The exterior of the partial mansard-roof building. Though the paint job is new, we’ll be repainting it in more historically appropriate colors.
Don’t you hate how every Lost Art Press project takes years to complete?
Me too.
After more than three years of work, Lucy and I have found a building for Lost Art Press where we will live out the rest of our days, making stuff and writing about it. We have come to an agreement with the owner of a circa-1890 commercial building with a living space above. If nothing goes wrong, it will be ours at the end in late August or early September.
The building is located in a residential neighborhood in Covington, Ky., that is off Main Street in a particularly German part area. The building first appeared in city records about 1890 as Jos. Horstmann, a “Dealer in staple and Fancy Groceries, Liquors, Cigars &c.” Two Germans lived above the store at that time – a baker and a stonemason.
The store remained a grocery and saloon for many years – switching to soft drinks during Prohibition – and was a meeting place for organizations such as the Latonia Mutual Aid Society and the Deutscher Pioneer Verein, a German publishing group. By the middle of the 20th century, it was a cafe. In the later part of the century it was a jazz club and, finally, a lesbian bar.
A view of the interior of the current bar. We will keep the vintage bar on the left. The black paint and tile will be replaced.
We have no desire to become bartenders, so we will convert the first floor to a storefront with a hand-tool workshop, offices, library and photo studio. The upstairs will be our living quarters. The rear of the building has a small courtyard, plus a two-bay garage for a car and a few machines.
These changes will take place during the next four years as we get our youngest through high school and off to college. So we’ll have plenty of time to do the work and do it right.
Have no fear that this blog is going to become the daily diary of This Old Storefront. While we enjoy fixing up old buildings, I much prefer building furniture and writing about it. But there will be a change of scenery. And I’ll probably sell off a last hoard of surplus tools to help make improvements that I cannot do myself.
And when it’s done, we’ll invite everyone to come see it.
Antique furniture is a portal to the past and these surviving artifacts are the keys to the fading artisanal knowledge of our furniture making forefathers. By being intimately acquainted with the ins and outs of the work of their hands, it’s almost as if we become their apprentices. We see the artisans in their work. As John Watson has put it, “our cultural ancestors… are manifest in the artifacts they left behind. The work of their hands is not only material inheritance, but an indicator of our identity as their creative spirit reverberates in ourselves.”
I can’t imagine trying to learn to recreate historic furniture without spending a lot of time working on the originals. My training was in conservation and all my furniture making knowledge grew out of time in the conservation studio. This is also true of the best makers today. Phil Lowe, Al Breed, Patrick Edwards, etc… They’ve all spent a lot of time restoring antiques. It isn’t until you diagnose a problem, take the thing apart, and repair it that you get a real sense of the work of the preindustrial artisan.
This past spring, Thomas Lie-Nielsen and I were talking shop and during the course of conversation he asked if I’d be willing to teach a class on furniture restoration at his place. As we discussed the details, it became apparent that what we wanted to do was empower students to understand the appropriate treatments for an object that has survived a couple hundred years. I frequently get even accomplished woodworkers asking me about the “right” thing to do for an antique they were entrusted to repair. They intuitively understand the message we hear on “Antiques Roadshow:” There are appropriate ways to do restoration and there are inappropriate ways to do restoration. This is what we have designed the class to do.
My conversation with Tom confirmed my experience blogging at The Workbench Diary. The past five years there I’ve tried to show the lesser-seen details of the objects I work on, the techniques used to preserve the objects for the next generations, and the techniques used to make the originals. Through my interactions with readers I found that there is a real desire to learn to restore antiques with integrity. There is a lot you can learn from reading but conservation treatment operates more on the Goldilock’s principal: Not too little, not too much, but juuust right. This is hard to get from books.
“What’s the right thing to do for this piece?” “What is the right way to restore it without devaluing it?” If you’ve asked these questions I think this class may be up your alley.
Some folks have the (partially true) impression that conservators are a closed community. They don’t want to open and up and share their magical incantations. They keep their specialized training close to their chest by fogging inquirers with ivory tower jargon. Frankly, that’s a bunch of rubbish. This class is my attempt at democratizing the conservation. Come to Lie-Nielsen this September and let me introduce you to a responsible and no-nonsense approach to maintaining the integrity of your furniture for future generations to enjoy.
Besides, what’s better than restoring antique furniture at Lie-Nielsen on the coast of Maine in fall?
When people who teach woodworking get together for a beer, there is an inevitable discussion that is about as fruitful as the pins-first or tail-first dovetail debate.
Here’s the teachers’ debate: Should woodworking classes focus on building skills or instead emphasize getting a project complete and out the door?
During the last 10 years that I’ve been teaching I have tried to see if I could do both – teach skills and “git ‘er done.” But I can tell you this: It involves a lot of yelling with a horrible German accent to make it happen.
This week I wrapped up a class with beginning woodworkers that was designed to teach 16 students a lot of basic hand-tool skills and also to build a traditional nailed-together tool chest using only hand tools. I think we almost succeeded at doing both. (Download all the plans and instructions for this chest for free here.)
The class was at Bridgwater College in Bridgwater, England, and put on by the New English Workshop. The class was offered at a very low cost (95 pounds for five days) to make it possible for young and aspiring woodworkers to afford. I think seven of the students camped during the week to save money.
Before I launch into some of the cool stuff we all learned, I have to thank Paul Mayon and Derek Jones of New English Workshop for allowing this class to happen. In the end, I think all three of us lost money on the class, but that’s OK. The students were thrilled with their new skills and their chest.
Day 1: Panel pandemonium. We had more than 60 panels to glue up for the chest but only about 20 or so clamps for the job. Solution: Spring joints. By hollowing out the edge of each joint with a handplane we could glue up each panel using only one clamp. The easiest way to do this is with a trick that Bob Van Dyke showed me: Clamp the lowest board of the panel in your face vise. Glue up the panel vertically in the vise and clamp it all up in the vise. It’s a brilliant space-saving solution.
Day 2: The day of the jack. Some of the stock we used had some variations in thickness, and some of the students had some panel joints where the seams didn’t line up perfectly. So we took a detour to the grinder to make more than a dozen newly minted fore planes with a radically curved iron.
Many woodworkers I teach are afraid of the grinder. But these students didn’t know to be afraid. It was nice to see them just step up to the machine and do beautiful work at their first go (you can do it, too).
Day 3: Rebates by saw, chisel and plane. After teaching hand-cut rabbets (rebates over here) for many years, I’ve concluded it is difficult to expect perfection on the first go. So I’ve switched to teaching cross-grain rabbets and dados using a fence, a saw and a plane to remove the waste.
This week we experimented with using a block of wood to press the sawplate against the fence. Every rebate wall was dead 90° as a result. I am quite happy with this technique. A few of us began assembling the carcase on day three but….
Day 4: I am so hammered. We nailed the chests together with hammer and cut nails. We imported some Tremont clinch roseheads for the job, but one of the students brought some interesting nails that looked exactly like a Roman nail but were machine-made. Crazy. More details on these nails after I find out where his parents bought them.
We also attached the shiplapped bottoms and learned about beading planes. Beading is a sickness. One of the students who likes modern furniture said: “I don’t want to like the bead, but I can’t help myself.”
Day 5: Finishing. Thanks to the hard work of one of the students, we were able to bring in some amazing casein-based paint that we tinted in class and applied with foam rollers. Lucky for us England has an industry that caters to the historic trades. So we bought the most amazing milk paint I’ve ever used for a small fraction of the cost I pay in the States. (I don’t have the name of the company with me – I’m in a hotel. When I find it I’ll post it here.)
The class was a bit tiring. Or let me put it this way: I’m looking forward to a relaxing time on Monday teaching a workbench-making course with hundreds of pounds of ash to throw around.
Note: Lately I’ve been pouring all of my creative energy into writing my next book (and editing the books of others). And with Jeff Burks on vacation, the content has been a little light here. So here is the draft miniature chapter I wrote on the airplane on using nails.
I’m often asked why I prefer nails to screws. Here are three reasons: Nails look better. They are quick to install with a hammer. And they allow for wood movement during changes in temperature and humidity.
Screws are ugly (I know, this is in the eye of the be-screwer or be-nailer). They should not be installed with a hammer. And they can crack your work when the weather changes – unless you take extra precautions.
That said, properly installed screws hold better. It’s a fact. And they are more accepted by the woodworking elite.
Nails, on the other hand, seem to be the herpes of the furniture-making world. I was taught this hierarchy: Wood-to-wood joinery is the best. Screws are OK. Nails are for rough, temporary or indifferent work.
But nothing could be further from the truth. Nails have been at the core of fine woodwork since Roman (perhaps Egyptian) times. We are just too blind to acknowledge it. Nails are often invisible to the eye – they are toenailed under a shelf or divider. Snaking into a plinth. At the back of a piece and facing the wall.
I see nails as important as the hardware you use for a piece – the hinges, knobs and locks. Cheap nails look like crap. Good nails enhance the piece. But what’s a good nail? Allow me to sidestep the question for a moment and present a historical aside. I would rather show this to you than simply tell it.
Blacksmith-made wrought nails.
Wrought, Cut and Wire Nails Nail nerds (reporting for duty!) divide the nail world into three broad categories based on how the nail was made:
Wrought or Roman Nails: These are blacksmith-made. The nail’s shaft is roughly square in section and tapers to a point on all four of its edges. The head is formed with hammer blows and typically has three facets.
Once you master these nails, they are iron joy. They bend and move readily. They cinch down hard. They will rob your body of a kidney if you don’t have a trust fund. A blacksmith will charge you more than $1 a nail. That will seem like a lot of money until you start to use them in your work. Then you will know that you are being undercharged.
Oh, and they look fantastic.
Rosehead cut nails from Tremont.
Cut Nails. In the later 18th century (as near as I can tell), ingenious mechanics developed machinery that could shear out a ton of nails in a short period of time. All that was required was a flat bar of steel and a machine that could “cut” the steel.
Cut nails are a rectangular square in section. In one view of the nail it has parallel sides. In the other view, it tapers. And it usually has a head.
Because of the shape of its shaft, a cut nail needs a pilot hole (except in some soft woods) and has to be oriented a certain way to avoid splitting the work. Think of the nail as a wedge. It is. Apply the wedge so it pushes against the end grain of the top board you are nailing down. Otherwise you are splitting mini firewood with your nail.
If this confuses you, don’t worry. You will do it wrong only once.
Wire Nails. OK, these really are the venereal disease of the nail world. They have a round shaft. They don’t hold for squat. They are cheap. They don’t require a pilot hole. They are the reason people think nails are for rough work.
I avoid using wire nails in my work unless I want them to work loose about a week after I drive them in. Which is never.
Bottom line: I use wrought nails when I (or the customer) can afford it. I use cut nails when I cannot afford wrought nails. I use wire nails to sprinkle the driveway of my enemy.
On the Naming of Nails Nails have a ridiculous number of confusing names. For the most part, I suggest you ignore the names at first and focus on how they look. That will usually tell you what they are good for. For furniture work, we usually use four types of nails.
Brads. This generic name refers to a nail with a smallish head. The brad is used to lock shelves into dados with what is called a “toenail joint.” Or to fasten one piece of wood to another when the head should be small. Because the head is small, the brad’s holding power is in its shank. So it’s not the best nail for attaching a cabinet back or a chest’s bottom boards.
Clouts or Roseheads. Nails that have a prominent head have the most fastening power. They can keep a cabinet back or chest bottom from being pulled off a carcase. The price of this holding power is that the head is quite visible in the finished piece.
Many times this form of nail is used for “clenching,” which is when an extra long nail is driven through two pieces and the too-long tip is driven back into the work.
Headless Nails. These thin nails have little or no head. They are used mostly for attaching mouldings and hold the work in place while the glue dries.
Pins. These are usually wire nails with a head that are used for attaching lightweight pieces of hardware, such as an escutcheon for a lock, or for temporarily holding pieces of veneer in place.
On the ‘Penny Size’ of Nails The origin of the so-called “penny system” of sizing nails is murky – on par with the stories surrounding the “nib” on the tips of old handsaw. Suffice it to say that the reason we still use the old penny system is because it is fecking brilliant.
How long is a 5d nail? (The “d” stands for “penny.”) I think I know the answer, but I’d have to look it up first to be sure. The point is that it doesn’t matter how long a 5d nail is, as long as you don’t use the metric system.
Here’s how it works: When you nail things together you have a top board and a bottom board. The nail enters the top board first and then passes into the bottom board.
So how thick is your top board? Let’s say it is 1/2” thick. Now convert that fraction, 1/2”, to eighths – 4/8”. The top number, 4, is the penny size you need: or 4d.
There are exceptions. When working in soft pine, you should increase the nail size by one penny, or 5d in our example. And the second exception is this: Use your intelligence. If the bottom board is very thin, the particular boards at hand are easy to split, you are clenching the nail or you need massive amounts of holding power, you need to adapt and adjust.
On the Pilot Hole Wrought nails and cut nails usually need a pilot hole, otherwise you will end up splitting the top board. The size of the pilot depends on many factors, mostly how close your nail is to the end of your board and the species being nailed.
My best advice is this: If you are unsure if you will split the work, make a test joint that is identical in every way to the real joint. Start with a pilot hole that is the same size as the tip of your nail. For example, my 4d clout nails have a tip that is about 3/32”, so that’s where I begin.
Drill the pilot to a depth that is only two-thirds the length of the nail’s shaft, otherwise the joint will be weak. If the top board splits, move up a size in bit diameter. Repeat until the joint holds and does not split.
This sounds arduous. It isn’t. After a few projects you will get a feel for the right pilot hole.
One caveat: With wrought nails, I like to use a drill bit that tapers along its length. This greatly reduces splitting.
Driving & Setting Furniture Nails If you’ve done your due diligence, then driving the nails is the easy part. I like a hammer with a 16-ounce head for most nails. For pins and headless nails I use an 8 oz. cross-peen hammer. The cross-peen is ideal for starting the nail without whacking your fingers.
If your hammer has a slightly domed striking face, you should be able to set the nail flush to the wood without denting it (called “Frenching” by the “English”).
Setting the nails is done with a nail set, also called a nail punch. You usually don’t set clouts or roseheads because the head will splinter the work badly. For brads and headless nails, set the nail 1/32” below the surface – and no more than 1/16”. Setting the nail deeper will make the nail hole difficult to putty or it will simply call more attention to itself if you don’t putty the nail.
Nail sets/punches for furniture making usually come in three sizes. Use the one that most closely matches the size of the head.
The above description is the absolute shortest treatise I could write on nails. There is a lot more to learn, but the education should come from the end of a hammer, not a book.
So don’t read another word on nails until you’ve driven a few cut nails or wrought nails using the instructions above. Most of the questions in your head right now will evaporate as soon as you get busy.
One of the criticisms frequently leveled at my writing is that I am not consistent.
The criticism is 100 percent true.
After writing many woodworking articles, blog entries and books during the last 20 years, things have changed. My work has changed. The tools available to us have changed. The way we communicate ideas has been transformed.
But still, I wish I had popped out of the womb knowing everything I know now – plus all the stuff I will learn before I die.
As a result, I am taking small comfort from editing the 800 pages of our forthcoming book “The Woodworker: The Charles Hayward Years.” When we selected the articles for the book we grabbed everything the magazine published during a 30-year span on some core woodworking topics.
All of these articles were filtered through the traditionally trained hands of Charles H. Hayward, the editor of the magazine and the author of most of the articles.
We decided not to change a single word of the writing, even when his articles contradicted one another. When you read this book, you might find this annoying at first – why didn’t we fix these blatant problems? After you pass through the stage of being annoyed, you might appreciate our approach.
Take, as an example, the topic of glazed oilstones. This comes up in about a dozen different articles.
At first Hayward says there is little you can do except send the stone back to the manufacturer for refurbishing. Then it becomes clear that his readers have schooled him for that comment. Later articles include all manner of reader-suggested solutions, including boiling the offending stone in a solution with washing powder and liquefying the glazed oil with a torch.
This happens over and again throughout the articles. It allows you to see the breadth of knowledge (or lack of it) in the very best 20th-century writing on handwork.
Hayward, unlike other some woodworking writers of his time and ours, refused to close his mind to other perspectives and techniques of his craft. He could have easily said: “This is how I learned to do it, and so this is the way to do it.” And he would have been right, and also above the criticism of being inconsistent.
But then I wouldn’t like Hayward as much. And we wouldn’t publish this book, which has been another multi-year “how-much-money-can-we-lose” odyssey.
