If the house was on fire and I could grab a couple of books probably the first among them would be How To Build Shaker Furniture, by Thos. Moser, Sterling Publishing, New York, 1977.
I remember, in the 1990s, I was enthusing about a then-new claw-hammer to an antique furniture trade colleague; it was the same configuration as a normal claw hammer
but it was the weight of a pin hammer.
great for knocking-in a couple of pins and sinking the heads with the flat side but you cannot use it for pin removal
I liked this hammer so much that I bought a score of them, some I have given as gifts, several I still have stashed, in my desk, just in case. I used to make loads of bookshelves/cases and the backboards required scores of panel pins, many of which would bend as you banged them in; what I'd have to do was put down the ordinary pin hammer and pick-up a pair of pincers to extract the bent pin and then start again; the ordinary pin hammer has no claw and I couldn't use a proper claw-hammer because it was too heavy, and I was delighted to find this smaller, lighter version. Hmmm, said Tony, 's'appened to you. What's happened to me? Oh, you reach an age when you get poetic about tools.
Tony was correct for not only was I
squeezing into my own daily reality a belated if haphazard appreciation
of tool anthropology and sociology, I was also purchasing a more
formal understanding - books about tools and procedures and one day, in
Victorian Llandudno, North Wales, I came across Moser's book which was
ostensibly a selection of drawings and cutting lists for the making of a
slew of Shaker pieces but was more importantly a tour-de-force in
technical writing of the spiritual kind.
I don't like Shaker furniture much
and there would be a long, cold day in Hell before I attempted making some but Moser's writing was and remains a rare treasure; here he is in his chapter, Materials.
and there would be a long, cold day in Hell before I attempted making some but Moser's writing was and remains a rare treasure; here he is in his chapter, Materials.
A Covenenant with Wood.
A craftsman is but a handmaiden to
his materials. The inherent qualities of wood limit to a certain extent
the cabinetmaker's choices. Unlike plastic or rubber, concrete or
steel, wood has a mind of its own. It is not easily bent and when bent
wants to return in time to its original form. It is easy to break along
its grain, yet it will withstand considerable shearing force. It warps
without provocation and swells and contracts with the seasons as though
it had entered a conspiracy with the calendar to loosen chair rungs in
the winter and swell drawers shut in the summer. Wood cracks
mindlessly, can shed a finish with disastrous effect, refuses to be cut
from north to south, yet yields submissivley from east to west. It
splinters, bows, cups, shrinks, loosens, swells, dents, cracks and
changes colour. Yet to many of us wood remains the most pleasing of all
natural materials, for in the richness and variety of its grain is to
be found nature's texture incarnate. Wood is a kind of a bridge between
man and that organic mass of growing things he calls Mother Earth. Wood
is a renewable resource which has given us warmth and shelter and
provided unrivaled joy to the eye and to the touch since long before
recorded time. Along with water and stone it is our most fundamental
material - without it our world would be an alien place. In wood man
fashioned his first tool, in wood he built the ladder with which he has
ascended over the millennia. It literally surrounds us from the cradle
to the coffin. Wood may well be called the foundation of civilisation.
When the craftsman commits himself to
work in wood, he becomes a party in a contract. If he sensitive to his
material, he enters into a kind of covenant in which he acknowledges a
certain subservience to his medium. He agrees (1) to come to
understand, not in a cognitive way, but through feelings, the nature of
wood: (2) to admit at the very beginning that there is no such thing as
perfection in wood, for in spite of all his efforts there will always
be some blemish, some telltale error, recorded in the wood though known
only to the builder; (3) in laying-out and forming joints, to anticipate
the inevitable movement that will occur long after the work is
finished.
Although my primary school teacher would
chide Moser for his failings in grammar and punctuation, these are
knowings and sentiments rarely expressed in technical books, certainly
not in the current spate of appalling wordworking magazines and
partworks, none of which are worth the glossy paper on which they are
printed.
It turns out that Moser, as well as running a respected cabinetmakers business
taught communication at a New England university and as far as I'm concerned the drawings of Shaker furniture are as irrelevant as are now the Shakers, themselves. Moser writes about handtools, powertools, machinery, about fixtures, adhesives, abrasives and finishes as only an expert can, few can combine craft and communication as enthusiastically (Greek, filled with God) as does Moser. Although the book is rich in photographs of sturdy, often vintage tools and machines, Moser, as did the late Fred Dibnah, offers pencil drawings, too, of his subjects; maybe there were no cameras to hand, there was no computer-aided design, maybe he just likes doing the drawings, there is something magical about drawing a project in advance and seeing how close comes the finished article.
taught communication at a New England university and as far as I'm concerned the drawings of Shaker furniture are as irrelevant as are now the Shakers, themselves. Moser writes about handtools, powertools, machinery, about fixtures, adhesives, abrasives and finishes as only an expert can, few can combine craft and communication as enthusiastically (Greek, filled with God) as does Moser. Although the book is rich in photographs of sturdy, often vintage tools and machines, Moser, as did the late Fred Dibnah, offers pencil drawings, too, of his subjects; maybe there were no cameras to hand, there was no computer-aided design, maybe he just likes doing the drawings, there is something magical about drawing a project in advance and seeing how close comes the finished article.
There has been a lot of technical
writing which is excellent; I have all sorts of compendia on how How To
Run An Efficient Household, Manage A Garden and Compose A Letter of
Condolence; mainly these are from before the Second World War, often
Victorian, punctilious, reeking with snobbery and etiquiette yet
miracles of concision, expertise and style but even as late as the
'sixties, publishers such as Readers Digest were producing well-written,
comprehensive guides to home maintainance and the Automobile
Association printed useful and understandable guides to car
maintainance but all of these date from before before and the
industrial dominance of Japan brought badly translated manuals and
brochures which were no more than gibberish. These days, finding
someone who not only knows but can also readily and pleasingly
communicate that of which they speak is a rare experience.
Comments (a selection)
Bungalow Bill said...
But I couldn't piss this one. Normally I seal the room up and just get down on my hands and knees with a flexible drum sander - the type that fits onto a normal drill and I sit there, mask on, in a blinding cloud of dust, meditating on maybe three, maybe four at a time metre-lengths of board, normally takes a couple of days. You have to get into the corners with - I use a Makita random orbital sander - but a flat sander or a detail sander will do just as well. I will then go over the entire floor with a fine or worn-out sanding drum and finally with four-zero wire wool And then I Hoover and brush and sweep and Hoover again and then I wipe it all over with white spirit and then, brushing and mini-hoovering as I go, I apply Van Dyke Brown crystal stain, smoothly and uniformly. The Van Dyke is roasted walnut kernels and it gives you as pale or as dark a brown stain as you want, just mixed with water and only costs pennies , literally. You can buy it online from Wood Finishes, I think.com. It's about twelve pounds a kilo but you use it in spoonsful, a better product and stupidly cheaper than all those Colron tins of rubbish.
But this time, when I lifted the carpet I found linoleum or oilcoth, looked to be about 1900 - 1920 and it didn't lift easily, it didn't lift at all, in fact and where I could see the adhesive it looked like pure evil, like a thin concrete. I might've removed it but it would've killed me. I had done a smaller area of something similar in this house but Oh, the work; I couldn't tackle this and so I decided I'd lay another floor on top of the existing one.
I measured it up and I needed forty-five four and a half metre lengths. Four and a half metres is one big long, heavy awkward bastard of a board, just getting them in the house was murder and then they had to go into the library, halfway up the stairs, twist the fucker around and then feed it into the drawing room. On a good day I managed to fit three boards. Despite them being tongued and grooved, the floor was as crooked as the government and I had to screw-in blocks and use sash cramps to pull each board up to the next and then screw it down with some of those modern self-sinking screws.
Like many blokes, I had been fooling myself that power tools spared your joints the wearn'n'tear of hand tools. It's nonsense, they don't, you are always fighting the torque of the machine - if you just hold a powered screwdrive loosely in your hand and squeeze the trigger it will instantly spin your wrist almost through three-hundred and sixty degrees, and it is trying to do that every single time you use it. I couldn't possibly sink five hundred screws by hand but instead I ditched the big powerdriver with battery weighing about ten pounds and bought this kit, from Makita, and I sunk the five hundred three inch screws on one charge, you are still fighting the torque but the reduced weight and the precision of the motor and gearing make things a bit easier, too late for me, now, to make any difference but if you are thinking of getting into major projects I would recommend buying this before anything else.
While I was at it I thought I'd partially board the walls and that meant resiteing all the sockets, renewing the skirting boards and doubling up the dado rail so I could tuck the tops of the boards behind. They were shit anyway, the skirting boards; no more than
That writing from Moser is lovely. It's what we've said before: there is little craft now, no touch, no awareness of what may be brought forth from apprenticeship and patience and a humble understanding of ourselves in the world. 10 December 2014 at 21:52
call me ishmael said... I am too old to be anyone's apprentice but if I wasn't I'd be Moser's. Don't know if he's still alive, actually, but he'll be around while I am. 10 December 2014 at 22:11
- The first known chair was a joint stool, a piece of fallen tree trunk with three short branches protruding which, inverted, could be sat upon, raising man's arse from the cold, hard floor, one of those techno-nature collisions which have shaped us, the rolled log led to the wheel, the rock led to the hammer, the jawbone to the saw and so on.
- mongoose said...
- "How a chair works?" Jeez, Mr I, we'll be here for weeks with that one.
- It doesn't help, of course, that my first foray was to fix my old windsor rocking chair which had started to explode. Instead of tracing the trouble back, I tried to kill it with lots of glue and a big fuck-off clamp. A chair that rocks being the perfect way of testing the sympathies of the chair within, this did not go well. It took me a while to work out that - everything being physics - the clamp was working against me and just pushing the problem down the line, and hiding it a bit more effectively. But what can you do with the slow-witted but wait, eh? For a further while then all was kept under control with a dressing gown cord - rigging for chairs - and by screwing around with that we got the stresses evened up and finally we had peace. I then crept up and glued the bugger while it wasn't looking. Cord back on to dry and there we are.
- I now often clamp stuff up with parcel straps - self-correcting and self-evening clamps for butchers. You heard it here last.
- blackholesunset said...
- Wood is a beautiful material. An entire secondary school woodworking class produced only one item, a picture frame, which I still have. It is not especially well made, yet I would not chose to part with it. It is almost certainly the only thing I do still posses which dates from that period.
- mr bhs; consider yourself lucky to
have that woodworking memento. It took me years, to get those
souvenirs, and I don't know how they slipped away from me. I have
nothing treasured from before, nothing.
-
call me ishmael said...
- It is a big subject, to which
we should return, DIY, renovation,loft- conversion and extension; the
Awful Coming of the Knockers-Through. 12 December 2014 at 10:40
-
THE DIY PAGE 1st September 2013
But I couldn't piss this one. Normally I seal the room up and just get down on my hands and knees with a flexible drum sander - the type that fits onto a normal drill and I sit there, mask on, in a blinding cloud of dust, meditating on maybe three, maybe four at a time metre-lengths of board, normally takes a couple of days. You have to get into the corners with - I use a Makita random orbital sander - but a flat sander or a detail sander will do just as well. I will then go over the entire floor with a fine or worn-out sanding drum and finally with four-zero wire wool And then I Hoover and brush and sweep and Hoover again and then I wipe it all over with white spirit and then, brushing and mini-hoovering as I go, I apply Van Dyke Brown crystal stain, smoothly and uniformly. The Van Dyke is roasted walnut kernels and it gives you as pale or as dark a brown stain as you want, just mixed with water and only costs pennies , literally. You can buy it online from Wood Finishes, I think.com. It's about twelve pounds a kilo but you use it in spoonsful, a better product and stupidly cheaper than all those Colron tins of rubbish.
But this time, when I lifted the carpet I found linoleum or oilcoth, looked to be about 1900 - 1920 and it didn't lift easily, it didn't lift at all, in fact and where I could see the adhesive it looked like pure evil, like a thin concrete. I might've removed it but it would've killed me. I had done a smaller area of something similar in this house but Oh, the work; I couldn't tackle this and so I decided I'd lay another floor on top of the existing one.
I measured it up and I needed forty-five four and a half metre lengths. Four and a half metres is one big long, heavy awkward bastard of a board, just getting them in the house was murder and then they had to go into the library, halfway up the stairs, twist the fucker around and then feed it into the drawing room. On a good day I managed to fit three boards. Despite them being tongued and grooved, the floor was as crooked as the government and I had to screw-in blocks and use sash cramps to pull each board up to the next and then screw it down with some of those modern self-sinking screws.
Like many blokes, I had been fooling myself that power tools spared your joints the wearn'n'tear of hand tools. It's nonsense, they don't, you are always fighting the torque of the machine - if you just hold a powered screwdrive loosely in your hand and squeeze the trigger it will instantly spin your wrist almost through three-hundred and sixty degrees, and it is trying to do that every single time you use it. I couldn't possibly sink five hundred screws by hand but instead I ditched the big powerdriver with battery weighing about ten pounds and bought this kit, from Makita, and I sunk the five hundred three inch screws on one charge, you are still fighting the torque but the reduced weight and the precision of the motor and gearing make things a bit easier, too late for me, now, to make any difference but if you are thinking of getting into major projects I would recommend buying this before anything else.
While I was at it I thought I'd partially board the walls and that meant resiteing all the sockets, renewing the skirting boards and doubling up the dado rail so I could tuck the tops of the boards behind. They were shit anyway, the skirting boards; no more than
 |
three inches deep. These are better.
13 comments:
Where is mr i when you need him? I live in an old tudor pyramid. No foundation. A brook, a river. Moisture everywhere. Near twenty years ago I ripped out every carpet and covered everything with 20mm of oak. (The same board supplier who supplied your lovely Scottish Parliament, mrs i. But a decade before that, I think.) What to do? A waterproof skin underneath? A floating ply raft? Both?. In the end the truth was that the moisture had to be let out. To try to conceal it would force it to the ancient lime-mortared walls, and make my house explode. (Just like my chairs, in fact.) Now the boards are warping a bit in the doorways, at the front where the floods rush by. Did I say? We are 6" below the level of the lane. There is no escape. We must learn to bend with it, live with it.
I am going to sand the downstairs and replace the disorderly boards with the spares, I hope enough, I have kept for all these years. And I will try mr ishhmael's Van Dyke finish too. It is a project for Lockdown 3.
I recall that conversation, mrs i, thank-you.
Wonderful, thanks, Mrs l. 6 years since that Moser piece, dear Lord.
As Mr Mongoose notes, it’s all about the time, the trouble taken and the endurance.
mr mongoose - this made me think of what you said down the road about advice to mongoslings venturing out:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-55560814
btw I just googled Tudor Pyramid and remain, to no one's great surprise, none the wiser. My guess would be it refers to the roof rather than the whole thing?
v./
We're on the edge of a defensive ditch, mr verge, that forms three sides of the old town, the river being the forth. Over time the ditch was used as a supply wharf and buildings built along it crept nearer the centre by the selective filling in of the old rampart. So the back wall slopes and is near three feet thick at the "bottom". (Which isn't the bottom but is ten feet above the normal bank of the brook though it is more or less level with the lane at the front.) The front wall is a single brick between us and the elements. It is all perched on a three-sided masonry plinth infilled with yeck and Lord knows what. Ad hoc and make do is what we are. Not a straight line nor a level one to be had. "Vernacular", as the precious people will have it. We are more custodians than residents I sometimes think.
Shocking totalitarian drivel, mr bb. The tyranny of the fixed penalty chit that bullies you into half-priced acceptance and buckling under to Plod. The new Chief Constable of Derbyshire though is a notorious pillock. She also has the most shocking hair-do I have ever seen on somebody older tthan 17.
https://www.derbyshire.police.uk/news/derbyshire/news/news/forcewide/2020/august/rachel-swann-confirmed-as-new-chief-constable/
Crikey Moses, mr mongoose - you'd never get that past the planning panjandrums these days.
That's a helluva photo - Chief Constable Barnet needs to get her finger out of the mains.
v./
What do Hancock and the lethal tribe know of any such things, of Mr I's Zen applications?
The kiddie psychos have no time for workings.
Mr Verge: I thought you were about to say "finger out of the dyke".
Very nearly typed just that, mr mike - how could one not?
v./
Gentlemen, the haircut is not sufficient evidence alone.
India not getting blown away by the new ball, mr mike. Yet. These are the two or three hours.
I agree, Mr mongoose. This could be an epic test. The weather will not be a problem. Currently sunny here is Sydney, and good forecast for the rest of the week.
PS the haircut is sufficient evidence for me. FFS who gave this "woman" the job?
The three run-outs will probably prove fatal, mr mike. One is unfortunate; three is indiscipline borne of too much shits'n'giggles slogging in the IPL.
Agreed Mr mongoose. Those run outs were fatal - although I have to admit some good fielding as well. Its clear blue sky and sun here this morning so the weather won't interfere.
And a dislocation to one's spinner and a query elbow fracture to one's wk and that puts the tin hat on it. Add dropping a catch on the second ball of the day and we are done. Cricket is a hard game. It is why we love it, mr mike.
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