When I started at Popular Woodworking, we were located in the syrup room of the old Coca-Cola bottling plant in Evanston, Ohio.
My blog at Popular Woodworking Magazine will end on Dec. 31, 2018 (backstory here), and I am posting some things there during these last two months that might be of interest.
The 2018 Anarchist’s Gift Guide will begin on Nov. 1. I have 11 items picked out (so far) that I’ve been working with this year. As always, the gift guide is focused on small items that are quite useful. And they aren’t hard to find or expensive. Starting in 2019, the Anarchist Gift Guide will be posted here on the Lost Art Press blog.
I’m also posting a series of essays that are not directly woodworking related. They are, instead, my thoughts on woodworking magazines, tool reviews and the woodworking internet. They are a bit rant-y. But I figure that after 22 years of working there, I have the right to spout off a few times. Note that some of the comments seem to have disappeared due to a technical problem there. Also, one of my posts was sent to another part of the site and I cannot get it posted back on the blog for some reason. I suspect something went wrong when they altered the template on the site. Anyway, it’s not malfeasance, it’s stupidity. Here are the posts I’ve put up so far:
I have a fourth entry in this series on social media advertising that will go up this week.
Please note that I am not ceasing my blogging efforts. Far from it. I’m just not blogging at PWM anymore. I’m not moving to another magazine. And I haven’t gotten a corporate sugar daddy. Instead, all my efforts will be here. Blog entries that I would have written for PWM will be posted here instead.
Finally, I don’t know what PWM will do with my 13 years of blog entries (there are several thousand). Those entries belong entirely to them – it was work for hire. So you’ll have to ask them.
“Shaker Inspiration,” Christian’s Becksvoort’s new book, is a bit different than most Lost Art Press titles; it’s part inspiration (both for the reader, and a look at the Shaker furniture tradition that has inspired much of Becksvoort’s furniture), part woodworking and design how-to (including some of the high-end touches he incorporates into his work), and part business advice, from a woodworker who has made a living at the bench for many decades (though one of the keys to his success is the time he spends away from the bench, at his drawing board and talking with clients). Also included are measured drawings for 20 projects: 13 are signature Becksvoort pieces (including the 15-drawer chest pictured above); the other seven are reproductions (and near-reproductions) of Shaker pieces he’s made time and again.
Below is a taste of what you’ll find inside.
— Fitz
Introduction
Opinionated? You bet. Nobody goes through life without forming strong likes, dislikes and opinions.
Informative? Positive. Again, working at a craft for five decades or more, one acquires, skills, knowledge and techniques that want to be shared.
Interesting and inspirational? I hope so. Let me state right here and now, however, that this is not intended to be the definitive last word. Nor is it intended to be a path to woodworking nirvana, nor a silver bullet for your business – and I’m not trying to foist my inspirations off on you. I am not a marketing specialist, lawyer, financial advisor or PR guru. What follows is just an overview of what has worked for me – a sharing of my experiences, failures and successes. Feel free to follow your own path. If any of my suggestions motivate or spark your own creativity, all the better.
Rigid? Not. I try to find a balance in my shop, and to suggest other options. I am not an “unplugged” or “silent” woodworker. I can’t make a living without machines. Nor am I a power-tool fanatic. I think that items spit out by CNC machines are useful for mass production, but have nothing to do with craftsmanship. I use hand tools where it shows, and machines where it doesn’t. You make your own choices.
Remember what’s important to you, your family, your friends, your standards, your idea of “craftsmanship.” Remember to volunteer, to give back and to help others.
On Craftsmanship
Craftsmanship is a tough concept to get your head around. Even the dictionary gives it short shrift. “Skill in a particular craft.” Pretty lame. This is a bit better: “The quality of design and work shown in something made by hand; artistry.” Much closer. I guess it’s one of those abstract impressions that’s hard to define, but you know when you see it. It has to do with skill, accuracy, artistry, expertise, technique, workmanship and sometimes even design. That’s thanks to a hunt through the thesaurus. What all those words have in common is a connection to the human hand and heart. That, I think, reiterates the notion of practice stated in Chapter 2: Do anything long enough and you become good at it. You develop and become proficient at craftsmanship.
I think that brings up the very important notion of standards. What are your standards when building a desk, cutting dovetails or finishing? Chances are that your standards are not mine. We all strive for a different benchmark.
3-9. Dovetail keys. The secret to mouldings that stay put in perpetuity, yet still allow the case side to move with the seasons.
A Few Leftovers
Lastly, here are few miscellaneous techniques and jigs that don’t warrant a whole section of their own, so they’re just lumped together here. First, you’ve probably been told that there is no such thing as a board stretcher. Well I beg to differ. Suppose you have only a 1′ x 3′ (30.5cm x 91cm) piece of pine left. What you really need is a piece 4′ (1.22m) long, and maybe 7″ (18cm) wide. Here’s the deal: Cut the board diagonally, plane the cut edge, and slide the two halves past each other until your reach the desired length, then glue up. Not too shabby, is it?
Now suppose you have that same, single board, but you want it 16″ (40.6cm) wide, but only 22″ (56cm) long. Same deal. Again, cut the board diagonally, plane, slide the two halves in the other direction, and glue them together. True, in both cases you do lose some footage (meterage?). Hey, nothing in life is free, it’s all a matter of making the best of a less-than-desirable situation.
6-5. My daily time cards, listing each day, time spent and what was accomplished in the shop.
Customer Records
In the office corner of my shop I keep all my paper records. The computer lives in the house. It doesn’t do well with dust. Dust is not an issue with a tablet or phone. Ever try to write an article or a book on a touch-screen tablet? No chance. All my important papers are in a file cabinet in the “office.” The bottom drawer has various leftover goodies, the next drawer has woodworking and supply catalogs, the third drawer has files for safety sheets, tool service manuals, shop drawings, ideas, non-customer correspondence and a variety of miscellaneous files. The top drawer has my customer files. The phone sits on top of the file cabinet.
For each customer, I have manila file with their last name on the tab in alphabetical order. Inside is their address and phone number, email address, correspondence copies of any drawings or sketches I have sent, and a list of what they’ve ordered in the past. When a customer calls with a question, issue or a request, I can pull their file and make a note, or check a drawing if there is a problem. Because I work alone, if there is an issue, I know exactly what the issue is. Most commonly, it’s usually a new customer with a new piece, and the first time they cleaned the cabinet top and moved the lamp, they discovered a light spot under the lamp. Or it’s maybe someone who wants a replica of a piece I built a few years ago, for child number two. All the information I have is immediately at hand. I can’t stress organization enough, in all aspects of the business.
Shaker Classics
Shown here are a few pieces that typify classic Shaker design. Many consider Shaker furniture to be “simple.” That’s far from the reality. It’s unadorned, for sure, but often more complex than the pieces appear. The designs, aesthetics, joinery and meticulous craftsmanship are truly created as an “act of worship.” True, not all Shaker pieces were perfect. The range of workmanship is evident in nailed-together drawers made for shop use, while those for offices and dwelling houses were fastidiously dovetailed. Likewise, not all Shaker woodworkers had the same degree of talent or experience. But as a general rule of thumb, antiques are old because they were built well. …
The pieces shown here are a mix of early, mostly classic and some Victorian. Many have been shown in other publications, and are fairly representative of the Shaker style. A few are making a first time appearance here.
My association with the Shakers at Sabbathday Lake started in the mid ’70s. My interest, area of expertise and my vocation is furniture – specifically, Shaker furniture. Yet, by concentrating on this one small facet of the Shakers’ contribution to society, I am in some respects, short-changing them. When Mother Ann Lee and her followers landed in New York in 1774, furniture was the farthest thing from their minds.
The Shakers, whose official name is the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, are first and foremost a Christian, celibate and communal religious sect. Their arts, crafts and inventions are purely secondary to their theology, the life of Christ, which also stresses pacifism, equality of the sexes and races. In the larger context, that is a more important legacy than their material creations. However, it is my hope that through their furniture, it may ignite in some readers a further interest in this small but highly influential social and religious group of progressives.
These 16 pieces represent just a fraction of the furniture that the Shakers produced. Should you get the chance, take a look at the genuine article. Visit the Shaker museums at Harvard or Hancock, Mass., Watervliet and Mt. Lebanon, N.Y., Canterbury and Enfield, N.H., Pleasant Hill and South Union, Ky., Shaker Heights, Ohio, or Alfred and New Gloucester, Maine. Seeing the objects, the history, the colors and the workmanship up close and personal is an amazing experience. It has sustained me for decades, and hopefully will leave a lasting impression on you as well.
“Shaker Inspiration: Five Decades of Fine Craftsmanship,” by Christian Becksvoort, is now available for pre-publication ordering. The book is $43 and will ship in November 2018. All customers who order the book before it ships will receive a free pdf download of the book at checkout.
Today I received my copies of David Savage’s “The Intelligent Hand,” and I was so relieved I thought I might cry.
This has been one of the most emotional projects I’ve worked on. Apologies for discarding the veneer of normal blogging communication, but this book has been a crap-tastic lightning rod for this entire cruddy year.
When my father died in February, I was crushed for many reasons. We had so many plans for things we were going to do together – take a carving class with Peter Follansbee, visit St. Petersburg and finally master bread-making.
A few months after my dad died, we lost Jennie Alexander. The future of a project we had worked on for five years – the third edition of “Make a Chair From a Tree” – was thrown to the lawyers.
So when I dove into editing and designing “The Intelligent Hand,” I was hell bent on getting it published before cancer claimed David. And I wanted to equal David’s effort. He gave us everything – his original watercolors, his archive of photos and a manuscript that ripped my heart open. The design and editing had to match it.
Luckily, I had Megan Fitzpatrick to help me. We’ve worked together so long that she knows exactly how little I will compromise. And so she is as pigheaded as I am when it comes to making things look right and read right. And she knows when to say: %$&* it.
Our warehouse has begun shipping “The Intelligent Hand,” and if you ordered a copy through our website, you should have your copy soon. It’s not perfect. We compressed a year of editing and design work into about three months. But it is good. Damn good.
Christian Becksvoort’s new book “Shaker Inspiration: Five Decades of Fine Craftsmanship” is now available for pre-publication ordering. The book is $43 and will ship in November 2018. All customers who order the book before it ships will receive a free pdf download of the book at checkout.
About the Book
Not too many woodworkers can claim five decades of business success, but Christian Becksvoort is among them. In “Shaker Inspiration,” he shares not only his woodworking knowledge and some of his best professional techniques for producing top-quality work, but also the business advice that helped him establish and sustain his long career in a one-man shop.
Plus, he shares measured drawings for 13 of his own well-known furniture designs and seven Shaker pieces that he’s reproduced. Whether or not you, like Christian, are inspired by the Shaker tradition, you’re sure to be inspired by one of the best-known names in woodworking.
“Shaker Inspiration” begins with information that all woodworkers need – the nitty gritty of how to successfully make trees into furniture. This requires a firm grasp of wood movement – one of Chris’s specialties – and he shares many of the tricks he uses to ensure his pieces remain sound through the seasons and generations.
The lessons are both big and small, from the advantages to working with a single species to how to calculate how much a drawer front will move inside a house with forced-air heat. Every page of this section is filled with little shop tricks that Christian has used to become a productive woodworker, from how to remove dovetail waste to how to align a drawer front and drawer side perfectly when dovetailing.
After all the great information on the technical side of things, Christian dives into discussing the business side of things. He pulls no punches in discussing the difficulties of life as a furniture maker and designer.
Getting started, you do whatever it takes to pay the bills. We’ve all done our share of kitchens and built-ins, and replaced porch railings. After more than five decades, I can do the woodworking almost in the dark. It’s the business end that’s a constant challenge, and it keeps me on my toes.
He offers straightforward advice on setting up your shop, from the roof to the heat pump to the sign you use to announce your business to customers. Even how to set up relationships with suppliers and subcontractors. It is a sobering section, but if you ever want to set up a woodworking business, it’s the type of information that is almost impossible to come by.
Finally, “Shaker Inspiration” dazzles you with three sections of photos and measured drawings. The last 60-odd pages offer a collection of Christian’s original designs, reproductions of Shaker pieces he’s made (and made famous) and photos of the original Shaker pieces that have inspired him the most as a craftsman and a designer.
In addition to a beautiful photo and details about the piece, Christian shares a construction drawing of each project that will allow intermediate woodworkers to produce their own version.
“Shaker Inspiration” is 166 pages and produced entirely in the United States. The 8.5” x 11” full-color book is printed on heavy coated paper. The pages are sewn and glued for durability and covered in cotton-covered boards. A tear-resistant dust jacket completes the package.
About Christian Becksvoort Christian Becksvoort has five decades of experience working in a variety of custom, architectural and furniture shops. In 1986, he opened his full-time studio. He works alone, designing, building, finishing and – in some cases – even delivering custom furniture.
Much of Christian’s furniture is inspired by the Shaker tradition, with clean, unadorned lines and fine craftsmanship. He typically works in native, sustainably harvested cherry, and he uses a simple oil finish. And while he is known for several signature designs, each of Christian’s finished pieces is tweaked at least slightly to be unique (with the exception of a set of chairs), and built specifically to meet his customers’ needs (while exceeding their expectations).
Since the mid 1970s, Christian has been privileged to do restoration work for the last active Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake, Maine. He is also a long-time contributing editor to Fine Woodworking magazine.
When I first picked up “Welsh Stick Chairs,” I didn’t fall in love with the chair that John Brown built for the book. That chair had a steam-bent armbow that didn’t quite suit my eye. Instead, I fell for the drawings of the antique chairs that John Brown showed in the book, most of them from St Fagans National Museum of History.
John Brown’s later chairs, which were featured in Good Woodworking magazine, also enraged my chair lust and drove me to Cobden, Ontario, to take my first chair class in 2003.
So when I visited St Fagans last week, I was quite excited to see the chair that was featured on the original cover of “Welsh Stick Chairs” and survived as the frontispiece of later (but lesser) editions of the book.
This chair is a stunner for several reasons. Take a look at the armbow. It’s made from two pieces of wood that are joined with a giant half-lap that terminates at miters at both ends. Call the chair primitive if you like, but that is a nice piece of work. The other interesting part of the armbow is there is no “doubler” that thickens the armbow where the spindles pass through. The lack of the doubler gives the chair a lighter appearance and makes it simpler to build.
The wide seat is radically reduced in thickness at the edges, adding to the sense of lightness. The legs, which are round as near as I can tell, are thinner than is typical. And locating them closer to the center of the seat gives the chair an hourglass look. With these legs, it would be easy to make this chair look top-heavy, but the builder got the splay correct so the chair looks solid to sit on.
The seat shape and armbow are tidy. I think the person who made this particular chair had a good eye for proportion, curve and line. Interestingly, the chair had stretchers near the floor, which are now missing. If I made a reproduction, I don’t know if I would restore the stretchers.
Finally, there is the crest rail (or comb). It has just a little curve to it and is gently pillowed on the front.
It really is a flawless chair and deserved its place on the cover. I’m quite happy that our edition of “Welsh Stick Chairs” put this example in its rightful place.
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