“Every now and then there comes a work of exceptional importance for a wide range of woodworkers,” writes J. Norman Reid in a review of “Cut & Dried: A Woodworker’s Guide to Timber Technology” by Richard Jones. “This volume, by British cabinetmaker Richard Jones, is such a book. In “Cut and Dried,” Jones examines a broad spectrum of issues concerning the character, qualities, and uses of wood, with particular emphasis on its application to cabinetmaking.”
After a thorough review of the book’s contents, Reid writes, “Cut & Dried” is one of the most complete and detailed works on wood and wood technology available to non-specialist cabinetmakers. For this reason, it merits a place on the reference shelves of all serious woodworkers. I highly recommend this important book.”
Thank you, Norman, for the kind review. You can read the entire review here. You can learn more about “Cut & Dried,” and purchase it, here.
I wonder if Chris understood what he was unleashing when he
first wrote about the Dutch Tool Chest. It’s the perfect blank canvas for
woodworkers to exercise their ingenuity. Just a quick internet search will
spill pages of configurations, colors, and creativity.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about DTC design and
execution lately. This spring I’m co-teaching a class where students will build
a version of the chest — but with a twist. My partner in crime is Thomas Latanè, one of the best blacksmiths working today, so
the surprise spoiler is students will be both building the chest with me AND
forging the hardware with Tom.
My influence for the project is easy to see but Tom’s comes from the tool chests that were attached to the sides of Conestoga wagons (a form curiously similar to the DTC). On many surviving pieces the strap hinge swings on a clenched staple as opposed to a standard barrel and pin. The example chest in the photo wears Tom’s vision for the hardware but there is opportunity for students to create something as complex or as simple as their skill set and time allows.
I’m really excited to be a part of this, it’s a wonderful
handshake between two crafts that frankly ought to hang out together more
often. The class will be divided into two, spending the morning with one
instructor and trading to the other for the afternoon.
We’ve chosen to host the class at the picturesque Tunnel Mill Craft School just a few miles south of Rochester, Minn. Unlike many schools, they offer a dormitory bed and meals included in the price of tuition. After the official class time is over, it’s open campus where students can catch up in either area they feel they need to or just hang around the common room and enjoy the community.
Now the important stuff:
The class is May 2-5, and there are openings for only eight students this go around – so please don’t miss your chance. Dual skill classes are a rarity.
For pricing, booking, and questions email Carol Adams
at jc-adams@msn.com or call 507-289-4189.
Editor’s note: We’ve just sent Peter Follansbee’s book, “Joiner’s Work,” to the printer. It will be released in May. If you order a pre-publication copy from our store you will receive a free pdf of the book at checkout.
I’ve told most of my stories many times. When I first learned woodworking, it was from books. Books and one magazine. Ultimately that led me to taking a workshop/class with John (Jennie) Alexander and Drew Langsner. Some years later, Alexander and I started a correspondence in which we collaborated while 500 miles apart. This correspondence consisted of letters, 35mm slides, notes and photocopies of research/books/museum work. Back and forth these things sailed between Hingham, Mass., and Baltimore, Md. Maybe three or four times a year we’d physically work together. This went on for quite a while, until email came along and changed how we worked. (I lost all the email copies of our collaboration in a hard-drive crash. Let that be a lesson….)
What this means is I have been documenting my woodworking habits, ideas, foibles since about 1989, in words and pictures. I learned how to use a camera, tripod, cable release/self-timers etc. back in those days to shoot slides showing JA what I was doing – while s/he’d do the same down in Baltimore. We ate through a lot of Ektachrome. The good ones we kept, and used in slide lectures to woodworking groups, museum audiences and whoever would sit still for our dog and pony shows.
Interestingly, when I started museum work in 1994, that made my documentation more difficult. It was the audience – no one wanted to see all that gear set up in my shop, so I was limited in how often I could set up my camera stuff. Mostly, then, it was before or after hours during the season, but in the off-season/winter, I just left it in place.
Starting about 1992, JA and I would often talk about “the book,” as in, “we’ll have to put that in the book…” about joinery. That book percolated for 20 years until it became “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree.”
A couple years before that book was done, I had the idea for “my” book – much of the iconic joined and carved furniture of the 17th century: chests and boxes, cupboards, chairs, tables and more. And carving. And more carving. So I wrote and wrote, took pictures and filed things where, in theory, I could find them.
Like the joined stool book, this one got interrupted a few times, but I halved the time it took and then some. We ditched some of the repetition, but I think when you learn the mortise-and-tenon and frame-and-panel, then composing the piece of furniture is not all that complicated. A cupboard is not much different than a chest; the chair and table are like overgrown joint stools, Thus the focus of the new book is boxes and chests and carving. And more carving.
One standout visitor comment at my old job I remember clearly. One of the members of what I call my “craft genealogy,” Bill Coperthwaite, had just died. He was on my mind as I was working that busy November day. I forget what I was making, but it was oak for sure – and a woman watched me for quite a while, we chatted some, and in the end, she turned to her partner and said, “It makes me want to go home and make something!” I hope my new book, “Joiner’s Work,” gets the same reaction.
Peter Follansbee’s fantastic and sprawling tome on early American woodworking is now available for pre-publication ordering here. The book is $49 and will ship in May. Customers who order before the publication’s release date will receive a free pdf of the book at checkout.
“Joiner’s Work” took eight years for Peter to complete, and it shows. Not only does it cover a lot of haircuts and wardrobe changes in his step photos, it also covers an enormous swath of Peter’s work. For the last eight years, Peter has been documenting his work at the bench and the many variations and iterations of the typical pieces from a 17th-century joinery shop.
As a result, Peter illustrates not just one joined chest, but more than a dozen variations, all with different carving patterns, slight joinery variations and different arrangements of rails, muntins and panels. It is a visual feast and I spent many hours just digesting the carved panels.
If you’re new to 17th-century furniture, here’s what you need to know: It’s neither dark nor boring. Instead, it’s a riot of geometric carvings and bright colors – all built upon simple constructions that use rabbets, nails and mortise-and-tenon joints. Even if you don’t fancy yourself a period furniture maker, there is a lot in here to learn.
If you like green woodworking, “Joiner’s Work” is doctoral thesis on processing furniture-shaped chunks of lumber from the tree using and axe, froe, hatchet and brake. If you are into carving, Peter dives into deep detail on how he festoons his pieces with carvings that appear complex but are remarkably straightforward. And if you love casework, “Joiner’s Work” is a lesson on the topic that you won’t find in many places. Peter’s approach to the work, which is based on examining original pieces and endless shop experimentation, is a liberating and honest foil to the world of micrometers and precision routing.
The book features six projects, starting with a simple box with a hinged lid. Peter then shows how to add a drawer to the box, then a slanted lid for writing. He then plunges into the world of joined chests and their many variations, including those with a paneled lid and those with drawers below. And he finishes up with a fantastic little bookstand.
Construction of these projects is covered in exquisite detail in both the text and hundreds of step photos. Peter assumes you know almost nothing of 17th-century joinery, and so he walks you through the joints and carving as if it were your first day on the job. Plus he offers ideas for historical finishes.
What Peter doesn’t provide, however, is detailed construction drawings of each piece with a cutting list and list of supplies you might need. As you quickly learn in the opening chapters, the size of the projects (and their components) are based on what you can harvest from the tree.
There’s immense flexibility in this method of work. But to help keep you oriented, Peter provides pencil sketches (made by the wonderful Dave Fisher) that explain the anatomy of each project, plus rough sizes that will help you plan out your work in the woods and at the workbench.
If you are accustomed to CAD renderings, this will feel unfamiliar. But if you are brave, I think you’ll find it a freeing way to build these pieces (which frankly look weird when built using contemporary precision techniques).
Throughout the book you’ll have the voice of Follansbee to guide you. If you’ve ever heard him speak, you will instantly recognize the rhythm of the language and the dry humor. We took great pains to retain Peter’s voice in this book (I think we succeeded).
“Joiner’s Work” is a massive tome, coming in at 264 pages in an 8-1/2″ x 11″ format. The text and full-color images are printed on coated #80 paper. The pages are bound to create a permanent book. We sew the signatures then glue and tape the spine with fibrous tape. The pages are then wrapped by heavy hardbound covers that are covered in cotton cloth. The whole package is wrapped in a #100 dust jacket that is coated with a supermatte laminate to resist tearing and long-term wear.
And, of course, all of this is done in the United States.
Editor’s note: As we wrote about in August, longtime LAP author Don Williams is writing a new book, “A Period Finisher’s Manual.” Don is a conservator, craftsman and author of many articles and several Lost Art Press books, and the maker of Mel’s Wax, a patented archival furniture care product. This post has been adapted from his new book’s introduction. Don is currently editing the manuscript and taking lots of pictures at the finishing bench.
It’s probably not the best marketing approach but now that the first draft of “A Period Finisher’s Manual” (APFM) is in the compewder it is probably time to scribe a few words about what it is not. That’s right, what it is not.
Even the title gives a clue; it is not “The Period Finisher’s Manual,” not “The Complete Finisher’s Manual” nor “The Ultimate Guide To Finishing.” Regardless of the subject or context those kinds of book titles almost always make me roll my eyes audibly. Epistemologically they strike me as pretentious and implicitly fraudulent; even The Bible confirms there was a lot more going on than there was time and space to record it all. I am personally not burdened with undue humility, but any book I write is by definition incomplete. To quote the punchline to an old joke, “An expert is a guy with a briefcase a long way from home.” I’m at home so my work can only include a portion of knowledge. So my title is “A Period Finisher’s Manual.”
Another thing APFM is not is a slavish catechism of pre-industrial finishing practices. No, you will not need to don knee breeches and replace your electric lights with tallow lanterns or wax candles in order to comply with the thrust of its message. You do not need to be strictly limited to the materials and tools available to the 18th-century workshops of London, Paris or Williamsburg. Certainly these form the conceptual and practical foundations but are instead the guides to thinking about finishing compatible with the technologies and aesthetics of the past. It’s sorta like the tag line for Don’s Barn: “Where modern craft meets the past.” APFM is about a way of working at the woodfinishing bench that transcends the limitations of orbital sanders and catalytic spray lacquers. Hint: You are probably not astonished when I suggest that old-timey hand-worked surfaces and their finishes are the more beautiful option. Just my opinion, of course (but I am right).
Were I forced to describe APFM briefly, it would be “The
What, Why, and How approach to traditional woodfinishing.”
What?
“A Period Finisher’s Manual” is not any sort of definitive survey of finishing materials and processes. It is a selective review of just a few materials and practices predating the Age of Synthetic Chemistry: a few waxes, a few varnish resins, and a few oils, applied (or not) with elegantly simple tools. The greatest attempt to recount a complete inventory of materials and processes available to the finishing enterprise was the magnificent WWII-era undertaking “Protective and Decorative Coatings” by Joseph J. Mattiello, consuming multiple volumes and almost 4,000 pages. Yes, I own and have scoured the set, along with its 1970s-era successor “Treatise on Coatings” by Myers and Long, and the most recent “Organic Coatings” by Pappas, Jones and Wick.
I could enter into writing APFM with the expectation that
the reader would undertake a thorough study of these tomes beforehand, but that
would likely be an unfulfilled expectation.
So necessarily APFM will be restricted to materials and information the
reader is most likely to actually use.
Why?
Recently I was corresponding with my friend John, a former seminarian, about the meaning of a particular passage in the New Testament. At one point in the discussion John said something to the effect of, “You can only get so far in this without reading Greek.” What does that have to do with woodfinishing (other than the possible implicit divinity of the craft)? Well, in the very same exchange John reminded me of my exhortation to students that, “In woodfinishing you can only get so far without learning some chemistry.” That said, “A Period Finisher’s Manual” is not a chemistry textbook. Rather than bombarding you with such exquisite knowledge, even though it would no doubt thrill a small cohort of readers, APFM integrates chemistry and its parent, materials science, as I believe necessary for the finisher to understand why things happen as they do on the surface of the wood. Solvent theory, molecular weight, adhesion, rheology, film formation, gloss, diffractive index, surface tension and many other components of successful finishing are essentially manifestations of molecular properties.
So too is color, even though I spend almost no time or words on the subject. APFM is not a color technology book, at least in the context of historic dyes and stains on bare wood. I find little use for ancient recipes for chemical wood stains in my own work so the topic is not addressed in any meaningful depth here beyond japanning and interlaminar glazing.
The need for understanding materials science in the finishing room is a constant theme running through the art form. One vignette from my own past is a fairly omnipresent reminder to me. Forty-five years ago, while working as a “scratch and dent man” for a furniture store, I was charged with touching up a set of bilious French Pretentious bedroom furniture. (Pop Quiz – Q. What’s the difference between a furniture repairman’s “touching up” and a conservator’s “inpainting?” A. About $75/hour.) Though I have a pretty good eye for color and layered finishes it was a struggle to get to an acceptable appearance, in the end involving the forcible integration of powder pigments with a concoction of spirit varnish, oil paint and latex. With these three totally incompatible materials I got it to work through the sheer application of energy, in this case the forced agitation with a brush. I was so pleased with the result that I bragged about it to my friends. Hey, I was 19.
Knowing what I now know about material properties, I have to wonder if at some point later the touched-up areas simply exploded off the surface. As my late friend and colleague Mel Wachowiak used to say, “With enough force you can pull the tail off a living cow.” I guess the same is true for incompatible woodfinishing materials. I got them to work together under the whiplash of vigorous mixing, but some understanding of the chemistry involved sure would have helped me then and it will help you in your future projects.
Which leads directly into another descriptor of what APFM is not – a stuffy academic book. I won’t say that Chris put his foot down, but he did suggest in a most emphatic manner that any book with hundreds of footnotes was unlikely to be appearing in the LAP catalog. Any technical citations will simply be folded into the folksy banter of the text. If you have read my other books or follow my blog you will know what to expect – big words when necessary, good humor always.
How?
“A Period Finisher’s Manual” is not a book of “how-to” tricks. Pets and circus animals do tricks, craftsmen have skills and techniques. (I’ve literally warned editors if the word “tricks” ever appeared in concert with one of my articles our working relationship was terminated.)
Instead, APFM is my attempt to describe a systematic approach to woodfinishing, complete with several dozen detailed verbal and visual descriptions – basically the How? culminating the What? and Why? considerations I mentioned above. By walking through a variety of finishing projects, complete with conceptual rationales and step-by-step visual representations, I hope to instill you with the confidence to embrace finishing as something to be anticipated with a delight rather than be feared and loathed, and ultimately, shortchanged. I have seen far too many examples of wonderfully designed and skillfully crafted woodworking projects that were betrayed by their makers’ puking some polyurinate on the surface with little understanding and less care.
Decades of woodfinishing (and teaching same) confirm that despite its vagaries it can be a predictable step-by-step process built on a foundation of technical and artistic understanding. So, I’m organizing the book’s contents the same way I organize the concepts and practices for my own woodfinishing, resulting in predictably good results.
Perhaps I should have titled it “A Predictable Finisher’s Manual,” or even “A Contented Finisher’s Manual.”
Because in the end, it is also not unpredictable and definitely not intimidating. It is in essence the very reason we make stuff.
