We’re big on books. We love to learn of obscure titles long out of print that contain information or images that cannot be found anywhere else. The quest for this kind of knowledge can lead down many rabbit trails – but where to begin? What volumes should a furniture maker track down to begin a woodworking reference library?Cabinetmaker, carver, and chairmaker Al Breed has forgotten more than most will ever know about pre-industrial furniture. He is a veritable walking reference, and he is generous in sharing that knowledge with others. For our book recommendation in Issue Ten, Breed has offered to do something a little different: He recommends a solid stack of books for the woodworker to start with in...
David Pye pondered deeply about craft. His thoughts, encapsulated in his most well-known book, The Nature and Art of Workmanship, have reverberated for decades within the maker community. But Pye didn’t just work out his philosophy in pen and ink – he chose to live it as well, in the way he worked in his shop.
In Issue Ten, author and furniture maker Jeff Miller takes us alongside his version of the “fluting engine,” an ingenious device Pye designed for carving bowls.
What does a modern apprenticeship look like? How has that ancient model of immersive learning changed as our society pushes forward into the 21st century? And what are the lessons that a master can teach in today’s specialized world?
Author and spoon carver Will Wheeler explores these questions through his own experience in the Maine Craft Apprentice Program, in which he gained experience in a period of seven months under the watchful tutelage of Kenneth Kortemeier of the Maine Coast Craft School. Together, they worked through the process of creating a pair of ladderback chairs, starting from green logs.
I’m in the thick of designing Issue Ten right now. I’m a few articles in and already find myself wonderfully lost in fine-tuning and finessing. There’s always a pile of bookmarked inspiration material laid out on the table, and edits and re-edits of photos stack up in my folders as I play with different presentations. It is a delightfully creative process that I’m consumed by every time. But that’s not what this post is about. I thought I’d give you a heads up that starting Monday, we will begin sharing the Issue Ten Table of Contents here on the blog. We’ll announce one article per weekday, sharing a few photos and a description of what you’ll be seeing in print....
Soon after high school, I spent a few months working with a very no-nonsense carpenter. I suppose it was the enthusiasm that often comes from inexperience, but I was full of innovative ideas on tasks like batch-cutting decking boards and scribing interior trim. However, this guy was old school – under his name on his business card was the moniker, “The Bigger Hammer.” You know the phrase – if it doesn’t work, get a bigger hammer. The saying perfectly embodied his work philosophy, as did the mammoth 2-lb framing hammer that never left his hip. I remember him telling me (and others), “You’re overthinking it,” as he pulled that hammer out and beat some framing member into submission. I learned...
I recently received an email inquiring about the reason I made the tenon before the mortise in my new book, Joined: A Bench Guide to Furniture Joinery. I knew I’d be asked this one as I’ve taught it the other way around before. In my article in Issue Four, I wrote, “I prefer tackling mortises first.” The truth is that in regular shop practice, it just depends on my mood. The reason it doesn’t matter is because I size both the mortise and the tenon to the width of the mortise chisel. The only advantage to chopping the mortise first is that you can final-fit the tenon right away, rather than waiting to pare it after the mortise is chopped....
“It is important to stress that few period cabinetmakers made a living exclusively by building furniture. Especially in rural settings, artisans had diverse sources of income. Warren Roberts has said, “craftsmen were usually part-time farmers who had some land on which they grew crops and raised animals, devoting time to their own farm when they could. Hence it is difficult to draw a hard and fast line between the farmer and the specialized craftsman.” If the Arts and Crafts legend of the rural craftsmen working in isolation, doing everything by hand and by the sweat of their brow is true anywhere, it is in Fisher. In rural towns such as Blue Hill, the craft tradition gave the maker more freedom...
Yesterday I got an email from Ken Schwarz, master blacksmith at Colonial Williamsburg, in which he shared a delightful video of nailmaking in Liège, Belgium in the 1930s. Besides the speed with which these smiths work and the fascinating dedicated nailmaking setup, I thought the dog-powered bellows were too cool not to share. As Ken described the video to me, “Note that the tooling and process are the same as those described in Diderot and by Thomas Jefferson more than a century earlier – right down to the dogs operating the bellows. This is how most commercial nailmaking was carried out.” Here’s the video: Below is a 1763 ink, wash, and chalk illustration from Jean-Michel Moreau le jeune called “The...
I’ve found the best way to learn a craft is to see the created item in person. Taking a class is a good way to develop general techniques, but unless you have a good amount of time to study the finished objects for yourself, you will stagnate in your development as an artisan. You’ll never know how it’s “supposed” to look or discover other ways it could be made. I learned to build furniture with hand tools by studying the furniture that was made with those tools. Those objects became my standard and reference. I’ve also taken this approach with the green woodworking crafts: spoon carving, pole-lathe turning, etc. I first learned the techniques by reading and by asking others,...
Throw together a couple $5 words, and you have a solid title for a blog post. Actually, this phrase popped unbidden into my head as I was splitting firewood, contemplating how the process of swinging a hefty edge tool at a standing chunk of hardwood, over and over, helps center my thoughts. There’s something about a repeated manual task, built around muscle memory and a degree of unconscious problem-solving, that functions as a relief valve for the mind. Once I get into the groove with a woodpile, the jacket comes off, the stack of split fuel grows, and the loud problems I’ve been wrestling with seem to sort themselves out. Running is another of these elemental, physical practices that is...
