The Lost Art Press storefront in Covington, Ky., will be open this Saturday with lots of interesting stuff to try and to see. Here’s what you’ll find if you pay us a visit.
An authentic Douro chair. I’m studying this chair and its transit case for an upcoming commission. This chair is great fun. It fits inside its case. The case turns into a side table.
Lots of blemished books for 50 percent off retail. (Cash only, on these, please.) I’m picking up a sizable load of returned orders and books with dinged corners from our warehouse for the Saturday event.
Megan Fitzpatrick is finishing up a Dutch tool chest.
Brendan Gaffney is building a beguiling bookcase using persimmon panels that use “recording.”
The Electric Horse Garage is complete. We have HVAC, electricity, machines and no leaks. Our machine room is simple, but if you saw what we started with in September you might be impressed.
If you are looking for other fun stuff to do in the area this weekend.
Go on a tour of the New Riff Distillery (in Newport next door to Covington). It’s a gorgeous facility. Plus you should stop at Braxton Labs, next door to the distillery, and try some of the unusual beers they are cooking up.
Get a cinnamon roll or brioche tart at Brown Bear Bakery in Over the Rhine, my new obsession.
Lil’s Bagels (the best bagels I’ve had outside New York) have opened a window on Greenup Street in Covington. Get there early because they sell out almost every day.
There is a three-step process for how people – woodworkers or not – approach a typical table.
They run their hands over the top to feel how smooth the finish is.
They run their fingers on the underside of the tabletop, right at the front, to see if it is also smooth.
If there is a drawer, they pull it out to see if it opens smoothly, and to look for dovetails – the mark of quality mid-priced factory furniture.
What annoys me about this ritual – and I’ve witnessed it 100 times – is not the people who look for dovetails. Heck, I want dovetails, too. Instead, what bugs the bejebus out of me is how people are looking for plastic textures and plastic drawer motion in a piece of handmade wooden furniture.
We have been ruined by plastic and its inhumane smoothness. I’ve watched people on a train rub their smartphones like they were rosary beads or worry stones. I’ve seen people pull drawers out of a dresser and feel the underside.
The message is that “smooth” equals “quality.”
That is so wrong.
I refuse to equate quality with smoothness in a universal manner. The “show surfaces” of a piece should be smooth, though they don’t have to feel like a piece of melamine or Corian. Subtle ripples left by a smoothing plane are far more interesting than robotic flatness.
Secondary surfaces that can be touched – think the underside of a tabletop, the insides of drawers or the underside of shelves – can have a different and entirely wonderful texture.
When I dress these surfaces, I flatten them by traversing them with my jack plane, which has a significantly curved iron (an 8″ to 10″ radius, if you must know). This iron leaves scallops – what were called “dawks” in the 17th century – that are as interesting as a honeycomb and as delightful to touch as handmade paper.
That is what old furniture – real handmade furniture – feels like. I refuse to call it “sloppy” or “indifferent.” It’s correct and it adds to the experience of the curious observer.
But what about the surfaces that will almost never be touched? Historically, these surfaces were left with an even rougher texture than dawks left by a builder’s handplane. I’ve seen cabinet backs that had ugly reciprocating-saw marks left from the mill – even bark. To be honest, parts with saw marks and bark look to me more like firewood than furniture.
Typical insides. This is what high-style furniture looks like on the inside. Unfinished. Tear-out. Knots. This is a late 18th-century North Carolina piece.
What should we do with these surfaces?
Here’s my approach: When these parts come out of a modern machine, they are covered in marks left from the jointer and the thickness planer. The boards are usually free of tear-out, bark and the nastiness you’ll see on the backs of historical pieces.
Should I rough these up with an adze and hatchet to imitate the look of the old pieces? Or perhaps just leave the machine marks?
Personally, I find machine marks ugly in all cases. I don’t ever want to see them. So I remove them with my jack plane or a coarsely set jointer plane. The result is that all the surfaces are touched with a plane of some sort – jack, jointer or smooth.
Those, I have decided, are the three textures I want to leave behind.
Step into Roy Underhill’s bathroom at The Woodwright’s School, and you’ll encounter a poster of Albrecht Dürer’s “Melencolia I,” a puzzling image filled with mysterious symbols and woodworking tools.
Whenever a student goes missing in the bathroom during the classes at Roy’s, it is for one of two reasons: the pork chop sandwich from lunch is troubling their innards, or they are studying “Melencolia I” and have lost track of time in the loo.
If you like Dürer’s work and live in the Midwest, I suggest you close your laptop, get in your car and drive to Cincinnati before Feb. 11, 2018, to visit the Cincinnati Art Museum’s exhibit ”Albrecht Dürer: The Age of Reformation and Renaissance.” Admission is free. Parking is free.
The exhibit tracks the progression of Dürer’s work using dozens of original prints he created using engraving, etching and drypoint. And the museum supplies magnifying glasses so you can view every stroke and get within about 1” of the original works.
This was the first time I ever got to see an actual print of “Melencolia I.” Like always, seeing the original is much different than seeing it on screen. The texture of the paper, the resolution of each line, even the physical edges of the image stir up a wilder set of feelings than pixels.
It was great to see the square and straightedge, both of which I’ve built many times for myself and customers. (Free plans for the square are here.)
I also spent some time hunting down other woodworking and tool images in the prints. One of the prints, “Sojourn of the Holy Family in Egypt” (1501-1502), depicts a sawbench much like the one recovered from the Mary Rose shipwreck. And it features a birdsmouth or ripping notch. That might be the earliest depiction of the birdsmouth I am aware of. (Correction: Suzanne Ellison pointed out the earliest one she’s uncovered is 1390.)
On the more gruesome side of things, there’s “Martyrdom of the 10,000” (1496-1497) in which someone is boring out the eye of a bishop with an auger. This image sent me scurrying to my archive of images. Somewhere in there is an image that Jeff Burks dug up that shows the eyeworker alone, separate from the chaotic scene.
My favorite part of the exhibit was an excerpt from the colaphon of the book “Life of the Virgin.” I wish we could print this inside all our books, instead of the dry copyright notice.
Woe to thee, fraudster and thief of someone else’s labors and invention, let thou not even think of laying thy impertinent hands on this work. For let me tell thee that Maximilian, the most glorious emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, granted us the privilege that no one might print copies of these pictures, and that no such prints might be sold within the imperial domains. But should thou still transgress, whether out of disregard or criminal avarice, be assured that after confiscation of thy property the severest penalties shall follow.
Will Myers takes a turn with M. Hulot’s “belly” – an incredibly simple and effective way to shave components.
Every book I write has a guiding principle. Something I mutter during the research, building, writing and editing. (For example, “Disobey me” from “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.”)
For “Ingenious Mechanicks: Early Workbenches & Workholding,” my mantra wasn’t as catchy. But I love it all the same.
“The principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” — Prof. Richard Feynman (1918-1988), winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965
When you write a book, it’s like constructing a little world. And what you include, leave out or emphasize can change its message, even if you are want to do something as straightforward as building old benches and figuring out how they work.
So for my last couple books, I subjected myself to peer review. For “Ingenious Mechanicks,” I invited a bunch of woodworkers of all stripes – modern, traditional, all hand-tool, powered-to-the-max, beginners, experts – and showed them what I found. Then I gave them free reign to use the benches. I watched and wrote down what they said.
(Even better, photographer Narayan Nayar took dozens of gorgeous photos to illustrate the book. The photo at the top of this entry is one of his unprocessed jpegs.)
The participants had a lot to say, and the review process eased my mind. These benches and early workholding devices work brilliantly (with a few exceptions). And, most importantly, their comments didn’t send me back down a rabbit hole for more research.
The book is nearly done. The text of “Ingenious Mechanicks” is now being edited by Megan Fitzpatrick. I have to draw a few maps to illustrate Suzanne Ellison’s chapter. Then I can begin designing the book’s pages.
Whether you’re a teacher, a doctor or a cabinetmaker, it’s sobering to subject yourself occasionally to the kind of conditions your students, patients or clients experience while in your care. The past few weeks have reminded me how disturbing a kitchen remodel can be…which seems appropriate, given that I’m working on a book about kitchens for Lost Art Press.
Mark: Where the *#@$ are the knives?
Mark: Where did you put the salt and pepper? Salt and pepper!How is it possible to forget the location of such basic things?
Me: I JUST. HAD. THAT &^$% CAST IRON GRIDDLE. WHERE DID I SET IT DOWN????
Time to do some dishes? Nah. There’s still plenty of room in that tub.At such moments I feel a special kind of empathy for my kitchen clients: the ones who wash dishes in the bathroom sink not for weeks, but months, because they just had to have that handmade faucet from England (the one that arrived damaged and had to be replaced — apparently with plating made from nickel newly mined and shipped on a slow boat from Botswana). The ones who have to endure complaints from their smart-Alec kids (“Why are you tormenting us?” — overheard in a kitchen where Daniel O’Grady and I were working in 2005). The ones who plan their remodel in two phases stretching over a calendar year so their income can catch up with the costs, and patiently live out of boxes. And especially the ones who camp out in their basement while doing their own remodel and building their own cabinets.
Granted, our chaos is more pervasive than it should have been. We’d had this kitchen work on the horizon but hadn’t planned to let rip when we did. Mark had an unexpected opening in his schedule one morning when a client wrote to say she was seriously ill and suggested that he and his crew might prefer to avoid exposure to contagion. I leapt at the chance to get our kitchen started and (like a champ) dispersed the contents of the cabinets to the far corners of the house before work that morning.
When planning the hayrake table I built last year*, I decided to modify the original dimensions of the 1908 drawing by Ernest Gimson so that Mark and I could use it in our home. Our house has no dining room; we cook, clean up, and entertain guests in the kitchen.
Getting there. This pic documents the stretcher and legs assembled dry so that I could measure for the apron.It seemed like a good idea. We missed the farmhouse table in our previous kitchen, which had also served as our dining room. Even though the old enamel-topped worktable I’ve been moving around for more than 25 years worked fine for meal prep and eating, we thought it would be lovely to have a homemade table where guests would feel like guests instead of warm bodies who might be pressed into service chopping or kneading.
But as soon as we carried the table into the kitchen I realized I’d opened a can of worms. The delightful retro-style vinyl composition tile I’d put down when I first moved in (because it was affordable and I could do all the labor myself in my spare time) was an affront to the Cotswold School-style table, never mind the pair of two heart chairs based on a turn-of-the-century design by C.F.A. Voysey. That floor would have to go. The table called for flagstones softened by centuries of wear; the least we could give it was a floor of wood.
Yes, I know. It’s out of sync. The hayrake table and chairs (made for the book on English Arts & Crafts furniture) along with the pair of bona fide 19th-century English antiques call for something more austere than the surroundings visible here. My apologies to the furniture.
As tends to happen when you tinker with one feature of a room, we decided that if we were going to the trouble of replacing the floor (which would entail removing *everything* from the kitchen), I should strip the cabinets I’d made in my spare time, years ago, when I was using my home to experiment with unusual materials and finishes. (Translation: The finish looked like crap.)
“Well, if we’re taking out the cabinets so you can strip them, I’d like to talk about a better sink,” Mark said. The sink was a salvaged double-drain model (though, being from the ’50s, it was made of pressed metal instead of cast iron as its forebears would have been a half-century before) — perfectly serviceable, and really, quite charming, but with basins that were annoyingly shallow and too-thin enamel that had worn through in some areas, allowing the steel to rust.
And if we were going to get a better sink… Well, there went my cheerful retro linoleum counters.
A simple table brought into our home proved the tip of a shipwrecking iceberg. At lunchtime on Thursday we reached a point sufficiently up the other side of the bell curve that I thought it was time for a punch list. Wishful thinking. It looks as though there will still be a few weeks of “Where’s that *%^& pan” and “What did you do with the oregano/pasta pot/tin foil/fruit cutting board?”
Still to do (and no doubt I’m missing a few things, but “strip rest of doors” and “new drawer faces” are too central for a punch list). (And no, I don’t really spell light “lite,” other than when writing in haste.)No guest room is complete without an espresso pot, book about brewing by @ladybrewbalt and copy of Hammer Head.***
Sure, I get that these are trifling inconveniences compared to going weeks without running water or months without electricity, never mind facing war, disease or starvation. But I’d forgotten just how deeply my basic ability to function — mentally as well as physically — is grounded in the orderliness of the kitchen. It really is the nexus of our home.
Doesn’t everyone have a mixer in his or her office?A demonstration of the ingenious device known as a Shoulder Dolly: Why use a dolly with wheels when you can bear the weight of a big-a$$ fridge on your spine? (Seriously, though, it is a clever and useful bit of strapping.)–Nancy Hiller, author of Making Things Work
*for a book about English Arts & Crafts furniture scheduled for publication by Popular Woodworking this June
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