This week has been intense so far. We have all been pushing the available light hours this week trying to get this barn frame disassembled in an orderly and efficient manner. On Tuesday, I pulled sheathing while Julia, Eden, and our friend Rachel de-nailed the boards as they came off. I also began taking down a few of the addition’s sawn rafters. As progress moved along on the barn, Mike C was back at home negotiating an Issue Eleven freight shipment debacle. Delay after delay. Wrong phone numbers. No one knows what’s going on. The driver left. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not. But MC is persistent and was finally able to get them to deliver yesterday morning and got it all...
I can admit that some people might think I have a problem with my relationship to timber-framed buildings. My woodshop is a 1790s Vermont frame, my blacksmith shop is a hand-hewn Charpentier sans Frontières frame, our newly built cottage is a modern rough-sawn frame I bought third hand from a friend, and six years ago, my wife Julia and I took down an 1810-ish cape cod house to restore for our home. When we took it down, we swept in to save it from bulldozing, but we were not ready to put it up right then. We knew we needed at least few years of preparations to get things in our life ready for such an undertaking. We’re finally ready....
Everybody loves a good poster, right? The ideal design should emblazon your wall with inspiration or beauty – a gorgeous photograph or thoughtful statement, rather than your sister’s old “MMMBop” poster from the ‘90s. In celebration of Mortise & Tenon Magazine’s first 10 issues, we’re releasing this beautiful image of all 10 issues’ wax-sealed trade cards, laid out on the M&T workshop’s wide pine floors, in poster form. The image was technically quite difficult to capture, requiring a complicated sliding platform (built out of rough lumber, of course) to keep the camera in plane to take multiple images. These were seamlessly spliced together, and the result is impressive: The wax seals and card edges seem to leap from the poster...
Back in June, our massive hardbound republication of Issues One through Three went to the printer. The files were promptly approved, and the book went to the press without hitch. But behind the scenes of book manufacturing is always a complicated matter. There’s back and forth with our printer and the press team. We sometimes get pulled into their discussions about the optimal way to make our books, but most of the technical discussions are handled for us. On our end, for the most part, things feel pretty seamless. Then, in normal times, the books arrive at our storage facility six to eight weeks later via freight truck. These are not normal times. If you read the Lost Art Press...
Selfportrait by Elsa Dorfman, Courtesy: http://elsa.photo.net/photos/elsa-disk26-0003.3.jpg Elsa Dorfman took big pictures. Really big. She shot 20" x 24" Polaroids – yes, you read those dimensions right – remarkable portraits of people like Allen Ginsberg and Julia Child. She lugged around a 200-pound camera: one of only six in existence, an “ad hoc machine made by camera junkies” designed to be operated by two or three people. She did it by herself, too. Dorfman was a small Jewish woman who inadvertently fell in love with taking pictures when a well-heeled acquaintance gave her a Hasselblad to take pictures as part of her work as an teacher in suburban Boston back in the mid-60s. Later in her celebrated career, it was Polaroids that...
In this (occasionally tongue-in-cheek) episode of the podcast, Mike and Joshua talk about the great “Sedgwick Mobile Internet Crisis of 2021,” and how dependence on technology and infrastructure can become crippling when those rickety structures are knocked away. They discuss the concept of “resilience,” how broadening a “good,” broad skillset is more valuable than being “great” at just one thing, and how hand tools like the axe have value far beyond use in a zombie apocalypse.
SHOW NOTES:
Issue Eleven
The First Three Issues article on Skip Brack and the Liberty Tool Co.
The Resilient Farm and Homestead by Ben Falk
The Mortise & Tenon Apprenticeship Program
Last year, my son and I picked up a 40-year-old motorcycle for $200. We hauled it home in our minivan and made a winter project of it, rebuilding the carburetors, going through the brakes, tracing electrical system gremlins, mounting new tires, replacing bearings, repainting the 80s purple accents, the works. I took a 2-day MSF course and got my license in the spring, all with the goal of gaining a new perspective on transportation. In many places around the world, 2-wheeled vehicles are the primary way of getting around, rather than being a secondary form or “hobby ride” as they are usually thought of in the U.S. Whether it’s bicycles in Amsterdam or ancient Honda motorbikes in Vietnam, super-economical 2-wheelers...
Julia has been out of town the past couple days, so the boys and I decided to make further headway on the winter’s firewood supply. This was the first year all three of my boys could split with me. My oldest has been helping for years, but only recently have I figured out splitting axes that the youngers can handle safely and effectively. It was a hit. These boys have unbounded energy, especially when it comes to smacking things apart with steel on the end of a stick. We made good progress together, and I can almost feel the toasty heat already. I think the boys feel the satisfaction too. As we stacked it tall this afternoon, they couldn’t help...
Photo by Gordon Baer. Courtesy of Kentucky Folk Art Center Archives. Chester Cornett was an anachronism in post-World War II Appalachia. While so much of the region had begun its slow introduction to the trends of modern American culture, Cornett lived a close-to-the-ground lifestyle, complete with bare feet, overalls, and a wild mane of hair. When Gurney Norman wrote a lengthy piece in the Hazard Herald in 1965 about this largely unknown Appalachian chairmaker titled “Rare Hand-Made Furniture Produced by Bearded Chairmaker,” he set off a chain of events that would shape the next two decades of that chairmaker’s life. Cornett (1913-1981), was a native of the remote Appalachian hollows and hills who spent the better part of his life making all...
We need your help. The late woodworking legend Phil Lowe is about to honored in one of the most democratic and noble ways possible: all 350 of his full-size furniture drawings are going to be digitized and distributed for free. In case you’ve been living under a rock, Phil Lowe has probably studied and reproduced more historic American furniture than 99% of woodworkers alive today. This is the reason we interviewed him in Issue One, and the reason everyone defers to his expertise. Lowe’s student, Nick Maraldo, and longtime shop assistant, Artie Keenan, are taking it upon themselves to organize and coordinate large-format archival scanning of the drawings so that they can be archived in an online database for woodworkers...
