Scholarship applications are now open for six spots in a special comb-back class in our Covington, Kentucky, workshop Sept. 15-19. The class is offered through The Chairmaker’s Toolbox, a non-profit organization that provides education and support to those who have been historically excluded from the craft.
The six students will spend five days building and finishing a vernacular comb-back chair using lots of hand tools and occasionally the band saw. The scholarship covers full tuition, all materials, and breakfasts and lunches during the week. (Housing and transportation are the responsibility of the student.)
Full details and the application are here. The deadline to apply is July 6, 2025. People of all skill levels are encouraged to apply.
This is the fourth year I have taught this class, and it’s one of the highlights of my year. The classes are intense, but they’re filled with good food, camaraderie and the occasional moonwalking lesson.
The “goose girl” statue in our Main Strasse neighborhood.
Our workshop is in the inner city in an old German neighborhood. The shop is an 1890s German barroom. As a result, you don’t really need a car once you get here. You can walk anywhere you want to go (including Cincinnati, which is right over the Roebling Suspension Bridge). Covington itself is a diverse, open and accepting community.
A lot of students come here with odd ideas about Kentucky (Will there be plumbing? Will people be riding horses?) I guess you’ll have to come find out for yourself.
You don’t need all the tools to take the class – some students show up with just a tape measure and a lot of enthusiasm. And that’s more than enough. We have plenty of chairmaking and general woodworking tools here we can loan you.
If you aren’t going to apply for the scholarship, please consider passing along this information to someone you know who might be interested.
We are not fancy here. So when Megan threatened to wear a skirt, I knew this was a serious event.
Rob Spiece, director of woodcraft at Berea Student Craft, had scored invitations for all of us to see the opening of a new exhibit at the Taft Museum in Cincinnati: The Crafted World of Wharton Esherick.
It’s rare for Esherick’s pieces to leave Pennsylvania, and this was a chance to see the pieces interpreted by Rob, a woodworker who knows a lot about Esherick’s work and life (Rob is from the Philadelphia area).
So I put on a chambray shirt and pants that weren’t visibly ragged. And we arrived at the Taft’s valet parking station in my minivan.
Esherick (1887-1970) was a polymath who excelled at painting, sculpture, woodblock prints and furniture design. His paintings brush up against American impressionism at the end of the Arts & Crafts Movement in this country. His furniture is incredibly forward-looking, presaging the studio furniture movement in the 20th century.
The first piece we looked at (above) was Esherick’s first woodworking project, Rob said. It’s a huge drop-front desk with massive wooden carved hinges. The little detail in the base that looks like moulding? That’s a big flat drawer. The piece was made with little concern for wood movement or traditional practice, and it has cracks here and there. But the piece has an incredible presence.
I, of course, was interested in Esherick’s chairs. First up was this woven-seat chair made from hammer handles. While the idea was a simple art school trope (furniture from alternative objects), the execution was sublime. Even the choice of wood for the backrest.
This impressionist painting (below) by Esherick was a turning point for the artist, Rob said. Esherick built and carved the frame for the painting, and Esherick’s painting instructor suggested he might be a better carver than painter (I think the painting of yellow pines is beautiful, but what do I know?).
That remark helped propel Esherick into the world of furniture. His home in Malvern, Pennsylvania, became a complete art project for him. Every aspect of the building, from the stairwells down to the drawer pulls, are marked by his work.
Every aspect of his desk reflects this sensibility, all the drawers are filled with handmade cubbies and trays that provide dedicated spaces for all his writing tools.
If you visit Cincinnati in the next few months, I highly recommend visiting this exhibit. I don’t have room to show or discuss his woodcuts, which are incredible. The Taft Museum itself is worth a visit for its architecture – an early wooden Greek Revival home preserved in downtown Cincinnati.
And really, you don’t have to wear a skirt to the exhibit (Megan stuck with her jeans during our visit).
Editor’s note: Our Mind Upon Mind series is a nod to a 1937 Chips from the Chisel column (also featured in “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years”), in which Hayward wrote, “The influence of mind upon mind is extraordinary.” The idea being there’s often room for improvement. (You can read the entire Chips from the Chisel column here.)
And so we ask for submissions: After building projects from our books, what else have you thought of, tried out and improved upon?
Today’s submission is from Jay Abramovitz in Voorhees, New Jersey.
I came up with an approach for accurately drilling holes at compound angles that has worked surprisingly well for me.
I started with three 2′ narrow lengths of pine. I glued two pieces together to form the “foot” of the jig. I attached the third piece (the “arm”) to the foot by drilling a hole through both pieces. I used a machine screw with a wing nut, which allowed the arm to rotate. I then attached two long eye screws to the opposite end of the arm a few inches apart to form a “gun sight” of sorts.
By placing the foot on my workpiece, I was able to line up the straight edge of the foot with my sightline.
I rotated the arm to the resultant angle needed (measured with a protractor) then moved the jig forward or back along the sightline on the workpiece until the location for the hole on the workpiece (the “bullseye” if you will) could be sighted through the two holes of the eye screws.
I then secured the foot to my workpiece with a clamp to make sure it didn’t move.
I placed a piece of tape on the back of my drill and used a Sharpie to mark a large dot on the tape in line with the long axis of the drill bit.
I then positioned my drill bit on the location for the hole on the workpiece and positioned the drill so that the dot on the back could be sighted through the two holes of the eye screws. I kept the dot on the back of the drill lined up with the center of the two holes on the eye screws as I drilled (like viewing a target through a gun sight, if you will). I then knew I was drilling dead on my sightline.
Did you change up one of our projects or do you have a clever idea for an improvement? Email kara@lostartpress.com. You can read more about the submission process here.
The following is an excerpt from “The Stick Chair Journal 2.” “The Stick Chair Journal” is also still available. While supplies last, you can purchase a bundle of issues Nos. 1 & 2 at a reduced price.
Your dining chairs can be more comfortable without being redesigned. The problem is that the tables won’t allow it.
Almost every modern dining table is 30″ tall. And almost every modern chair has a seat that is 18″ off the floor. That 12″ of difference allows space for the tabletop, the table’s aprons (if it has any) and the sitter’s legs.
Here’s the problem with those standards: An 18″ seat is too dang high for many sitters. My mother-in-law is about 5’2″, and every modern chair leaves her feet dangling over the floor like a schoolgirl in an adult chair.
After 10 minutes or so, the chair becomes incredibly uncomfortable as her blood supply to her legs is cut off by the seat, which is compressing her thighs. In the 1990s, I made her a small 4″-tall footstool for her dining set that would support her feet.
The solution to this problem, however, is not to build footstools for everyone whose shins are short.
Instead, the solution is to first lower the standard seat height of dining chairs by 2″ to 3″ or so. This will allow shorter people to rest their feet on the floor like regular human beings and sit comfortably for hours. What will a 15″ or 16″-high chair feel like for a tall person? Just fine. Their thighs will be above the seat, and if they want to lower them a bit, they can move their feet forward.
I’m 6’4″ and regularly sit in vernacular chairs that are 15″ and lower. I love them.
The only problem with this plan to cut all the chair legs down is the bog-standard, dyed-in-the-wool 30″-tall dining table. With shorter, more comfortable chairs, suddenly all the sitters’ elbows are below the tabletop, and everyone sitting around the table looks like a small child.
So, we also need to reduce the standard height of dining tables to 27″-28″ or so. That’s easy to do with a regular four-legged apron table – just cut down the four legs. Problem solved. But what if you own a pedestal table? Or a trestle table? There are solutions that involve trimming a little off the top and bottom of the trestle and pedestal. But some table designs won’t let you remove the full 3″ without making the table weak or weird-looking.
In 1933, Bengt Åkerblom asked a joiner in Sweden to build a chair to his specifications. The joiner refused to make thechair lower than the standard chair height. That’s how ingrained these standards are.
The only good solution is to start building dining tables that are 27″-28″ high. Then the chairs will come in line with lower seats. I don’t know why tables get to wag the dog, but that has been the case for more than 100 years.
Bengt Åkerblom wrote about this problem in his landmark “Standing and Sitting Posture” (1948). According to Åkerblom, here are the guidelines for a comfortable chair:
• The sitter should be able to shift position easily in the seat to use different resting positions.
• The height of the seat should not compress the thighs. He recommends a standard chair height between 15″ and 16″ .
• The seat should not be too deep. He recommends a seat should be no deeper than 15-3/4″. Seats can be as shallow as 8″, but this gets in the way of guideline No. 1 – the sitter needsroom on the seat to shift positions. A shallow seat does not allow this.
• The seat should slope backward by 3° to 5°.
• The seat should not be flat. It should be hollowed out a bit. Or it should have a thin cushion that is firm.
• Lumbar support is ideal. Having lumbar support and a backrest above can be very comfortable. The back can be inclined by as much as 25° to 30° off horizontal.
• Finally, and this is worth quoting Åkerblom directly: “In general, the height of the table must clearly conform to that of the chair and not vice versa.” He then goes on to recommend a table height of 27-1/2″.
At left, a sitter in an 18″-high chair at a table that is 30″ high. At right, the sitter in a 15″ chair. It is not the chair’s fault.
So today I opened my copy of “Human Dimension & Interior Space” (Watson-Guptill, 1979). This book is used by furniture designers and architects to construct interior spaces. I’ve used it for many years to figure out how tall a sideboard should be, or how long a table needed to be to seat eight people.
I turned to page 147-148, the section that deals with dining tables. It’s time to deal with “Line Item F,” which is the height of dining tables. I crossed out 29-30″ and wrote 27″.
The reprint of all four volumes of our Charles Hayward collection arrived this morning; as I write this they are on our driveway. Good thing there’s no rain predicted until much later today!
In late February when we got our new Hayward four-volume collection in stock, we offered a $100 special on the set with free domestic shipping through April 30. But we ran out of books two weeks before the end of the special offer date. Now, we have a new print run in stock of all four volumes (it will be inside the warehouse instead of on the driveway by the time you read this…I hope). So, we’re extending that special offer for two weeks from today, through June 4. Order by 11:59 p.m. Eastern, June 4, and you can get all four volumes for $100 with free domestic shipping. That’s $39 off. Plus the free shipping.
Here’s the link to the page. The books are also available for sale individually.
These four books are the backbone of a complete education in handwork. A team of six people (including some extra helpers) worked for eight years to read, organize, scan, design and produce these four books from the articles written and edited by Charles H. Hayward.
As editor of The Woodworker magazine from 1939 to 1967, Hayward oversaw the transformation of the craft from one that was almost entirely hand-tool based to a time where machines were common, inexpensive and had displaced the handplanes, chisels and backsaws of Hayward’s training and youth.
Our massive project distilled the thousands of articles Hayward published in The Woodworker. This is information that hasn’t been seen or read in decades. No matter where you are in the craft, from a complete novice to a professional, you will find information here you cannot get anywhere else.
The books have 1,492 pages total, with thousands of hand drawings and photos. The books are printed in the USA and are designed to last decades. The sewn bindings will lay flat on your bench. The uncoated paper is easy on your eyes.
For more information on the project, including a complete list of all the articles in the books, click here.
