Figure 6.12. Three 25 mm (1″) long lengths cut sequentially from an English oak plank were prepared and tested. Each piece started the test weighing 73± grammes, and were approximately 177 mm wide by 21.5 mm thick. Piece A was kept near a radiator for three days prior to further experiments. The weight recorded after this additional drying was 69 grammes. Subsequent microwave oven drying to 0 percent MC and a final weight of 65 grammes shows the piece started the test at 6.5 percent MC. After oven drying it measured 171 mm wide x 21 mm thick. B, the middle section of the three cut pieces, was placed outside but sheltered from rain for three days after which it, too, was oven dried to 0 percent MC. Prior to drying it weighed 76 grammes with a dry weight of 66 grammes. This equates to just over 15 percent MC, indicating its MC rose probably 7 percentage points over the three days. Dimensions of the piece just before oven drying were 177 mm wide by 21.5 mm thick. C was weighed and measured after three days of soaking in water. Its weight after soaking was 92 grammes and measured 184 mm wide by 22 mm thick. Subsequent oven drying to 0 percent MC and a final weight of 67 grammes show MC of this piece was 37.5 percent after soaking. Dividing the narrowest width (A) by the widest width (C), i.e., 171 / 184 = 0.93 or ~7 percent shrinkage from 30 percent MC, or greater. Similarly dividing the narrowest thickness by the greatest thickness, i.e., 21 / 22 = 0.955 or 4.5 percent shrinkage. The photograph was taken after A was oven dried but before pieces B and C were dried. The dimensions are very approximate as only a steel rule took the measurements. Although measurements are only approximate it’s interesting to note shrinkage factors for the tangential shrinkage (~7 percent) and radial shrinkage (4.5 percent) for this piece of oak are quite close to European oak numbers provided in various wood movement tables, i.e., 8.9 percent tangentially and 5.3 percent radially.
This is an excerpt from “Cut & Dried” by Richard Jones.
Oven drying in a microwave oven takes between 20 and 45 minutes. The average time is 30 minutes. It saves a great deal of time compared to drying wood in a regular oven. It does, however, require care and attention to details. Poor methodology and mistakes in the procedure usually lead to problems and failure.
You will need to be able to weigh the wood samples. I find electronic postal scales purchased at a reasonable cost from an office supplier work well enough for my needs. If you require more accuracy, more expensive scales are required. My scales provide readings in 1 gramme divisions from zero up to a maximum of 2,200 grammes, and the machine can be set to give readings in either grammes or ounces.
To dry the wood I use a turntable-type microwave oven with several power settings. The only two settings I use are the very lowest setting and the next higher setting which is “defrost” – your oven is likely to have a different configuration. But whatever marked settings are available, restrict yourself to the lowest one or two power levels. As the wood is heated, moisture evaporates from all exposed surfaces, including the bottom face resting on the turntable; three to five paper kitchen towels laid under the wood absorb and dissipate the condensed moisture drawn downward from the wood. If you’re testing several samples, make sure they don’t touch each other because this can concentrate the energy and can lead to smoking and possibly fire.
If the wood starts to smoke during the drying procedure the sample is ruined and you need to start again with a new sample. Smoking during the cooking means you have burnt away some of the wood volume, so weight measurements taken thereafter are inaccurate. This is why I mostly restrict myself to the lowest power setting and short bursts of heat. The second lowest power setting, defrost on my microwave oven, is seldom used, but I do sometimes use it for the initial drying cycle of very wet wood.
The ideal wood sample is the same as described in section 6.6, i.e., a full thickness and width piece taken at least 400 mm in from the board’s end, approximately 25 to 32 mm (1″ to 1-1/4″) long. Weigh your sample and make a note of this. If the sample is already partially dried, e.g., about 25 percent MC to 15 percent MC, cook the wood at the lowest oven setting for between one and a half and two minutes in the first cycle.
If you know the wood is already below 10 percent MC, I recommend you cook it at the lowest setting of the oven for no more than 45 or 60 seconds to start with.
When wood is definitely very wet, 30 percent MC or above, the first cooking should last no more than between one and a half and three minutes with the oven at the second lowest setting. Even in this circumstance I prefer to use the lowest oven setting. It takes a few minutes longer to dry the wood but is preferable to starting again because of a burnt sample.
After the first cycle, weigh the sample or samples again to form an impression of how quickly the wood loses weight, i.e. loses water. Let the sample rest for a minute or so and re-cook it for between 45 and 60 seconds and re-weigh.
Continue with this routine until you can’t measure any weight change, i.e., less than 0.1 of a gramme variation if you are using highly accurate scales. My scales read only to the nearest gramme, so I stop cooking when five or six low-weight readings are recorded.
When this point is reached, use the formula provided earlier, i.e., MC percent = ((WW – ODW) / ODW) x 100, where WW is wet weight of the sample, and ODW represents the wood sample’s oven dry weight.
The following cautions are important: Do not use the microwave oven’s high power settings. The internal heat built up in the wood needs to dissipate, and high settings cause rapid heat build up, smoke and even fire.
The more wood tested in one go, the more time is required to complete the job. This is useful because after the initial heating of a large batch you can rotate from one sample to the next in the oven with short bursts of cooking for each piece. This gives each sample a break between heating cycles, thus reducing the chance of overheating any one piece.
I generally find kiln-dried wood samples react differently to cooking than green or air-dried samples. It’s best not to mix samples of very different moisture contents and different wood species during the test, but it’s possible if you proceed with care.
Being sure the wood sample or samples is, or are, truly oven dry requires patience and careful weighing using accurate scales. It’s better, and safer, to use several short cycles in the oven at low settings than it is to try and rush the job using a higher setting for extended times. The latter strategy usually results in burning the wood and failure.
In closing, these final, following warnings probably seem obvious, but they’re worth mentioning. Removing cooked wood from the oven requires care. It’s usually quite hot, and can and does burn skin – you probably don’t need to ask how I know that! Use an oven glove or heavy leather work gloves. Also, be aware that at the end of testing, and unknown to you, wood might have charred on the inside: It can smoulder and burn and, if placed in a rubbish bin, could start a fire. Careful disposal is essential. The safest thing you can do is put the cooked wood in water when you’ve finished drying it to ensure it doesn’t burst into flames later – it can happen.
I wasn’t the first person to use Southern yellow pine to build a workbench in 2000. But it sure felt like it when I built the above workbench for Popular Woodworking Magazine.
At that time, almost all of the workbenches I’d read about and saw in workshops were made from European beech or white maple. And most were what we call a European bench, German bench or Ulmia-style bench.
I was making $23,000 a year at the time, and we had a 3-year-old girl, so I couldn’t afford a commercial bench or even the wood and vises (about $800 to $1,000) to build one in beech or maple.
I was desperate to make a bench. I was working on a pair of sawhorses topped with a door I had scavenged from the Coca-Cola plant where our shop was located.
One day I went to the home center to price out some plywood and spotted a gleaming pile of clear 12’ 2x8s – the same stuff we used for joists and rafters to build our houses in Hackett, Ark. My normal Pavlovian response to yellow pine was my arms turning rubber – yellow pine can be incredibly heavy, especially when it’s packed with resin.
But instead of that rubber feeling, something clicked in my head. I could make workbench out of yellow pine. Then I did some quick math: Eight 2×8 x 12’ boards would cost only $76.56. Add the hardware, a face vise (later replaced) and the Veritas Wonder Dog, and I could make the bench for $175.
The bench ended up on the cover of the February 2001 issue, and we showed it off to readers during an open house one evening. Their reaction was split down the middle. Someone called it a redneck bench. Someone else said that at least it was better than my sawhorses. But a few people asked a lot about the mechanical properties of yellow pine.
It’s amazing stuff. It’s stiff, hard (after the resin sets up) and stable. In fact it’s way more stable than beech or oak.
As a result, I’ve continued to build benches from yellow pine since 2000 with no complaint. My first Roubo (2005) and Nicholson (2006) workbenches were made from yellow pine. And I’ve built at least 25 or 30 benches from the stuff during classes or at woodworking shows. (That actually was our gimmick for a few years – we built a bench during the show and gave it away at the end of the show.)
Today, the $175 Workbench came back home to me. John has had it for the last 10 years in Indianapolis. He’s moving house and won’t have room for it. So Megan Fitzpatrick and I rented a truck and brought it to the storefront.
It’s now a bench for students when they take classes here. We scooted my father’s workbench under a window, and it fits perfectly – like it was made for the spot. We now have eight workbenches in the front room of the shop, but we’re not going to expand the number of students we serve above our normal six.
Instead, the extra bench is going to be used by Brendan, Megan or me while classes are going on. We all have commissions that have to get out the door, and delaying projects by two, three or five days while a class goes on can be stressful.
I’ve taught a lot of woodworking students of all different skill levels – from beginners to professionals – all over the world. Despite that, I was shocked and delighted by the full-time students at Rowden Atelier in Devon when I taught a tool chest class there in 2014.
Most of the Rowden students had less than a year of coursework under their belts when we ran the course, and David Savage instructed me to push them to work at a professional pace through the week.
David thought they would be accurate but a bit slow. I had no idea what to expect. When I teach a tool chest class, I usually have time to instruct, time to build the project, time to work with each student one-on-one and time for many cups of coffee or tea.
Not so at Rowden. The full-time students were monsters and nipped at my heels all week.
It turns out the training there is even more impressive than David suspected. And after watching the students for more than two weeks, I remained deeply impressed. Not only did they have a firm grasp of joinery, machine work and hand work, they also knew how to draw, paint and do a bunch of tricky veneer and inlay stuff that’s frankly beyond me.
They had been schooled in the realities of business – all of the instructors there are hard-bitten professionals. And they had been given the opportunity to work at an extremely high level on some of David’s own designs for clients.
Had I been in my 20s, I would have dropped everything in my life and enrolled myself.
When David Savage died on Jan. 18, he had already stepped away from day-to-day management of the school and put it in the good hands of instructors he hand-picked and trained. Many of them – David admitted – were even better woodworkers than he. Daren Milman, Ed Wild and Jon Greenwood are all world-class woodworkers and instructors.
“Despite (or even fuelled by) David’s recent death, his vision for teaching the next generation of cabinetmakers at Rowden continues to surge onwards,” according to Matthew Lacey at Rowden. “We knew this was coming, of course, and his presence is greatly missed by all of us. But, because of the work he did over the last 15 years setting up the group there today, day to day nothing has changed.
“The same goes for the students at Rowden, learning the craft of cabinetmaking, pushing themselves as they move through this part of their furniture-making adventure. The next generation of students are now coming through Rowden to start their cabinetmaking story, lead by David’s philosophy and guided by the team he put together to achieve this.”
If you are considering a woodworking education, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better school than Rowden. Its roots stretch back to the English Arts & Crafts Movement, but the design aesthetic is entirely contemporary. The shop is located deep in Devon where you are surrounded by nature, high-quality machinery, beautiful bench rooms and drawing/painting studios.
Though I miss my friend, David, I am glad he left Rowden in the hands of these capable instructors. And I look forward to meeting the future generations of capable and confident woodworkers that will come from Rowden.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. We’ve never published a single sponsored post here at Lost Art Press, and we’re not starting now. The above opinions are my own.
Whenever I can manage it, I try to build an experimental chair alongside one of my trusted designs. It gives me a chance to use less-than-perfect wood and see how things that have germinated in my sketchbook look in real life.
This week I started two stick armchairs in walnut – one that will be for sale and a second that might be for fire.
I’m building the experimental chair using the sappier parts of a walnut slab I bought in Lexington, Ky., last month. The board was cut from a street tree, so it’s not like lumberyard walnut. My tree grew fast, out in the open and has some odd coloring and grain, which is typical for a street tree.
The experiment with this chair is the armbow. With a traditional three-piece armbow, the “doubler” – the piece that joins the two arms – has always been a magnet for my eyes. I like the look – it’s traditional – but I’m always looking for ways to make the doubler recede into the overall design of the arm.
After chatting with Narayan Nayar about my efforts to minimize the doubler, he suggested repeating its design elsewhere on the chair. It could be added to the underside of the arm. Or the top of the chair seat. Repetition would make the doubler look more like part of a pattern than an “eye catcher.”
So after some sketching, I decided to use a “double doubler” that has 30° bevels on all edges – one on top of the arms and one on the bottom of the arms. I think I like the way it looks. But I’m going to have to finish the chair to know for sure.
Earlier Experiments Some experiments work so well they get adopted immediately. A couple years ago I started making my stretchers into double-tapered octagons. Making this shape is a fair amount of work with a plane and a couple cradle blocks on my workbench.
But I loved the double-tapered octagons immediately.
Before embracing the double-taper octagon, I would turn or plane my stretchers into a round shape, usually cigar-ish or with a bulge in the middle. These rounded forms are traditional shapes, but I always thought they conflicted with the facets on the six- or eight-sided legs.
Other design ideas survive on the bench for minutes or even seconds before being chucked into the scrap pile. I try to forget about those ideas before I’m even tempted to write about them on the blog.
Mechanics playing cards, circa 1702, New York Public Library.
In 1788, New York City celebrated the the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, and the artisans of the city participated in one of the parades. In an article for the journal MaterialCulture, Thomas J. Schlereth wrote, “…the city’s shipwrights constructed floats mounted on wheels and outfitted to look like full-rigged vessels. Blacksmiths shops atop wagons carried working smiths toiling at their anvils and forge fires. Carpenters, instrument-makers, and printers demonstrated to all who lined the parade route the manual and muscular dimensions of their crafts.”*
The Carpenter on the Lower West Side
2-5 Hudson St., 1865, photo by Marcus Ormsbee, New York Historical Society.
This is a photo that makes the hearts of many woodworkers go a-flutter. Amidst the signs and the assembled men one figure stands out: the strapping carpenter with mutton-chop whiskers and wooden plane in hand framed by the open doorway on the second floor of 3 Hudson St. It looks as though he has the carpenter’s square paper hat pushed back on his head, and unlike some of the other business owners in formal suits and top hats, he wears his shop apron. When this picture-taking business is over he will get back to work.
There isn’t a tremendous amount of information about J.V. Outcalt but there are a few details, and we can get an idea of the nature of his working neighborhood.
Circa 1857, New York Public Library.
Numbers 1-5 Hudson St. are a short block, perhaps all of 165 feet, at the convergence of Hudson, Chambers and West Broadway (the 1865 photo was taken from Chambers Street looking down Hudson).
1851, Museum of the City of New York.
In the autumn of 1851, the Hudson Railroad Depot opened (on the map it is in the bottom, middle). The Girard House Hotel is the large building in the drawing. Horse-drawn traffic was heavy in this area with carts and carriages, and horses pulling arriving train carriages to the next station on the rail line. A photo from the other side of the street provides a better idea of the appearance of the area.
Dated between 1857-1860, New York Public Library.
On the other side of that nice and clean pastel drawing is our block on Hudson Street. It is easy to imagine how busy this area would have been with goods moving by carts and people moving on horse-drawn trolley cars on grade-level tracks. Let’s not think too much about the amount of manure on the street, in the summer, the heat and humidity…
Left: 1896, New York Historical Society. Right, top: 1875, Museum of the City of New York; bottom: 1865, NY Public Library.
Moving from left to right in the photo, there is Ridley’s Candy (established in 1806) on Chambers Street (second entrance faces Hudson). Next, is the five-story brick building at 1 Hudson St. occupied by wholesale druggists Harral, Risley & Kitchen. In the 1865 photo we only see a small slice of this building on the far left.
The vacant lot and 3 Hudson St. NY Public Library.
Until a found a photo with higher resolution turned up it was impossible to figure out the name of the carpenter at 3 Hudson St. This second photo tells us J.V. Outcalt was occupying this property sometime between 1857 and 1860. What exactly is in the empty lot between numbers 1 and 3 Hudson? It could be anything from a small shop used by a tradesman to an outhouse, it’s hard to tell. It is not apparent if another business occupies the ground floor of 3 Hudson or if Outcalt has the entire building. On the far right is one edge of 5 Hudson and the occupant is a house and sign painter. It is likely the same business as seen in the 1865 photo.
In 1865 this short block had the addition of 2 Hudson where Henry Croker, Jr. opened his printing business. How was an even numbered address put on this odd-numbered block? First, there is no Hudson Street across the street, it’s West Broadway over there. Second, this was New York in the 1860s, so what are you going to do about it?
John Peake, the druggist, now occupies the ground floor of No. 3 and Leonard Ring (established 1848) has his house and sign painting business on the upper floors of No. 5. Using a jeweler’s loupe revealed the Sample Room on the ground floor of No. 5 was not part of the painting business. It is O’Brien’s Sample Room (just visible on the awning), where according to the sign behind the left-side door, one could sample ale and probably spirits. Well, that explains the barrel at curbside and the jugs arranged under the window.
Based on a poster advertising Aug. 3, 1865, as the date for the annual picnic of the Mutual Society Club we have an approximate date of the photo. The Civil War was over and New York, already experiencing a steady population growth, was about to take off. In 1840, the population count was around 313,000, by 1850 it was 516,00, by 1860 814,000 and in 1870 it was 942,000. Around the time of the 1865 photo the west side of Lower Manhattan had a population per square mile density of 93,500. People lived and worked cheek by jowl. Lower Manhattan was dense with businesses and boarding houses.
In 1854, No. 3 Hudson St. was occupied by Allen & MacDowell, carpenters. They don’t show up in later business directories. Peter Bertine, carpenter, is listed at 3 Hudson in the 1856/57 directory. J.V. Outcalt seems to be the next occupant, but is not found in the available city directories until the 1862/63 edition. There were competing city directories and he could be listed in an other edition.
In a later listing he uses his first name, John, and in the 1871/72 city directory his full name, John Voorhees Outcalt, is given and he has formed a partnership with George Youngs, a builder.
The business is Youngs & Outcalt, Builders. The 1871/72 directory included an advertisement for the business. In the city directories George Youngs also has his own listing with both addresses.
Wilsons City Directory, 1871/72, NY Public Library.
George Youngs began his listings in the city directory around the same time as Outcalt. Another change for Outcalt was his home address, moving from East Seventh to West 55th Street. He may have gotten married, or was already married and with business more successful was able to move.
Looking down Hudson Street, 1870, NY Public Library.
This photo was taken the year prior to the Outcalt and Youngs partership and was taken at the front of our Hudson Street block. It gives a better idea of the street traffic running at the front of the building. The triangle on the lower right is now the present-day Bogardus Garden.
In the 1875/76 city directory a Peter I.V. Outcalt, with no occupation noted, is listed directly below John V. Outcalt. This may be his son working at 3 Hudson. In the next year’s directory Peter I.V. is listed as a builder and he continues to be listed until 1880.
The 1877/78 directory has the last listing for J.V. Outcalt, carpenter, with the Hudson and Seventh Street addresses. He is not listed in the 1878/79 directory, however George Youngs is, but not Youngs & Outcalt. It is likely John V. Outcalt died sometime in 1878 or 1879 (city business directories run from June to the following May). In the 1880/81 directory there is a listing for Mary H. Outcalt, widow of John. As a side note, in all the directories checked no other John or J. Outcalt was listed. Based on the photo dated between 1857-1860 and the city business listings John Voorhees Outcalt had his shop at 3 Hudson St. for somewhere between 18-22 years. That’s a long run in a city changing at a rapid pace.
Another thing of note is Leonard Ring, the house and sign painter at 5 Hudson, was listed at a different address in the 1875/76 directory and in the 1877/78 and 1878/79 directories he is not found. His business was started in 1848 and it is quite possible he died within a year or two of Outcalt.
Get your hankies out for this next part. Sometime in the late 1890s Ridley’s Candy and the building at 1 Hudson St. were gone and in their place the Irving National Bank was built.
Finished in 1903, NY Public Library.
An additional change for the area was the elevation of the train tracks (dismantled decades later) and I decided to not make you depressed by showing you any more photos of what replaced Nos. 3 and 5 in later decades, or today. The Irving National Bank building eventually took on other names and today is One Hudson and filled with luxurious TriBeCa condos.
Let’scheerupandgo over to the Lower East Side and meet the other Mechanic.
TheShipJoinerontheLowerEastSide
1865, photo by Marcus Ormsby, New York Historical Society.
Daniel Coger was listed as a shipbuilder at 184 Front St. in the 1855/56 directory. The following year he (as a joiner) and Thomas Hanes (carpenter) were now at 480 Water St. and this probably marked the year he first owned his shop. Did he buy the shop with the ship’s wheel on the roof or did he put it there himself?
Daniel Coger is the only Coger listed at 480 Water St. until his son, John Jr. joins the business as a joiner in the 1864/1865 city directory. The photo above, taken in 1865, may mark the year the business became Daniel Coger & Son, certainly an important event for the family. Thomas Hanes is pictured to the left in the photo, at the front of the small brick shop.
These photos of workman assembled before their shops were a true event and possibly the only time they would have their photo taken, something that can be hard to believe in today’s selfie-drenched world. An effort was made to turn up in your best clothes and that might entail adding a vest over your work shirt and dusting down your trousers. The proprietor might but on a jacket and top hat. Shop goods would be positioned at the front door and if you had a wagon it was cleaned up ready to be photographed. The photographer would sell the photos on cartes-de-visite to be used as advertisements. And what must it have felt like when the photographer arrived with the finished product and for the first time seeing oneself in a photograph?
1857, NY Public Library.
The shop at 480 Water St. (marked with the ship’s wheel) and its adjacent lumberyard are close to the Pike Slip that ran down to the water. A portion of the lumberyard can be seen on the right in the photo.
Shipbuilders, circa 1860. University of Maryland Digital Collections.
The group photo of 1865 may also mark the 30th year (possibly more) of Daniel Coger’s work as a ship joiner, for there is a Daniel Coger listed in Longworth’s Directory in the 1835/36 edition.
Coenties Slip, 1871, New York Historical Society.
I couldn’t find a photo of the Pike Slip but did come across one of the Coenties Slip, which was further down the waterfront and near the Battery. It provides a glimpse of the kind and number of ships on the waterfront and where Coger & Son worked when 0utside of their shop.
Another view of the Coenties Slip, 1876, NY Public Library.
Daniel Coger is listed in the city directories through the 1878/79 edition. In the following year only John Jr. is found. It is likely Daniel died. If so, he was a business owner for at least 22 years and before owning his shop he would have apprenticed and worked for others. Altogether he could have easily worked for 40 or more years along the waterfront, living long enough for his son to join the business and succeed him.
John Jr. is listed as a joiner and remains at 480 Water St. through 1883. In the 1884/85 city directory, he is at the same address but is now listed as a truckman. When he joined his father’s business the population of New York was around 814,000 and 20 years later, when he was no longer or could no longer be a ship joiner, the city population was 1.2 million. He saw the growth of Brooklyn shipyards shift work away from Lower Manhattan and at the same time great changes in the modes of transportation.
To pick up again on Thomas Schlereth’s MaterialCulture article, wheres the artisans of New York participated in and were honored in the 1788 celebrations things were vastly different in the 1853 New York Crystal Palace Exhibition of Art, Sciences, and Manufactures, “…President Franklin Pierce opened the fair but the many artisans who had constructed the fair site and crafted the objects on display were not, as Horace Greeley observed, invited to share in the inaugural ceremonies in any appropriate or official way. Their products and processes were celebrated, but not their persons. By the 1850s industrialization had begun its impact…”
John V. Outcalt and Daniel Coger both came up in their trades during the 1850s and by the mid-1860s owned their own shops. They worked as they were taught and followed long-held traditions in a world that was rapidly changing. On the door steps of their shops they saw carriages replaced with trolleys, rail lines that ran to the state capital, sail competing with steam and metal replacing wood. The city directories indicate they had relatively long and stable business lives, but they were close to the end of the line.
These old photos intrigue us and make us yearn to know more. We have just a few details about their work-carpenter, builder, joiner, shipwright and where they worked. We want to visit their shops, the lumberyards, hear their stories and ask loads of questions. And we want to know the individual.
— SuzanneEllison
*”The New York Artisan in the Early Republic: A Portrait from Graphic Evidence, 1787-1853” by Thomas J. Schlereth, ModernCulture, Vol.20, No.1.
In a later listing he uses his first name, John, and in the 1871/72 city directory his full name, John Voorhees Outcalt, is given and he has formed a partnership with George Youngs, a builder.
