The Woodworker - The Charles Hayward Years, Vol III

[Andy Kev.]

For those who have had a look at Vols I and II of this series, you have a good idea of what to expect. This volume (running from pages 890 to 1166) is concerned with all aspects of woodworking joints. It is based on an original book by Charles Hayward called Woodwork Joints but the content has been filtered through and culled from articles which appeared in The Woodworker. If you want more clarity on this, the foreword of Vol III appears as the blurb for the book on the Classic Hand Tools website. The last paragraph of the foreword states:

... we think this volume is an admirable companion - if not a replacement - of "Woodwork Joints". I hope this becomes as ratty and thumbed-through as almost every copy of "Woodwork Joints" I've ever seen. That would be the best tribute ever to Hayward as his work continues to inspire the next generation of woodworkers.

So if you have a copy of Woodwork Joints you may feel that this book is not for you. However, for those of us who have not seen the original, what do you get?. The answer is possibly, "everything you've ever wanted to know about woodwork joints and a bit more". The topic of the moment - mortices and tenons - is covered exhaustively over 36 pages, including a couple of very useful articles on what the most common mistakes are. The section on mitres is frankly daunting and the more delicate reader may be left feeling in need of a stiff drink. There's more about dovetails than the normal person could possibly want to know.

Under the heading of "Miscellaneous Joints" there appear (amongst others) knuckle, rule, spliced and scarf joints and a sort of hybrid of the lap and halving joints which is used to make the central part of a wooden flywheel. You probably get the picture: if it's about joints it's almost certainly here.

Talking of pictures, the book is excellently illustrated with line drawings. The more I look at these three volumes, the more I am becoming convinced that the clarity of the line drawing communicates much more effectively and efficiently than the photograph does.

The high standards of the Lost Art Press are of course applied to the manufacture of the book and they effectively make Chris Schwarz's wish for it to become "ratty and thumbed through" an incitement to commit a cultural crime. What you really need is photocopier so you can reproduce the page you need and take that in the workshop with you.

In short: an excellent book and if you've got any sense you'll start dropping hints about last minute Christmas presents.

 

[custard]

+1

These are wonderful books. The illustrations are superb and the writing is crystal clear.

It puts most modern woodwork writing to shame. Instead of loads of glossy, colour photographs that are just thinly disguised tool ****, and articles by people who are enthusiastic enough but have never had much actual time at a bench, instead of all that you get time served craftsmen supported by brilliant illustrators.

The only regret is that a lot of the furniture they make, and towards which the techniques are biased, has relatively little market appeal these days. But thats not a criticism, there is still masses of content that is completely relevant to today's woodworkers.

Incidentally, one of their regular columnists was a cabinet maker at Gordon Russell Furniture, isn't that where Peter Sefton trained and worked? You don't get much better than that!

Fingers crossed there'll be a volume IV!

 

[AndyT]

Thanks for the review, Andy, I'll add it to the reviews Sticky.

I don't need to buy this book, but I am glad that LAP have produced it and that more people will be able to benefit from years of good writing. I don't need it as I have 90% of the contents in other books that Hayward wrote or edited.

His book on joints is the best one I know on the subject. It reads like the work of a man who has learned the trade but not forgotten to provide hints or help at the points where beginners may have trouble. Not all woodworking books are so good!

I know that there are people who work in publishing and book design who have collected Hayward's work as an example of clear writing and visual communication. They're not wrong!

 

[bugbear]

His book on joints is the best one I know on the subject. It reads like the work of a man who has learned the trade but not forgotten to provide hints or help at the points where beginners may have trouble. Not all woodworking books are so good!

Do you know if he ever taught in person, as well as writing?

BugBear

 

[Andy Kev.]

Custard,

thanks for pointing out the clarity of the writing. It was remiss of me not to mention it. I suppose I just take it for granted now that I've got used to it. Hayward and the other contributors do write with a great clarity and strip everything down to that which needs communicating, no more, no less and not a hint of taking their egos for a walk. The style reminds me a bit of old style school masters: firm but fair and determined to do their best by their pupils.

 

[AndyT]

Do you know if he ever taught in person, as well as writing?

BugBear

Good question. I think I recall a bit of a bio somewhere - maybe on a blog - but can't remember where. Anyone else with a better memory know?

(It might actually have been Robert Wearing!)

Edit: found it - yes, he taught at Shoreditch College for two years. Lots more and a good appreciation of his work here

http://woodworkinghistory.com/manual_author18.htm

 

[Cheshirechappie]

I read somewhere, I think on the Lost Art Press blog, a comment that Robert Wearing is reported to have made about Hayward - he was a workaholic. When he edited 'The Woodworker', he not only wrote most of some editions, he also prepared the illustrations himself and took the photographs.

Something else that I can't recall the source of was that Hayward served near the front during WW1, looking after horses. Being the shortest man in the regiment, he was always given the largest horses to tend.

This did come from the LAP blog - Hayward served his time as an apprentice cabinetmaker in an area of London called Victoria, a little west of Shoreditch. The firm he worked for (possibly the same his father worked for) specialised in antique work - repair, refinishing, making up new pieces from the remains of older ones, and 'faking' (which wasn't quite as unrespectable as it is now).

One thing is for sure - he certainly knew his subject. He was also absolutely brilliant at imparting his knowledge with simplicity and clarity.

 

[custard]

Hayward served his time as an apprentice cabinetmaker in an area of London called Victoria, a little west of Shoreditch.

I remember seeing Shoreditch and Whitechapel in the late 1970's, and a couple of other UK furniture making centres like Cheetham Hill in Manchester. I had relatives in the timber business so worked as a driver during university holidays, delivering premium hardwoods to the furniture trade. I didn't appreciate it at the time, but it was the last gasp of a cabinet making trade that had been conducted in those areas for hundreds of years. There were scores of tiny little specialised workshops, mainly involved in different parts of the antique reproduction business. Cabinet makers, bed makers, chair makers, carvers, gilders, veneer layers, polishers; they were generally separate one man and a dog businesses, so you'd see pieces of furniture "in the white" being carried down the street from one crumbling Victorian workshop to another for the next stage in the process. It really was straight out of a Dickens novel.

I didn't recognise that it was fading fast, and when the old boys would bang on about the pre-war trade I couldn't get away quickly enough. Hire purchase MFI chipboard was eating into the bottom end, while Habitat and stripped pine were taking away the middle class customers. By the end of 80's it had pretty much all disappeared, I wish now I'd paid a bit more attention while I had the chance.

 

[AndyT]

Indeed, Custard, if only we could go back in time.

It would have been about 1980 that I was in London for the day with a friend who needed to visit a music publisher. As we walked towards it, I remembered that I wanted to get some hinges and popped into a likely looking shop. I wish now that I gad paid more attention and gone with a longer shopping list. We were on Curtain Road, which I think is in the area you are talking about, and although they had exactly what I wanted they clearly had everything in the hardware line that any specialist trades in the area might have needed. It was one of the real old hardware shops with boxes on racks and staff in brown coats. A quick look on Street View confirms that such places have all gone, giving way to architects, bars, estate agents and cafes. Maybe some of your customers!

 

[Pete W]

English Heritage produced a good guide to the trade and workshops of Shoreditch, which is available as a PDF at the Historic England website here:
https://content.historicengland.org.uk/ ... eneer.pdf/

Lots of good info and pictures. I just missed the end of the era - in the 1980s I used to spend a lot of time around Old Street and Tabernacle Street visiting companies in the pre-press printing industry, and a lot of the old workshops were standing empty.

 

[AndyT]

What a great find and what an enlightened policy - the book is out of print so the pdf is made available for free download!

Thanks Pete.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

There are a couple mentioned at the back of that PDF concerning Sheffield steel trades and the Birmingham jewelry quarter that might be of interest but being English Heritage may be more concerned with the buildings than the businesses.

 

[AndyT]

Phil,

I'm looking through them too!

Those two are both available as free pdfs, as is the one on Stourport. You do need to search the whole site, not just the bookshop part, which is on a different url.

 

[custard]

English Heritage produced a good guide to the trade and workshops of Shoreditch, which is available as a PDF at the Historic England website here:
https://content.historicengland.org.uk/ ... eneer.pdf/

Just brilliant, thanks for posting.

There's a photograph, quite early on in the document you linked to, of a workshop full of antique repro. That's exactly what I remember from the late 70's and very early 80's. Workshop after workshop, all churning out repro. And then, in the blink of an eye, they were all gone.

 

[JimB]

'faking' (which wasn't quite as unrespectable as it is now).
I seem to remember him mentioning somewhere of a piece they had made and 'distressed' coming back in to be repaired!

 

[Phil Pascoe]

There was an article about 25 years ago in the woodworking press about a guy who faked oak furniture (it might have been written by his grandson?) - some of it was in furniture collections in major museums, although he refrained from identifying them . The farmhouse tables were aged by being left for a while in a pig sty, so the ammonia in the urine darkened the wood and stained the bottoms of the legs and the pigs knocked the arrises off by using the frame as a scratching post. Some other furniture which did not require distressing was just hung above the sty to let the gas alone do the job.

 

[Trafalgar]

If a spoon bit had been used they likely never would have figured it out it was a fake:

https://www.thehenryford.org/explore/bl ... ter-chair/

 

[custard]

There was an article about 25 years ago in the woodworking press about a guy who faked oak furniture (it might have been written by his grandson?) - some of it was in furniture collections in major museums, although he refrained from identifying them . The farmhouse tables were aged by being left for a while in a pig sty, so the ammonia in the urine darkened the wood and stained the bottoms of the legs and the pigs knocked the arrises off by using the frame as a scratching post. Some other furniture which did not require distressing was just hung above the sty to let the gas alone do the job.

You used to hear stuff like that all the time, back in the day when antique furniture was actually worth something and it therefore made economic sense to restore and even "enhance" it.

I've no doubt that a few charlatans got up to dodgy dealings, but most of what was written was a load of "heard it from a bloke in a pub" cobblers. The problem with antiques was hardly ever out and out fakes, even at the absolute height of the antique market in the 80's it was rarely financially viable to build a fake from the ground up. There were one or two small (and pretty well documented) exceptions to this, such as fake Oak panelling which was manufactured by the yard for the refurbished offices of wealthy American lawyers, or children's Yew windsor chairs. But by and large the issue was antique furniture that had been structurally amended to make it more desirable, or marriages of two antique pieces into something more valuable, or pieces that had been so heavily restored that there was relatively little original work remaining.

In any event, the real methods of ageing new timbers to blend in with older wood, the methods practised by restorers who actually knew what they were doing, never involved pig sties or stables or yogurt and manure or any of the other nonsense that kept getting trotted out. Chiefly the timber was oxidised with dilute Nitric Acid, possibly bleached with Oxalic Acid or a two pack solution, and then the patinated surface was carefully built up and stained as required. Distressing was a pretty clinical process designed to accurately reflect the actual wear patterns observed on genuine pieces; scratching pigs or dragging furniture behind cars over cobbled streets would be way too random and unrepresentative to pass muster.

Nowadays it's just comical to think anyone would actively fake furniture. Any value in something like this for example is contained in the very nice Cuban Mahogany that it's made from, which is worth more broken up and sold on Ebay than the cost of the piece itself,

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ANTIQUE-REGEN ... SwtUtXBUzs

 

[James C]

Fingers crossed there'll be a volume IV!

From the Lost Art Press Blog
The next book in the pipeline is Vol. IV of “The Woodworker” series. This final volume is on workshop stuff (workbenches and tool chests), furniture and its details, plus a few philosophical surprises at the end.

 

[custard]

The next book in the pipeline is Vol. IV of “The Woodworker” series. This final volume is on workshop stuff (workbenches and tool chests), furniture and its details, plus a few philosophical surprises at the end.

Yaaay!