The Peasant Without a Shavehorse

Make anything with the help of these small vises.

This was an experimental arm anyway. Now it’s experimental kindling.

It’s been more than five years since I threw an almost-completed chair in the burn pile.

But on Thursday I completely botched one. First, I drilled the chair’s 12 sticks at the wrong angle because of a brain fart. Then I tried to recover by plugging all 24 holes with oak to redrill everything. While plugging the 16^th hole, the armbow split into a mess.

(I probably could have fixed it. But I would be fixing a mistake that was made while fixing a mistake on an experimental piece that only had a 50 percent chance of working anyway.)

I put the chair parts out for the neighbors to use as fuel. And I smiled – because I got to start building this Romanian cupboard.

These antique cupboards were typically built using beech, a widely available wood in Eastern Europe. In the United States, beech is expensive and difficult to find. So I’m building most of the projects for “The American Peasant” using tulip poplar and linden. Both spe…