Maker, builder, publisher and author Lloyd Kahn left a great comment on my rambling review of the documentary Spaceship Earth. Lloyd said (in reference to the title of Buckminster Fuller’s 1969 book Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth), “In 1973, in our book Shelter, I wrote “Calling Earth a spaceship is like stepping out into a clear night in New Mexico and saying, “Wow, it looks just like the planetarium.”

If you aren’t familiar with Lloyd’s work you should check out his blog and buy his books! I have a vintage copy of Shelter on my workshop bookshelf.

I had a request for some work-in-progress photos of Kelly’s office furniture and, instead of feeding the Instagram beast I thought I’d put them on the blog.

Kelly requested a bookshelf, three cabinets and a desk for her shed office (we are lucky to have a 100 year old shed in the backyard that I have restored over the years we’ve lived here).

Lately, I’ve taken to hand drawing designs more than using Sketchup. I’m not against 3D modeling but I like the speed of pencil and paper.

I’m in that Venn diagram somewhere that combines a leftist outlook with extremely conservative design tastes. I find there’s a hard to express and paradoxical freedom that comes from working within historic design limitations. It certainly makes staring at the blank sheet of paper easier when you have some rules about proportions and standard practices to fall back on.

I’ve also been practicing my hand tool methods. I took a class last year on how to hand cut dovetails and have spent some of my quarantine time practicing this skill, which gets down to learning how to cut an angled line with a saw. It’s actually not that hard once you spend some hours practicing on scrap wood.

Kelly did not like how long it took for me to make the bookshelf (made out of inexpensive beech wood, by the way) and requested that I put the cabinets together faster. I used birch plywood which was more fun to work with than I expected and certainly saved a lot of time. Hardwood has to be milled, the edges jointed and small pieces glued together to make wider boards. It takes days of work. Plywood cabinets come together in hours not days.

The plywood cabinets for Kelly’s office ended up being a kind of ironic, post-modern commentary on the fuddy-duddy bookshelf. Rather than hide the edges of the plywood I decided to bring attention to them. I like the look of the edge of a decent birch plywood. Speaking of plywood, if you work with it you should get it from a local lumberyard not the big box stores. The plywood I got was a big step up in quality–fewer voids and a better surface and well worth the extra price.

I called a friend who restores vintage trailers for some advice on how to finish plywood (thank you Phil!). He suggested a light sanding with 220 grit sandpaper followed by either spray varnish or a poly finish. I went with a poly finish since it’s what I had on hand it ended up looking great. Wish I had the space to build a teardrop trailer out of ply.

The last project for the office will be a desk from a plan in Christopher Schwartz’s The Anarchist Design Book.

Window Swap is a poetic quarantine art project. Click a button and you get a ten minute prerecorded video of someone else’s window view complete with sound. I took a window tour of the Bavarian countryside, a street in India and a cat watching birds in Qatar. You can also record your own view and submit it. Thanks to the Recomendo newsletter for the tip.

If you’re looking for a movie to watch tonight check out The Story of G.I. Joe, a 1945 movie centering on the war correspondent Ernie Pyle. It was directed by William Wellman and stars Burgess Meredith and Robert Mitchum. This movie has a big heart. You’ll leave it with a greater empathy for what war veterans go through and it’s free in the YouTubes. Thanks to the Jacobin for the tip.

Root Simple reader Mary H left a nice comment on my Monday post about the muses,

A long time ago I heard “When times are good, make art. When times are bad, make more art.” Also, Neil Gaiman said, ” When things get tough, this is what you should do. Make good art… Make it on the good days, too.”

In that spirit, in the midst of the quarantine/curfew I spent some time organizing my garage workshop so that I can continue to make furniture for the house. I took on the much delayed and deadly dull tasks of organizing the disorganized hardware storage bins and improving dust collection. Life is easier when the workshop is clean and the tools are sharp and in their place. Speaking of sharp, I also spent time setting up a dedicated sharpening station so that I won’t be tempted to put off this essential task when in the midst of working.

It’s important to have a pleasant space to work in. So amidst the tools are a few tchotchkes, images of cats and Bernie Sanders signs to remind me of happy before-times. Spending time in this space does not completely allay a foreboding sense of anxiety about the world but it’s certainly better than sitting in the house doom scrolling Twitter.

One of those Sanders signs says, “Fight the Power” a kind of pun in that I’ve, unintentionally, managed to assemble a work practice that blends power tools and hand tools. While I enjoy the convenience of a table saw and band saw I much prefer “fighting the power” with an over 100 year old hand plane that works as well as the day it was made. I’ve slowly begun to shift to using hand tools more often. They are safer, produce less dust and, while taking some practice to get used to, are just as precise if not more so and lead to fewer catastrophic mistakes. Lastly, I can’t minimize how important it is to have a proper workbench. Other crafts such as sewing, metal work, electronics etc. are greatly facilitated by a proper and dedicated work surface as well.

While expensive to set up, the workshop has paid for itself many times over. I’ve used it to make reproductions of furniture that would cost tens of thousand of dollars as well as make molding for the house and install wood floors.

I often think of the Nick Cave anthem “There She Goes, My Beautiful World” when I find myself slipping into a pity party. The song reminds us that creative types of the past managed to work under much more horrible conditions.

John Willmot penned his poetry
riddled with the pox
Nabakov wrote on index cards,
at a lectern, in his socks
St. John of the Cross did his best stuff
imprisoned in a box
And Johnny Thunders was half alive
when he wrote Chinese Rocks . . .

So if you got a trumpet, get on your feet,
brother, and blow it
If you’ve got a field, that don’t yield,
well get up and hoe it

Over the past year I’ve fallen down a traditional furniture design rabbit hole. In the course of this study I discovered a measuring and calculation tool that went out of use until a recent revival: the sector.

Before the 19th century cabinetmakers worked with proportions rather than measurements. When laying out dovetails for a drawer, for instance, rather than using a ruler a traditional cabinetmaker would use a sector and dividers to come up with the spacing. You can figure out this spacing by trial and error but a sector speeds along the process.

To use a sector to divide a line you open the sector up to the length of the line. Then you hold up a divider to the scale etched on the side of the sector to the number you want to divide your original line into. Then you step out the divider on the workplace.

In addition to carpentry the sector was used in navigation, surveying and gunnery. With your handy sector you can also solve multiplication and trigonometry problems. The sector’s invention is attributed to either Galileo Galilei and/or Thomas Hood sometime in the 16th century.

If you’re a teacher or a parent looking for a geometry lesson to do in quarantine Jim Toplin has a free paper sector plan you can download and assemble. I use this paper sector for laying out dovetails. You can also turn a folding ruler into a sector.

With the rising tyranny of inches and feet the sector went out of use in the 19th century. But recently, freaks like me have revived its use and you can buy one for the first time in over a hundred years.

I’ve found thinking in terms of proportions rather than inches revelatory and liberating. And geometry lessons based in practice stick with you much better than those distantly remembered hours of junior high math.

For more information on sectors see The Sector: it’s History, Scales and Uses