and into her own place in Covington. She got a job at Rookwood Pottery, a Cincinnati ceramics company founded in 1880. (Her favorite tile is “Tree of Life.”)
“I was glad to get my hands back on clay,” she says.
She started in the press department, 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., pushing a button on a 30-ton machine that would press each tile. She’d remove the waste, slip a board underneath the tile and then press a pedal to release water in order to release the tile from the mold on the press.
Working at Rookwood Pottery
“It was so hot down there,” she says. “No AC. No fans because the clay comes first and fans would cause the clay to crack. Finally, I was like, ‘I can’t do it anymore.’”
She moved departments, cleaning up seam lines and fingerprints from pieces that hadn’t been fired yet. In the slip department, she’d pour liquid clay into molds, let it set, dump out the excess, let it dry and then take the mold apart.
Working at Rookwood Pottery
More than a decade ago, Chris planted the seed of working at Lost Art Press, casually mentioning to Katherine and Maddy that they were always welcome to work for him.
But Maddy loved science, earned her Ph.D. and is now a virologist in Philadelphia. Katherine loved art, went to art school and found a job working with clay.
Occasionally, during those long, hot days Katherine worked at Rookwood Pottery, Chris would remind her that she could always work for him.
“It came to the point where I was like, ‘Yeah, I think I am ready for something new, and it’d be awesome to work with my dad.’”
Jumping back into woodworking was a difficult start, Katherine says.
“I felt like I didn’t know how to use any of the tools or how to adjust anything,” she says. “Kale and my dad and Megan were really patient with me, explaining things a couple times, but I still made myself nervous. Wood is so different from clay. I know how to form clay but wood – you can’t squish it into a ball, you have to carve the ball into it. So it was a huge learning curve.”
But her dad’s teaching style is exactly how she likes to be taught.
“Me and Kale talk about it a lot,” she says. “He’ll give you at most five instructions and then walk away. And then he waits for you to ask a question. I think it’s really efficient. He’s able to keep everyone on the same page. And he doesn’t give up on a student if they’re running behind. He’ll always wait for everyone to be ready for the next step, which I really like. It’s like how math class should have been – no one gets left behind.”
Katherine signed her apprenticeship papers a few months after beginning her new gig working full time at Lost Art Press. (You can read Katherine’s posts about being an apprentice on The Anarchist’s Apprentice Substack.)
Katherine signing her apprenticeship papers
Katherine’s first apprenticeship chair was an Irish lowback.
“It was hard,” she says. “I remember hating saddling the seat, but now that’s one of my favorite parts. I didn’t know where to put the energy in my body, so I was just getting worn out. And that’s how I felt with a lot of the steps. With each chair, it got easier and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I do know how to do that.’”
She built her second apprenticeship chair, the Lincolnshire, with her dad, Lee Runyan and Rudy Everts.
“I was building along with them, more experienced woodworkers, trying to get everything done that they were getting done and I ended up getting my chair all glued up. That was a really good experience. That chair is huge. It’s a monster, so it’s cool that I was able to build that.”
While working on her third chair, her dad handed her his book, “The Stick Chair Book.”
“He’s like, ‘You’re probably going to need this.’ And I did. I called the book “Book Dad.” I was like, ‘Oh, don’t worry – “Book Dad” got me.’ And I did build quite a lot on my own, which was awesome.”
Katherine still has one last chair to build as part of her apprenticeship.
“It has to be my own design,” she says. “I’ve been cooking up some stuff for sure. I’m excited to get started on it.”
Work outside of the apprenticeship differs every day. Katherine typically begins her day by checking email. Her dad keeps a list of tasks on a whiteboard. Random jobs may include cleaning an air filter, buying plywood to build a crate or creating a cutting list for a project Chris is building.
She and Kale make their “Hey Apprentices!” videos, which are silly and fun, she says, but can take a while to make.
“Kale’s awesome,” Katherine says. “We listen to each other’s music and laugh and talk about our weekends. It’s so nice catching up with Kale and I think it’s nice to have two young people in the shop who can be stupid together.”
Recently, Katherine and Kale built a clamshell bookcase for the storefront, a project they both loved. Around it, she painted “Collin the Colon Snake.” One of Katherine’s favorite things to do is paint the things she makes. Her Hare Chair is her favorite thing she’s ever made.
Katherine’s Hare Chair
A lot of people ask her what it’s like to work with her dad.
“I guess I was a little nervous, but I think I have a unique father-daughter relationship in that we’re both the quiet ones in the family,” she says. “So I’ve always gotten along with him. From what I can remember, him teaching me how to do stuff in the shop when I was younger, it was the least stressful thing ever. There’s absolutely zero issue working with him.”
A Full Circle
Katherine loves movies, especially thrillers. She loved John Carpenter’s “The Thing.” Art remains a constant in her life. She’s still taking pottery classes, now at Baker Hunt, which is within walking distance from where she lives.
Katherine is 25 years old. When asked about the future, she says that’s a question she’s hated her entire life.
“One time, my grandma asked me and I was like, ‘I just want to be alive in five years,’” she says. “Seriously. I just want to be alive. And I still want to be alive three, five, 10 years.”
She says she hopes to have her life together a little bit more.
“I think traveling more would be really fun,” she says. “Learning new skills. I want to keep up with my pottery. It would be awesome to find a way to have a wheel studio or something like that in my house.”
Katherine says she’s never seen herself as a teacher. But people she admires, including her dad, think she’d be great at it. Aaron, one of her art professors at Spalding, once said, “You, Katy, you’re going to be a great teacher. You’re good at teaching people.”
“That was nice,” Katherine says. “He made me talk about one of my painting techniques to my fellow students. I think I could see myself teaching some classes after seeing how my dad does it.”
Katherine went through a period of depression and anxiety that was pretty harsh, she says.
“But now I know it’s OK,” she says. “If I saw younger Katy, I’d be like, ‘Don’t worry. It’s OK.’”
And in the past five years, she says she’s started to stand up for herself.
“The world’s been crazy the past five years,” she says. “Everyone went a little cuckoo in lockdown. But I don’t know. I got really comfortable in my skin. I’ve learned to be fine with myself.”
An excerpt from a blog post Chris wrote in June 2009:
I’m just about ready to assemble a drawer, so my daughter Katy lays down her saw and heads to the pickle bucket below the drill press. She dumps the cool water down the drain outside the shop door and refills the bucket with hot.
She drops the liquid hide glue bottle into the bucket then comes over to the bench, where I’m paring out the last little bit of the floor of my half-blind dovetails. I’m using a fishtail chisel, which she’s never seen before, so Katy asks if she can give it a try. I show her how I hold the tool to wiggle it into the acute corners, then I put the tool in her hands.
After a couple shavings we knock the drawer side into the dovetail sockets. It fits fine, so Katy shakes the glue bottle and fetches the deadblow mallet. I hold the drawer front and Katy paints the sockets with hide glue using an artist’s paintbrush I’ve owned since college.
I show her how I drive the joint together with a block of wood by spreading out the blows all along the joint line. Two taps. Move the mallet. After the first joint is home, Katy takes over gluing and assembly. We put the assembled drawer on the table saw and check it for square. We press the corners of the assembly against the rip fence until the box is square.
Then Katy goes back to the small bench I’ve rigged up for her and lines up the two handplanes on the end of the bench. She asks when she can start cleaning up the shop.
It’s at that moment that I realize I’m living in a book. It feels a bit like the time I visited Graceland and descended the stairwell to Elvis’s basement. Both walls are completely mirrored and the thousand reflections of your every move are both familiar and disorienting.
Katy has been working alongside me through most of the chest of drawers. When I don’t need her help, she’s off doing her own thing, trying out the different saws, messing with the planes and asking me questions. Such as this one she asked on father’s day:
“Dad, when I grow up, do you think I’ll be a woodworker?”
Anthony Parsons, a luthier at Troublesome Creek Stringed Instrument Co.
More than 150 years ago, in the heart of Appalachia, James Edward Thomas, known as Uncle Ed, loaded up a handcart and pushed it along the banks of Troublesome Creek, selling his handmade mountain dulcimers in Hindman, Kentucky.
Today, at Troublesome Creek Stringed Instrument Co., the making of these same dulcimers, as well as guitars, mandolins and banjolynns, have helped dozens of people recover from substance abuse addiction and find fulfillment as luthiers and musicians.
“There are a lot of dulcimer makers who have been connected to this place,” says Doug Naselroad, luthier and founder of Troublesome Creek Stringed Instrument Co. “So it’s sort of like a firmly rooted tree right here in Hindman – the music, the instruments and the people keep coming back.”
The Origins of Troublesome Creek Stringed Instrument Co.
Nearly 15 years ago, in an effort to further revive Hindman’s luthiery roots, the Appalachian Artisan Center invited Naselroad to come to Hindman to start a school of luthiery.
Doug Nasleroad, luthier and founder of Troublesome Creek Stringed Instrument Co.
Naselroad has been playing and making guitars since 1969. He was mentored by Homer Ledford (a neighbor and encourager). In 1979, he opened his own shop in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. He worked for Collings Guitars in Austin in the 1990s. He’s taken notes from many instrument makers he’s met along his life’s path, and he’s built many instruments, including guitars, mandolins, harps and dulcimers, for well-known musicians, including John Prine, Lyle Lovett and Steve Miller.
In 2012, Naselroad founded the Appalachian School of Luthiery. Once fully embedded in the community, Naselroad was struck by the number of people affected by the opioid epidemic, and wanted to help. Around 2016, he and a former colleague began to formalize a plan, leading to their founding of the Culture of Recovery in 2020 – an apprenticeship program for folks recovering from substance abuse disorders.
“It was very organic,” Naselroad says. “It grew up out of the need of the place, the resources that were available and the community that started to grow there. I really feel like it’s a mission. To put it plainly, I just think it’s what God put me down here to do.”
At first, the idea was simple: Teach people how to make instruments in order to learn a craft that will enrich their lives.
That idea became a lifeline for many and led to the founding of Troublesome Creek Stringed Instrument Co., a nonprofit formed in partnership with the Appalachian School of Luthiery, providing jobs and helping with recovery.
“I realized that it was a critical part of their recovery to learn a skill and develop a career that they could fix their hopes on,” Naselroad says.
A New Way Forward
In September 2020, Anthony Parsons, then 22, entered rehab at Hickory Hill Recovery Center.
“I was at the death of my addiction,” Parsons says.
Through Hickory Hill, he entered the Culture of Recovery program, and once a week, he would come to Troublesome Creek Stringed Instrument Co. and learn how to build guitars. Parsons has played guitar since he was 12, but had no woodworking experience.
“When I got here, it was just like, oh man, this is exactly where I’m supposed to be,” Parsons says. “And they were nice enough to give me the opportunity to continue doing that. They hired me when I was just getting done with rehab, and I’ve worked here ever since.”
It took Parsons about a year to get the hang of the neck-making process.
“You’re learning something for the first time, and maybe you don’t have a lot of experience in it,” Parsons says. “It takes determination to get past your initial frustrations because not everything comes naturally to everybody, and that’s OK. But I think when you push past that aspect of it, that’s where you grow.”
Today, Parsons mainly builds guitars and banjolynns, but he has a hand in most of the instruments, and is usually the last person to touch them before they go out the door.
“I make sure they play really nice and that they sound good and everything’s working,” Parsons says.
Much of his work is by hand, with fine attention to detail.
“It’s kind of an art form in a way,” Parsons says. “We have a few templates and stuff, but really, it’s by feel. You kind of close your eyes and you feel the neck in front of you and you feel for lopsidedness or anything like that. And you just spend time with sandpaper and files and you make sure that it’s as good as it can be. And I think that process in particular can be really soothing. It helps take away some worries from time to time if you can just get in the zone and work on it.”
Parsons, who enjoys everything from Tony Rice and Doc Watson to slam metal, plays nearly all the instruments thoroughly, before they go out the door.
Currently, he’s going to school to earn his drug counseling license.
“I hope, and who knows if this could ever happen, but I hope to be able to do some of that here rather than have to leave – be able to kind of help out here and maybe work that into my position and help counsel the guys as I can,” he says.
Naselroad says watching people enter the Culture of Recovery straight out of rehab – raw and often lacking confidence – and witnessing them become accomplished woodworkers is an amazing experience.
Woodworking is Magic
Lessons begin with entry-level instruments.
“We have a little ukulele that’s made kind of like a wishbone,” Naselroad says. “We have a guitar and a banjolynn that are basic wooden instruments. And then, as soon as people are interested, we make the traditional mountain dulcimer of Knott County, Kentucky.”
Troublesome Creek Stringed Instrument Co.’s catalog is structured, but not restrictive.
“We use traditional violin-making tools for the mandolins,” Naselroad says. “There’s a lot of hand carving that goes on with drawknives and spokeshaves. At some point, we do end up using abrasive planers and power tools in a modern workshop.”
Instruments are often made from Appalachian hardwood.
“It’s been a wonderful ongoing experiment,” Naselroad says. “The woodworking part has just been a joy because we get to find out what instruments made of hackberry, Osage orange and persimmon sound like – all these instruments that you never see in the industry because we have all these Appalachian hardwoods, and we can try them and fine-tune the process. We’ve got some real outstanding results that way.”
This, Naselroad says, has been driven by his people.
“My guys just love to build from things that are from this place,” Naselroad says. “They have a real sense of place. One guy came in one time, and he said, ‘I got some big, wide, tulip poplar shelf boards from my wife’s grandfather’s general store. They were the produce shelves at the C.B. Caudill Store. I’ve got to see if I can make a guitar out of it. Will that work?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, sure. Let’s see what it does.’ If it’s stable, it’s crack-free and it’s quartersawn, we can generally make a functional instrument – and sometimes a really excellent instrument.”
Fine woodworking, Naselroad says, can be a magical experience.
“Instrument making, for me, is the best example of fine woodworking because it’s like this tremendous magic trick,” Naselroad says. “You take a muddy old log from the woods, and you process it, and you cut it just so, and you dry it and you build this thing at the end of which you have music. It’s like a magic trick. And that to me is the most functional kind of woodworking.”
And when people become enthralled by this magic trick and challenged by this labor-intensive work, their attention refocuses on something other than obtaining drugs, Naselroad says.
The factory.
“The gratification, the endorphin rush that comes from drug abuse, is replaced by something that doesn’t punish you, something that you can actually get a reward out of and not be given time by the courts,” Naselroad says. “You’ve got a positive goal, an obsession, if you will, to replace the one. It actually rewires the chemistry of the brain of the addict.”
Jeremy Haney has been with Troublesome Creek Stringed Instrument Co. since October, 2019. Like Parsons, he was introduced to the Culture of Recovery program through Hickory Hill Recovery Center.
“I came down and started learning how to build instruments,” Haney says. “And from there, it’s just been one step after another, gaining knowledge and experience. And later on, I gained a job here at Troublesome Creek Instrument Co.”
Woodworking came naturally to Haney, in part because he’s always been artistic.
“I think that helped a lot with the learning process,” he says. “But I did have my challenges. It was a big learning curve, learning the process, the steps and having my eyes opened up – the details that I would’ve never had them opened up to. Learning how to build these instruments, you have to look at fine detail, and that’s just something I wasn’t used to doing. So that was a big learning curve for me.”
Having something to put his mind and hands into helped ground him, Haney says.
“This kind of work is therapeutic,” he says. “So that was a big help for me, from my recovery standpoint. I think they go hand-in-hand and one really supports the other.”
Today, Haney solely builds mandolins and is considered one of the country’s leading mandolin makers, Naselroad says. Each mandolin takes him one to two weeks to build.
“It’s a mixture of power tools, hand tools and sandpaper – a lot of sandpaper,” Haney says. “I try to be as flawless as I can.”
Haney loves the work.
“I kind of just naturally took to it, and it’s something that I’ve learned that I’m actually good at,” Haney says. “So not only is it rewarding in the sense that it’s therapeutic, it’s also rewarding in the sense that at the end of the build, I get to hear this instrument being played. And getting feedback from the people that buy these instruments, saying how much they love them and how good they sound, it’s pretty rewarding all the way around in that aspect.”
One of Haney’s instruments was purchased by an organization that donated it to Ricky Skaggs.
“Knowing Ricky Scaggs has one of my instruments is probably one of the highlights of my career,” Haney says. “Hopefully, I have a lot more moments like that in my future. But right now, that’s good enough for me. Never in a million years did I think I’d be building instruments, let alone having somebody like Richard Skaggs own one.”
Haney hopes to one day have his own shop and brand.
Community & Music
Community is a core component of recovery.
“We eat together, we work together, we design our stuff together,” Naselroad says.
With shared goals, there’s a shared sense of purpose.
“It’s like one big meeting, all the time,” Haney says. “Talking about your problems in recovery is a big thing. It’s something that’s vital in recovery. You need to talk it out and get other perspectives on what you’re going through, because being in it firsthand, you really can’t see the problem or the solution. Having somebody’s opinion or somebody’s perspective from the outside may give you a better perspective of what you need to do or how you need to handle it.”
With so many fellow colleagues in recovery, Parsons says he always has someone, which has helped him stay clean and sober.
Music is key to the recovery process, too.
“I just left the factory a few minutes ago, and one of our newest employees was sitting with our shop foreman, and they were having something like a guitar lesson over there after work,” Naselroad says. “My crew is full of musicians and songwriters,” Naselroad says. “They write as part of their recovery. In the 12-step program, journaling your feelings and your experience is a means by which you get a handle on a lot of things. And a lot of them like to journal about their upbringing, their addiction and their recovery. We take the instruments that we make and we do radio shows and festivals – all kinds of opportunities for them to express themselves.”
For Parsons, it’s the process that matters.
“Having a hand in this process, where you start with something that’s just a tree, and you end up with this really fine instrument, that’s beautiful,” Parsons says. “You have this guitar or mandolin or dulcimer or whatever it may be in your hand and you can strum it, Parsons says. “And it has this really beautiful sound and then you get to see where all your hard work and dedication has come out on the other side and you have a finished product. I think recovery is very similar. If you work to mold yourself into the person you want to be, and you put in all the work, and there’s other people that help you too along the way, just like the instruments, I think you also get a really beautiful and wonderful product at the end. But it requires work and dedication, just like the luthiery does.”
The Flood
In July 2022, after 10 years of laying the groundwork for the factory, it was gone – all of it.
“On the day of the flood, we pretty much thought that we’d all lost everything and one another,” Naselroad says.
The night of the flood, Parsons woke up to constant emergency alerts on his phone, telling him to seek higher ground and to seek shelter.
“It was scary,” Parsons says. “Luckily, where I live in particular, I didn’t have to worry too much, but I had no idea what was going on. That morning, I had every intention of going to work, but there was mudslides at the end of my road and I couldn’t. So then I started trying to call and text people and nobody really knew what was going on. Nobody could get to the factory. And then I finally got a hold of somebody and they were just like, well, everything’s gone.”
It was difficult, but no one wallowed in it, says Naselroad, who called his crew and said, “You guys were skilled luthiers yesterday. Today, you are disaster recovery workers, so pick up your shovels.”
Jeremy Haney, on cleanup duty at the school,
Everyone dug in and went to work.
“There was mud and dirt and grime everywhere,” Parsons says. “Wood had been washed down the creek. There was a bunch in the facility still, but it was all water-damaged and dirty. All our tools were in the mud. At the time, I didn’t know what was going to happen because this is still my livelihood. This is what I do to make money. So I was pretty worried about that, but we’ve really bounced back from it. Luckily, we’ve had a lot of supporters along the way. A lot of people have helped us rebuild.”
They lost five buildings, including their factory, which took three years and millions of dollars to restore. Throughout it all, Naselroad managed to keep everyone on the clock full-time, paid.
Doug Naselroad, picking tools out of the septic mud.
“You would be amazed at how strong and capable and dedicated my crew was in the midst of this disaster,” Naselroad says. “When we finally got back, the guys felt like they were back home again,” Naselroad says. “The flood, while it shook my confidence in the creek – I don’t trust the creek like I used to – it really affirmed my faith in the community, not only my guys, but the church community, Eastern Kentucky, and a lot of nonprofits and artists who stepped up.”
This included famous musicians, such as Chris Stapleton and Tyler Childers.
“Without them, we wouldn’t have made it through that first winter,” Naselroad says.
A Promising Future
Troublesome Creek Instrument Co. has produced about 400 instruments since its founding, despite the flood and the pandemic. Prices range from $525 for a dulcimer to $6,000 or more for a high-end guitar.
“Social-impact luthiery is an idea that never occurred to me until I was doing it,” Naselroad says. “But it’s a community that I’ve been privileged to serve and it’s been a wonderful, wonderful time. I really think that it’s a string of miracles that have put us where we are today, the flood included. We lost everything and then had everything put back in a really spectacular way. There’s a community strength that’s there that goes beyond just our shared interest of luthiery. A lot of life and death stuff has happened in the past four or five years.”
If you can use woodworking to give people the gift of a better life, then you are fortunate, Naselroad says.
My kitchen renovation is nowhere near complete, but I’m glad the space is at least semi-functional.
I’ve been at home this week (and possibly will be next) staring on and off at my not-yet-finished kitchen – on which I cannot currently work – every time I go to refresh my ice pack and drink more fluids. (I’m recovering from minor but uncomfortable surgery, and am under doctor’s orders to do no physically taxing work and to lift no more than 10 pounds for at least two weeks.)
This gives me plenty of time to second-guess my decisions. Maybe I should have built a lazy Susan cabinet in the corner…. Perhaps a smaller refrigerator tucked into the pantry would have been a better use of space… Should I have done inset toe kicks after all… Why did I even start this project ….
But start it I did, the day after Thanksgiving last year. And I’ve been thinking about it since the day I closed on the house in 2016. The first thing I built was the pantry storage, so that I’d have a place to store stuff – and it turns out that the pantry holds about 70 percent of my dishes, cookware, food stocks, etc. Not in any terribly organized or convenient setup, mind you – but at least I don’t have everything piled on my dining room table.
The pantry is also not done, but it’s almost completely functional (blue-tape drawer pulls for the win!). All that’s missing for full functionality is the ladder, which will also be used in the kitchen proper to reach the not-yet-begun upper cabinets there.
I moved my refrigerator into the dining room for a few months while I tore everything out and had the floors sanded and refinished. Going down to the basement to do dishes sucked enough that I got the sink base done quickly and hooked up the disposal and dishwasher with as little delay as possible.
And, my stove is now in place and hooked up. It taught me an expensive lesson: Do not replace a gas stove with a dual-fuel stove (or an all electric range, I suppose) without first making sure you have enough space on your electric panel to run that new stove. (I had to have a new panel put in…there went the budget!)
I built the cabinets just like Nancy Hiller teaches in “Kitchen Think” – except I use loose tenons where she used biscuits, because we have a Domino but no biscuit joiner. I did build one cabinet without loose tenons – screws only – and that was a mistake. The tenons (or biscuits) make it a heck of a lot easier to keep things in alignment as you drive screws. Always listen to Nancy.
I sure wish she were around to help me – or to at least weigh in on my choices. Or to simply share dinner with. (But I think she’d be proud I decided against a corner cabinet.)
Here’s how Nancy usually built kitchen cabinets (and how I do, too).
– Fitz
The method I use most often for built-in cabinetry combines simplicity and strength for the basic casework with materials and techniques for doors, drawers and finished panels that owe more to the world of furniture than that of contemporary commercial cabinetmaking. The technique that follows is a hybrid, drawing on what I learned at the different shops where I’ve worked. I have chosen materials and methods that make sense for my business, given my clientele and the styles in which I specialize.
Basic types of toe kick seen from the cabinet’s left end. The base cabinet at left has a flush kick. The one at right has a recessed kick.
I have worked on kitchen remodels managed by general contractors, but more often I’m working directly for clients. This is at least partly because installing the type of cabinets I most often build for kitchens is more labor-intensive and finicky than a lot of contractors want to bother with. They want to get their job done and return the kitchen to their clients as quickly as they can while doing high-quality work.
I get it. Before my husband and I were romantically involved, we were acquainted as tradespersons in the town we’d both made our home. The first job on which we collaborated was a wall of built-in bookcases. The clients had contracted with me to design and build them; Mark and his crew were going to do the installation. When we discussed the job initially, I asked about scribe rails for the sides where the bookcase face frames would meet the walls. “Life’s too short,” Mark commented. I was happy to be let off the hook and have him install the casework with applied trim, as he saw fit.
As time went on and we worked together on several kitchens, his attitude shifted. He still prefers not to scribe cabinets to their surroundings – it’s fiddly work that involves a fair amount of heavy lifting. As you get older, it hurts. But despite the aches, Mark has become expert at installing this type of cabinetry. A couple of years ago he even said he’d come to appreciate why I design and build kitchen cabinetry the way I do – it’s far more truly handmade than the majority of custom cabinetry. It allows the cabinetmaker (in this case, Mark’s wife) to use materials and techniques that are no longer common in this line of work, which translates to opportunities for the kind of satisfaction John Ruskin argued was every worker’s birthright.6 And in my experience, it’s clear that many clients appreciate the extra attention to detail, along with the awareness of history and craft that underlies it.
This is not to suggest that building and installing cabinets according to the following methods will be for everyone. It obviously isn’t. But considering how much flak I’ve had for my approach from fellow professionals over the years, it’s worth pointing out that a growing number of craftspersons and clients value this way of working.
The cabinet in the following example was designed for the kitchen of a 1912 house. I planned to scribe it to the floor and to the wall at its left; that’s why the face frame protrudes beyond the cabinet’s left side.
Unless you’re running a production facility where you build things in multiples to standard sizes, you should take the building work in stages instead of cutting all your parts at the start, based on a cutting list taken off drawings. That way you’ll have a chance to adjust the different parts to fit what you’ve made so far, instead of finding that your face frame is 1/16″ too narrow or you cut the recess for your kick 1/4″ too high.
Some people start with face frames, then build their carcases to fit. I work the other way around: Once the basic cases have been assembled, I move on to face frames. Then come doors and drawers.
Get Going
Now you have your scale elevations at hand and have made a cutting list based on them. My typical material for kitchen casework is 3/4″ maple-faced veneer-core plywood, prefinished on one side. The prefinished side goes to the cabinet interior; it saves a lot of time, which helps make my work affordable. That said, some jobs call for painted interiors or other finish treatments, so I always choose the sheet material to suit the job.
The next step is to cut your basic parts (sides, tops and cabinet floors) to size. Because I’m building each job to genuinely custom dimensions, some base cabinets may not be designed to end up 24″ deep or 34-3/4″ high. (For example, I love a 38″-high counter. It should go without saying that the carcase height must be adjusted to allow for the thickness of whichever counter material you’ll be using.) And even if most of the uppers in a kitchen job will be 12″ deep, one may be a 5″-deep spice cabinet, while another may be 16″ deep.
Rip all of the sides and floors to width. The edges and corners of sheet goods may not be square, and they often have minor damage, so it’s ideal to make the first rip slightly overwidth, then turn it around and rip the other edge to the size you require. That way you’ll have two square, clean edges for joinery.
Keep in mind how parts relate. Plan view of cabinet sides and back with face frame overhang (top). Front elevation showing face frame, door and drawer (bottom).
After ripping, cut the parts to length. There are various ways to do this. Aside from cutting each part accurately to length, it’s important to cut the ends square. You can do this with a track saw if you have one. Alternatively you can use a straightedge and a pattern cutting bit to rout one end square, then crosscut on a table saw, running that end along the fence. (The same technique will work with a radial arm saw for the second cut, which trims the piece to length.) My current method is to crosscut one end of each piece using a slider on my table saw, then cut it to length using the fence. Be sure you mark each part clearly as you cut it.
My method for joining cabinet floors to sides may not be refined, but it’s quick, simple and strong. I use a spacer made from scrap 3/4″ plywood to position the floor and support it. Twin-thread screws run in through the cabinet sides will fasten the whole thing together.
Your elevations will determine how high the kick needs to be and whether it will be flush or recessed. Calculate the height of the space that will be be neath the cabinet floor and rip spacers from scrap plywood to this width, then cut them to length. If your kick will be flush, the spacer should be a hair under the width of the cabinet sides in length; if the kick will be recessed, the spacer should be a hair under the width of the cutout portion at the bottom of each cabinet side.
Next, drill for the screws that will tie the sides together with the floor.
Most base cabinets do not need a solid plywood top. A strip several inches wide at the front and back offers plenty of material to tie the sides together and support a counter, and using less material lightens the weight of these substantial cabinets while minimizing waste. Sink bases in particular do not need a solid top; the vast majority of a sink base’s top will be cut out to accommodate the sink. For narrow cabinets (those 18″ or less wide) it’s usually quicker to go ahead and make a solid plywood top, following the same directions as those for a strip top.
The strips for a particular cabinet will be the same length as the floor for that cabinet, so cut them to length at the same time. The sides of the cabinet will be joined to these strips with twin-thread screws, but I also use biscuit joints, for increased strength as well as a positive means of locating the parts during assembly. Mark each strip with the cabinet name or number and “front” or “back,” so you’ll be able to identify quickly which end is right and left, and which long edge faces forward. It’s a good idea to have at least two biscuits in each strip to help prevent the strips from twisting during assembly.
If you have ever found yourself on hands and knees, searching for that custard pan in the very back of a base cabinet, you’ll understand why most cabinets today are made with drawers or pull-out trays on full-extension mechanical slides instead of with shelves concealed by doors. I rarely put shelves in base cabinets, but I do use them in upper cabinets and in shallow base units such as bookshelves.
When a cabinet will have adjustable shelves, I usually use 1/4″ pin-style supports, which are unobtrusive, extremely strong (I have used them to store large shelves of LPs) and fast. Now is the time to drill shelf support holes, because you can clamp the cabinet sides together and mark them at the same time. Lay out the positions with a long square.
Safety first. Drill shelf support holes close to the front and back of the shelf, where they will give the necessary support.
Shelf spacing may seem like a no-brainer, but even here it’s worth paying attention to a few considerations:
There is no point putting shelf support holes too close to the cabinet floor or top (or, in cases where there will be drawers above the shelf compartment, too close to the drawers) where there would not be enough room to store anything on the shelves. Think about what the shelves will need to hold and plan their spacing accordingly. If the bottom of the cabinet will be holding flower vases that are 12″ tall, there may not be any point putting shelf support holes lower than about 13″ above the cabinet floor.
Holes at the back of the cabinet should be about 1″ forward from the back edge to allow enough space for fingers when inserting and removing supports.
Holes near the front of the cabinet should be positioned close enough to the front edge of the shelves that they prevent the shelves from tipping when someone is putting an object away or taking it out. At the same time, take any lipping at the front edge of the shelf into account. In general it’s a good idea to center the front shelf support holes about 5/8″ on center behind the back face of a shelf lipping that hangs below the underside of the shelf.
Consider how much adjustability is really necessary for the shelves in a given cabinet. For cabinets that will store shorter items such as juice glasses and dishware, closer spacing may be warranted; I often lay these out at 1-1/4″ on center. For cabinets storing large items such as tall jars of dry goods, 2″ on center may be more practical. The point is to allow as much versatility in positioning the shelves as may be needed while avoiding the visual busy-ness of too many holes.
A typical upper unit. The top shows a plan view; at bottom is an elevation.
Assembly Time
With the basic carcase joints cut and shelf support holes drilled, you’re ready to glue up the cabinets. Run a bead of glue along the top edge of each floor spacer, then stand the sides on the floor, front edge facing up. (You can lean each side against a workbench, stationary machine or sturdy trash can to hold it temporarily.)
Set the cabinet floor in place between the sides, and clamp loosely. Depending on the size of the assembly and whether you have a helper, it may be more practical to hold the floor and sides together by clamping the floor to the bottom spacers instead of clamping across the cabinet’s width. At this point the clamp is just to hold the parts together while you insert the top (or top strips); there will be time to adjust the fit and get things square.
Now apply glue to the biscuit slots for the top (or top strips), insert the biscuits, and set the top in place. Apply a couple of clamps to hold the assembly together while you adjust the fit.
After squaring the cabinet, sight across the top edges to check for winding. Shim at the bottom as necessary to remove twist, then drill and screw. Let the cabinet sit until the glue has set, per the glue manufacturer’s instructions.
Vertical Dividers Plywood that’s prefinished on both sides comes into its own for vertical dividers. I measure for dividers at this point and fasten them in place with screws.
Instead of using a tape measure, I cut a couple of pieces of scrap plywood (one for the bottom, the other for the top) to the distance between the divider and the nearest cabinet side. Clamp the scrap in place and you have an instant way to drill the pilot holes, 3/8″ on center from the edge of the scrap. This method also makes locating the divider a snap when you’re ready to screw it in place.
Of course, you can’t insert that divider until you’ve cut it. Don’t precut dividers to size; cut them to fit. Otherwise you may find that your divider is too small. The most accurate way to determine a divider’s length is by setting one end in place and marking the other.
Wide cabinets should have support feet below or near vertical dividers to prevent sag. Make these from strips of 3/4″ plywood cut to the same height as the spacers supporting the cabinet sides. Screw a batten on each side of the foot through which you can fasten to the underside of the cabinet floor.
Excerpted from Nancy R, Hiller’s “Kitchen Think” – which I cannot recommend highly enough if you’re considering a kitchen renovation. And doubly so if you’re considering a sympathetic renovation for an older home
