For me, it is easier to launch a book-writing project than begin a big woodworking job. That’s because with a book, I can begin by writing a chapter at any point in the narrative.
That doesn’t work in woodworking. You shouldn’t build a dresser by first sanding and finishing all the rough lumber.
I’ve tried to start a book by writing chapter one several times. The swarf in the mutton tallow here is that by the time you write your final chapter, your book has wandered in a different (probably better) direction than your TOC. So you have to throw out the first few chapters and rewrite them.
Here’s how I do it now. I write a chapter somewhere in the middle of the book – one that I have a handle on. If it’s a woodworking book, maybe it’s the chapter on how the hardware is made, or the one that compares several historical workbench forms. It’s something that I know forward and backward and can knock out.
We ask our new authors to do this, too. This is for two reasons: One, it gives the authors confidence that they can write a book. That first chapter is a significant step.
Then we edit this sample chapter and give the author a list of ways to improve the writing. Some authors ignore the advice (which makes more work for me) and some take it to heart. They tape notes to their computers to remind them of their weaknesses.
Here are the most common problems. (If you want to improve your writing, buy a used copy of “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser. There are millions of extant copies. I sometimes buy a bunch at Half-price Books for $2 each and send them to authors who request help.)
Too wordy. Many people write like they talk. And they talk too much. After you write a paragraph, try to remove as many words as you can and not change the sentence’s meaning. Sometimes you can remove 25 percent.
Use active voice instead of passive. Most sentences should be: subject, verb, predicate. Example: John handplaned the cherry. A passive construction is: The cherry was handplaned by John. Passive voice is weak and wordy. (But sometimes you should throw in a passive sentence to break things up.)
Avoid -ly adverbs and -ing words. Most of them are stupid anyway. Banish the word “very” from your vocabulary.
Avoid semicolons. Most people have no idea how to use them.
Use the dash as little as you would use an exclamation mark. What comes after a dash should be something that you are shouting.
Three short sentences are better than one long-ass briar patch of mouth oatmeal.
Write a chapter, then leave it alone for eight weeks. Then edit it. You will be amazed at how you can improve your writing this way.
I could go on with this list for about nine weeks, like when I taught news writing classes at Ohio State and the University of Kentucky.
Bottom line: Write as if your audience is a bunch of 8th graders. If you can explain complex ideas to 8th graders, you have achieved something few writers do.
I haven’t decided where to begin with “The Stick Chair Book.” Perhaps the chapter on how to make stretchers. It’s shorter than other chapters about the seat, the legs and the arms. That’s because I don’t have as many tricks to make stretchers as I do for the other components.
Or perhaps I need to figure out some new stretcher tricks.
Let the self-doubt commence.
— Christopher Schwarz
Read other posts from the “Making Book” series here.
Cabinets finished with Real Milk Paint Company colors Boardwalk (the base color), Dijon (amber), Granny Smith (green) and French Grey (blue). Door and drawer pulls from Schoolhouse.
When most of us think about installing cabinets, we picture ourselves shimming them at the floor so they’ll be level across their width and plumb across their faces. Another consideration comes into play in cases where more than one cabinet will be joined together without some other thing (such as a stove) to break up the front plane: we want to make sure the faces are in a straight line, not higgledy-piggledy following bumps or concavities in the wall behind them.
With base cabinets, there are two ways to level casework at the floor. The most common involves shimming up a separate platform on which the cases themselves will stand. The platform runs the full length of the cabinet series, providing a flat surface, and is typically recessed relative to the cabinets’ faces to hide any irregularity in the fit of the applied toe-kick, which goes on after the cabinets are set. You find the highest point of the floor in a given run of cabinets, set the platform down and shim it level and plumb. Then you set the cabinets on the platform, fasten them together to form a unit, shim as necessary at the wall and screw in place.
On most of my jobs, we scribe the cabinets to the floor, a technique that “Kitchen Think” covers in detail. With this method, we locate the lowest point of the floor in a given run of cabinets; instead of shimming the cabinets up, we cut their bottom edges down until they sit level and plumb.
Whether you’re building up or cutting down, in all cases involving more than a single cabinet it helps to screw the units together before you attach them to the wall. That way you can treat multiple cases as one entity, shimming at the wall so that the faces will be flat and plumb.
Never take for granted that serial cabinets will automatically end up in a straight line. Always check them with the longest-available straightedge.
On our most recent kitchen job, Mark and I had to switch our thinking by 90°. Usually, when he’s gutting a room to the joists and studs, Mark takes the time to get the walls and floors flat and level. Sometimes this means cutting long, tapered wedges to build those structural timbers up; sometimes it means having at them with a power-plane, to remove a twist or a bump. On this job he straightened most of the surfaces, but he didn’t bother with the exterior wall. You know where this is going.
Naturally, that wall turned out to be a problem. The lower section of the wall was pretty flat, so the base cabinets went in easily. It wasn’t until we were installing the upper cabinets – three large, heavy units – that we realized we were in for some fun.
Busted. The bump became visible when we chalked a level line to indicate the bottom of the upper cabinets so we could screw a temporary support batten to the wall.
Here’s how we installed the upper cabinets plumb on an out-of-plumb wall and flat across their faces despite that bump.
With the bump as a starting point, Mark used 4′, 6′ and 8′ levels to shim the wall plumb at strategic stud points across the cabinets’ width. We ended up with shims pinned to the wall in five locations — a textbook example of why it’s worth plumbing the studs (if you have that option) before you start cabinet installation.
View from above. We clamped the right-hand pair of cabinets together at their faces, then inserted screws, making them into a unit, before we lifted them onto our support batten and screwed them to the wall. Because I’d made the face frames overhang slightly at the cabinets’ sides, we had to insert a shim between them at the back to keep them from conforming to the wall (which would have prevented them from lying flat across their front faces).
I made a 1/8″ x 3/4″ scribe strip to hide the gap caused by the shims at the left end of the run.
The aim of the following exercises is to produce full-length, full-width shavings. The first exercise will show whether the reader is achieving this aim.
Grip in the vice, edge upwards, a piece of clear softwood about 300 x 75 x 25mm (12 x 3 x 1in.). With a woodworker’s soft pencil draw a line down the middle (Fig 29). Using a sharp, well-adjusted plane, plane a full-length, full-width shaving. The pencil mark should be completely removed. Mark the wood with the pencil and plane again, repeat this for ten shavings. If a trace of the pencil mark remains, begin the count again. After ten successful attempts have a brief rest then cut a further ten. This is the technique of planing when the wood is narrower than the plane.
When the wood is wider than the plane, the technique is modified as follows. Grip in the vice a similar piece of wood about 75mm (3in.) wide. Clean the dirt and roughness from one of the wide surfaces and draw on it three pencil lines (Fig 30). Proceed to plane as before, in groups of three shavings, either left side, right side and centre or left, centre, right. After three cuts, if all trace of the pencil mark is gone, the score is one. Continue in groups of three as before up to ten. Start again if a trace of pencil remains. It is not necessary to take off a line with each cut, but after three cuts all the lines must be gone. Repeat as before for a second group of ten.
If the wood is wider still a group of four, five or more cuts will be necessary. The important thing is that the planing must be regular and consistent. Planing haphazardly all over the board will never produce a flat surface.
Facing Just as a building requires a true and accurate foundation from which all the subsequent measurements can be taken, so every piece of wood requires one accurate surface from which sizes and angles can be taken later on. This is known as the true face (often confusingly called the ‘face side’). There is a straightforward method of obtaining the true face, which can be tried out on a softwood piece of about 300 x 75 x 25mm (12 x 3 x 1in.).
Grip the wood in the vice and plane off the dirt and roughness from one large side (Fig 31). Resist the temptation to clean up all sides – it may look nice but there is a good chance of ending up under the required size. Now make a thick, soft pencil mark at each end (Fig 32). With a fine set plane try to plane the piece hollow. That is, start the cut just inside the first pencil mark and lift off just before the second. Continue this process with a fine set until the plane no longer cuts. Failure will be shown by the removal of a pencil mark. If this happens replace the mark and continue.
When the plane will cut no more, plane the wood from end to end. The first cut will remove a small shaving from each end, and subsequent shavings will get bigger. When a full-length shaving has been produced, stop, and test for accuracy (Fig 33). Naturally, if the workpiece is wider than the plane, groups of cuts will be taken in this way.
Tests for a true face There are three tests for a true face: 1. Is the work flat in length? Test with a steel or wooden straightedge which must be longer than the work (Fig 34). 2. Is the work flat in width? Test in several places with a rule (Fig 35). 3. Is the work ‘in wind’ (i.e. twisted)? ‘Wind’ is pronounced as in ‘winding a clock’ or ‘on a winding road.’ Test with a pair of winding strips. Place a winding strip on at each end, step back a couple of paces then sight across the top of the winding strips. These magnify twist and quite a small error will be revealed (Fig 36). Correct where necessary, then test again. Take care that in correcting for one of these tests, one or both of the others is not disturbed. When all the tests have been satisfactorily passed, put on a pencil face mark (Fig 37). For some constructions the true face is inwards, others require it on the outside. It is important to bear this in mind when examining the timber before facing. In other words, does the best-looking surface have the true face or not?
Edging The true edge (sometimes called the ‘face edge’) is the next important stage in producing material to size. The work already faced is held in the vice edge upwards and preferably with the true face outwards (Fig 38). This latter will of course depend on how the grain runs. The process is similar to that of facing. Clean the dirt and roughness from the edge on which the face mark stands. Make a strong pencil mark at each end (Fig 39). Plane as previously to hollow the workpiece between the marks, continuing until the plane no longer cuts. Now plane right through, stopping when the first full-length, full-width shaving results (Fig 40).
Tests for a true edge 1. Is the work flat in length? Test with a straightedge longer than the work (Fig 41). 2. Is the work flat in width? Test with a rule; if the last shaving was full width the work will be flat in width automatically (Fig 42). 3. Is the edge square (i.e. at 90°) to the true face? Test with a try-square in several places (Fig 43).
Correct where necessary and mark with a ‘vee’ pointing to the true face (Fig 44). Often a cross is used which is not so useful. If the face mark is lost the ‘vee’ indicates which side it was. If the edge mark is lost the face mark does the same.
Edge planing When the test for squareness has been made (Fig 45), it is more than likely that one side of the wood will be higher than the other. The obvious remedy appears to be to tilt the plane. However, this will merely produce a second surface (Fig 46), making it even more difficult to settle the plane. It was stated earlier that the jack plane blade is sharpened to a curve and advantage will now be taken of this. With the plane correctly adjusted (Fig 47), a shaving cut in the centre of the plane will be of an equal thickness across its width. A shaving cut near the edge of the plane will have a thick side and a thin side, the latter thinning down to virtually nothing. Settle the plane on the workpiece (Fig 48). Successive shavings cut in this manner will gradually reduce the high side to squareness. The last shaving should be cut using the centre of the blade. In order that the plane does not wander sideways during the stroke the normal grip is replaced by the edge grip. The left hand no longer holds the front knob but instead grips the sole just behind it with the thumb and first finger. The finger acts as a fence preventing sideways movement (see photographs 8 and 9). This is the standard method for planing all edges accurately.
Photo 8 Planing – the edge grip. This is a way of avoiding the plane moving sideways.Photo 9 Planing – the edge grip. Here the fingers make a fence.
The beginning. In the House of the Vetti, this dining room fresco is perhaps the earliest depiction of a workbench in the West. Photo by Narayan Nayar
Editor’s note: On this day (Aug. 24) in 79 C.E., Mount Vesuvius erupted, killing thousands and forever changing the course of archaeology. The ash that covered the nearby towns was devastating, but it also created a detailed snapshot of everyday life. It also gave us the two earliest images of workbenches in the West. To remember this day, here is the first chapter of “Ingenious Mechanicks,” which is about my visit to the volcano.
The journey to the summit of Mount Vesuvius has all the romance of visiting an unlicensed reptile farm. It begins in Ercolano, Italy, a touristy village in the shadow of the volcano and home to Herculaneum, one of the towns buried by Vesuvius’s eruption in 79 C.E.
As Narayan Nayar (the photographer for the journey) and I stepped off the train from Naples we were assaulted by young, attractive Italians. Their job: Bait tourists to nearby restaurants. We glanced around and saw only one escape route from the train station’s cul-de sac. So, we plowed through the crowd of eager human fishing lures.
We emerged from the other side a bit relieved. Then we realized we’d scurried past the bus company that was supposed to drive us up the volcano. We turned around and dove back into the swarm of too-perky people in order to catch our bus.
Where are the virgins? The cone of Vesuvius is not a fiery hole leading into the bowels of the earth. It looks like a gravel quarry where you might buy stone for your garden. Photo by Narayan Nayar
The twisty-turny bus ride ended 660 feet below the volcano’s summit, and we then climbed a steep trail to the volcano’s rim. The top resembles a gravel pit where one of Frank Herbert’s worms might emerge. There’s no deep hole for tossing human sacrifices – throw a virgin into Vesuvius and she’s only going to get skinned knees and a sunburn. I looked around the volcano and promptly excused the early settlers of the area for building their homes at the base of Vesuvius. The only evidence you’re on a volcano (besides the little gift shops) is the occasional tiny plume of gas and the odd rocks below your feet.
I picked up a few rocks. For rocks, they were young – likely the result of the 1944 eruption, which destroyed several villages. I looked out from our 4,200-foot perch at the buildings in every direction below, which are built on top of villages that were covered in ash from earlier eruptions. It’s a grim scene if you think about it too much – 600,000 people now live in the so-called “red zone” for a future eruption.
Ruined. Even with thousands of tourists around you, Pompeii is so sprawling that it seems deserted. Photo by Narayan Nayar
And yet, as I fondled the rocks in my hand I felt only gratitude for this deadly, fire-breathing mountain.
The Earliest Workbenches The recorded history of woodworking begins with the Egyptians. But the recorded history of workbenches begins (for now) with Vesuvius. Its massive eruption in 79 C.E. buried Pompeii, Herculaneum and other sites, preserving frescoes, buildings, pottery, human remains and even wooden furniture.
At Pompeii, the ash blanketed a fresco showing a low, four-legged workbench being used for mortising by a man in Greek attire. At nearby Herculaneum, the eruption preserved a fresco showing “erotes” – what we might call “buck nekkid cupids” – sawing a board at an eight-legged low workbench. It features a holdfast and other holdfast holes. This fresco has since been destroyed, but we have engravings that were made soon after its discovery (more on both the frescoes’ stories is ahead).
Graven image. This copperplate engraving was made by Italian artists shortly after the Herculaneum fresco was discovered. Sadly, the original has deteriorated.
These two images are the earliest representations of workbenches of which I’m aware. And they launched my interest in exploring knee-high workbenches and how to use them to build furniture, boats, storage containers and wagon wheels.
The conventional wisdom is that these low benches were used in former times for simple work and were replaced by superior modern benches, which are thigh-high or taller. But the more I studied low benches, the more I found that they never disappeared. They are still in use. Additionally, these low benches can be used for complex work, including steam bending compound shapes and lutherie.
The low bench is more than a thick plank of wood with legs. It’s also a collection of simple jigs and appliances that allow you to do remarkable work while sitting comfortably on an easy-to-build platform. For centuries, these simple jigs remained hidden in plain sight in paintings and drawings in museums. And their appliances have been proven to work, both at my low benches and by the modern craftsmen who still use them.
But why bother with this musty old crap? Modern woodworkers are blessed with a wide array of vises, dogs, clamps and other devices that can immobilize a piece of wood so you can work on its faces, edges and ends. Well, at times I think we tend to make our workholding far more complex than it has to be. And that can affect your approach to the things you build. While your brain might see the logic of a screw-driven tail vise with a series of movable metal dogs, the ingenious early craftsman might find this same vise slow, fragile, fussy to maintain and cumbersome in use.
Teach a Roman to shave. It is a short intellectual leap from the low workbench to other “sit and work” appliances, such as the shavehorse.
I empathize with the early woodworker. My brain is wired to look for a simpler solution to a problem instead of creating complexity.
Example: Earlier this year, I spent a couple hours in the dentist’s chair and was force-fed several episodes of a home-improvement show focused on carving out storage from oddball places in a home. Some of the examples I remember over the whirring of the dental Dremel include:
• Hinge your steps to create trap doors on the landings of your stairs to make small bins in the wasted space between your stringers. • Find stud walls that are chases for utilities and turn them into built-in chests of drawers. • In attic spaces, create sliding racks on the interior of a high-pitched roof. You slide giant plastic bins into the racks – it’s a bit like a top-hanging drawer.
Through the entire program I wanted to puke (that was mostly because I have a sensitive gag reflex). But it was also because these “storage solution” programs neglect to mention the easiest way to control clutter: Get rid of your excess crap.
No one should have so much stuff that they have to slave excessively to make a place to stow it. In the same way, no workbench needs vises on all four corners (I’ve built these for students and customers) to build fine furniture. You just don’t.
With this book, I hope to expose you to early and simple ways of holding your work. While many of these devices were used on low workbenches, most of them work on high workbenches as well. I use both sorts of benches – high and low – in my work for building all manner of things, from stud walls to Welsh stick chairs, dovetailed chests to nailed-together coffins.
The workholding on these benches is truly ingenious and effective. Things change when you sit down to work. And I think you’ll be surprised what you can do on your bum: planing, chiseling, shaving and even dovetailing.
The low bench form might not be for everyone. But it might be right for you and you might not know it. Woodworkers with limited mobility use low benches because they can sit and work. Apartment woodworkers use low benches because they take up little space and do double-duty as seating or a coffee table. Curious woodworkers use them because – dammit – they are an interesting form to build and use. Many chairmakers already use a low bench (but they call it a shavehorse), as do many other specialty trades, including coopers and basketmakers. Oh, and a low bench is the best sawbench ever made – promise.
One more plug for these early benches: Using their lessons, you can make almost any surface into a worksurface. A couple drywall screws can turn a picnic table into an English-style workbench. A missing brick in a wall (and a pine wedge) can become a face vise. A shavehorse can be cobbled together with a rock and a scrap of wood strapped to your gut.
Even if you never build a low workbench and reject its appliances as “not whiz-bang-y” enough for your engineering mindset, you might enjoy the journey of discovery required to write this book. It involved trips to exotic Italy, Germany and Indianapolis. (And understanding the low bench might connect your work to Chinese benches.) In the process, we rescued oak slabs from a pallet factory. We flushed $1,000 down a metaphorical toilet to learn about the construction of the first modern workbench in 1505. We ate a ton of Neapolitan pizza.
Workbenches are at the heart of everything we do. So, let’s take a brief look at the history of Western workbenches and consider why it’s even worth looking at ancient benches.
The first woman I was ever aware of in the realm of woodworking publications is Aimé Ontario Fraser. It was the early 1990s when I began to notice her name, and occasionally her picture, in the pages of Fine Woodworking. By then, I had spent a decade in custom furniture and cabinet shops in England and the States. One of the shops where I’d worked had three women, along with about ten men. But in the pages of the woodworking magazines I read, women rarely made an appearance.
The last article I remember seeing with Fraser’s byline was in 2005. After that, she slipped from my notice. Every so often I wondered what had become of this woman who was among the first to normalize images of women in woodworking – to get our eyeballs so used to seeing women (of all ages, sizes, etc., just as we do with men) fitting butt hinges, planing boards, ripping panels on table saws, carving mantels, and so on, that we may someday no longer say “wow, a woman woodworker” and simply see someone building a cabinet or applying her skill in the furnishing of an interior. So I contacted Fine Woodworking’s unfailingly helpful Betsy Engel, who forwarded my inquiry to Fraser. To my delight, she agreed to speak with me.
***
The Sono 15, a boat Fraser designed for teaching. “It’s a great little boat, and there are 27 of them around New England, all built by students of mine.”
Fraser got her start in woodworking as a high school exchange student in New Zealand. It was 1976 and New Zealand was the center of modern wood composite boatbuilding technology – we’re talking 1/8” or thinner layers of wood laminated with epoxy and fiberglass cloth to produce hulls that are very light and strong. Even though she hadn’t been allowed to take woodworking classes in high school back home (she had to take home economics instead), she got a job working for a boat builder. She loved the work.
Back in the States, she wanted to keep building. She became romantically involved with a sailing buddy in Connecticut whom she would later marry. “He built stuff, so we started doing boat stuff,” she says. Building boats and finishing hulls became her work for the next decade-plus. This is how she learned woodworking.
Fraser earlier in her career
Fifteen years later, she worked her way into running the boat shop at The Maritime Center (now the Maritime Aquarium), where she focused on traditional local boats and boatbuilding techniques. She led a group of serious volunteer builders, and the job also allowed her to work with schoolchildren; at one point she and a group of seventh graders built four boats in two weeks and then raced them on the river behind the Center.
On the Topic of Gender
At this point it’s worth noting that the trajectory of Fraser’s woodworking career has had a lot to do with being a woman in a field long dominated by men. “I’m pretty skilled as a woodworker,” she says. “I know how to make odd shapes and how to fit things together so well that the water doesn’t come in.” If you know anything about boatbuilding, you’ll appreciate she’s being modest. Such meticulous work is no mean feat. “But I never worked in a boatyard or on a building site. I honestly didn’t want to put up with that s**t.”
Take mansplaining, for instance. (Please, do take it, and never bring it back.) “I remember when I was in charge of the boat shop at the Maritime Center,” Fraser recounts, “and one of my jobs was to build boats so that people could watch me. I was a display! I had a team of volunteers including a V.P. from GE, a retired general, some heavy-duty people I had to manage. They would come into the shop and work, and we worked together to build boats in a traditional manner. But then men would wander by to watch the display. Some high level work was going on, and random men would tell me I was doing it wrong and start lecturing me on how to use a chisel or plane. Anyone who knew anything about building could see what I was really doing, yet so many clueless men felt compelled to tell me I was wrong. This phenomenon has always been hard for me to fathom.”
It’s fair to say that neither Fraser nor I would claim that such advice is only given to women. What’s irksome – well, aside from the “correction” being based on a widely held belief that fails to take all relevant factors into account – is the experience of people assuming you know less than you do because you’re a woman. Which is pretty ironic in Fraser’s case, considering she’s something of an expert on this subject. In 2002 she wrote an article on sharpening handplanes for Fine Woodworking (#157, July/August 2002) that involved electron micrographing plane irons and sharpening stones.
Shortly after, she put together a team for the New England Handplaning Contest (organized by The Woodworkers Store in Norwalk Connecticut); her team included the then-president of DMT, students, and friends, and relied heavily on Harrelson Stanley of HMS Enterprises, importer of Japanese tools and sharpening equipment. They trained by sharpening planes every day for weeks prior and discussed technique. The president of DMT made them a diamond flattening device so they could flatten the soles of their planes. Fraser was named the New England Handplane Champion for producing a 9-foot long lace-thin shaving of Alaskan cedar. “After I won it, I had to go to the grocery store on my way home. I remember walking down the frozen food aisle and thinking, ‘I’m the New England Hand Plane Champion!’” she recalls, chuckling at the geekiness of it all.
Nevertheless, corrections from men on the proper way to put down a plane continued to dog her. She did a TV commercial for Woodcraft in which she was planing a wide panel while talking about the company’s products. She put the plane down upright on the bench. Alarm bells went off around the country. “People throughout my career who were not professional woodworkers, people who did not win the New England Handplane Championship, would tell me I was doing it wrong!” she laughs. “I would have to say, ‘no if you put it on its side you risk nicking the blade [or] cutting yourself. Put it down gently, but not on its side, [or] somebody’s gonna get hurt.”
And then there’s just plain old-fashioned sexism. “I always faced a lot of crap for being a woman,” she continues. “‘Oh, you do that and you’re a woman?!’ I didn’t let it bother me. Writing helped a lot because it gave me many more opportunities than if I’d been a tradesperson alone. But I always felt, ‘This is what I am, this is what I do.’ I think like a woodworker. I never wanted to get too bothered about gender, though it’s always been there. At this one boatyard, one guy called me the Varnish Muffin. I said, ‘Look, I’m a professional; I have a staff of four and thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment. If you want me to come and varnish your boats, I will, but I am not a ‘Varnish Muffin.’ I don’t varnish just because I’m the captain’s girlfriend and girls varnish. I varnish because it’s my part of my profession.”
The Taunton Connection
Throughout the early years of her career she wrote for WoodenBoat and other boat-related magazines, in addition to running her own business on the side. One winter’s day, as she headed out to work on a 60-foot yacht in the water, she realized, “if I fall off this dock I will die, and no one will know, because I’m the only one out here and it’s too cold, and the current is too swift [to survive].” She started looking for another way to stay in woodworking and was hired by the Taunton Press.
After leaving Taunton around 1998, she had a job as the director of education, planning classes and teaching at The Woodworkers Store in Norwalk, CT that had a woodworkers’ club. People paid for shop time by the hour and there was someone on hand to help with projects. “I tended not to do ‘woodworking for women’ because I felt that was talking down to people,” she says. “I recognize that women at that time needed extra encouragement. But I didn’t like the idea of putting the women off in another room. I [did teach] boatbuilding classes. It was Taunton’s 25th anniversary; the owner of the franchise teamed up with Taunton and we had a bunch of authors come in and demonstrate while working.”
After that, she was the Principle Instructor at the Wooden Boat Workshop, also in Norwalk. It operated on a similar concept, focused on building small boats.
Fraser has written two books: Getting Started in Woodworking and Your First Workshop. She did technical editing for Taunton Books, working on the Mark Duginske’s Band Saw Handbook and the second edition of Bruce Hoadley’s classic, Understanding Wood. After that, she hooked up with John Kelsey and Ian Kirby; together they had a small company called Cambium Press, which published Kirby’s books on sharpening and dovetails, along with other books. She also ghost-wrote James Krenov’s book With Wakened Hands. “I was given a box of photographs and several hours of recordings, and we made that book.” She spent a week with Krenov to finish it up – a special experience, given that he was one of her heroes from the 1970s. “I had the good fortune to hang out with people who were my heroes,” she reflects. “Krenov, Mark Duginske, Ian Kirby, and others. We became good friends and had a lot of fun together.”
By 2008 Fraser had gone out on her own, with a 1500-square-foot woodworking shop in an old warehouse in Connecticut. Along with other types of cabinets, she did specialized work for equestrians, designing and building travel cases for all manner of dressage equipment.
Boot rack with jacket and hat, one of the specializes pieces of equestrian equipment Fraser made in her business
Fraser’s business logo
Then the economy shifted, culminating in the housing crisis and the Great Recession. As a one-person business without the capitalization necessary to survive the drying up of high-end spending, she was devastated. She worked all day in her shop, then went to an evening job at a grocery store in an effort to keep the bills paid. “When they taught me how to run the fryer, I cried just a little,” she says. Eventually she realized she could not keep her business going. She sold all of her machinery, though she kept the hand tools and clamps.
Saddle stand with shop-made brass hardware
Just last year, Fraser was hired as New England Training Coordinator for Mueller Reports, a company that specializes in insurance inspections for homeowners and small business. She trains people to inspect buildings. Not surprisingly, her knowledge of building and woodworking is invaluable. “It’s a wonderful challenge, and the steadiest paycheck I’ve had in my life,” aside from when she was at Taunton Press.
Fraser in November 2017
For the present, Fraser thinks of woodworking as a fallow field she’s letting rest. She lives in a community that regulates how she uses her garage. “But I do have a basement and tons of clamps and tons of tools,” she adds, thinking about how she’ll get back into it.
Finally, what about the name Ontario? I’ve always been curious, so I asked. Fraser’s family is from Upstate New York near the Canadian border. Her grandmother was from Ontario, and her parents had a summer cottage on Lake Ontario, so that became her middle name.
Thank you, Aimé, for allowing me to interview you, for digging up all these old photographs, and for being one of the early public faces of women in our field.
