Popular Woodworking Editors' Blog

In July, Popular Woodworking Books will publish "Grove Park Inn Arts & Crafts Furniture." If you’re not familiar with the location (host site for the annual Arts & Crafts Conference), let the author (Bruce Johnson) fill you in a bit… 

When in 1988 I organized the first Arts & Crafts Conference and Antiques Show to be held at the Grove Park Inn, very few Arts & Crafts collectors had heard of the historic hotel, and fewer still had ever visited it. A few dedicated Roycroft collectors knew that in 1913 the Roycroft Furniture Shop and the Roycroft Copper Shop had furnished all of the lighting and much of the furniture for the 150-room hotel, but what few outside of Asheville, N.C., realized is that from 1984 through 1988 the Grove Park Inn had purchased scores of antique Arts & Crafts settles, sideboards, library tables and Morris chairs for their two new additions.

When Arts & Crafts collectors arrived at the Grove Park Inn for the first annual Arts & Crafts Conference in February of 1988, they discovered a treasure trove of Arts & Crafts furniture. Examples of Roycroft, Gustav Stickley, L. & J.G. Stickley, Charles Limbert, Stickley Brothers, J.M. Young and Lifetime furniture filled the rooms, restaurants and hallways, giving the Grove Park Inn the distinction of having the largest Arts & Crafts collection of furniture and lighting in the country.

Each February since then collectors from across the country and around the world have come to the Grove Park Inn each February for the national Arts & Crafts Conference. They come to experience the historic Arts & Crafts hotel, to inspect and enjoy its Arts & Crafts collection and to make and renew friendships with their fellow Arts & Crafts enthusiasts. Their love and admiration for the craftsmanship and the simple, yet elegant designs which set the Arts & Crafts style apart from others brings them together in the one place which, since 1913, has been known as the most famous Arts & Crafts resort hotel in the world.

And while the history of the hotel and its famous guests has been chronicled in "Built for the Ages: A History of the Grove Park Inn," the Arts & Crafts furniture and lighting which complement its architecture has always been deserving of its own book.
— Bruce E. Johnson

Grove Park Inn Arts & Crafts Furniture includes the history of this unique resort, through good times and bad, as well as a visual tour through the hotel and its furniture collection. For the furniture builder, the book includes detailed scaled drawings and photos for building 10 of the most significant pieces in the Grove Park Inn's collection (including the GPI chair and hall clock, pictured above). Look for more information on this title in the coming months. Or check online in June for ordering information.

— David Baker-Thiel

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One of the great things about writing a blog is that you get to go off on stuff once in a while. Today is my day. And you, the readers, can read along and agree, call me an idiot and shake your head at my blathering, or in this case, I hope you use the comment section to add your own disgruntled responses.

Here goes. On the drive into work in the morning, I listen to talk radio. In Cincinnati, the major talk radio is WLW (a 50,000 watt giant that’s heard from Texas to New England overnight and throughout the Tri-state area all day). This morning, in an ad for a restaurant or some food-selling establishment – I didn’t catch the name because my head exploded when I heard the first sentence – the announcer told me the product included CHERRYWOOD-smoked bacon between two waffles and blah, blah, blah.

Notice capitalization of cherrywood – that means I'm yelling. It's my biggest woodworking pet peeve. We don’t say walnut-wood, tiger maple-wood, or poplar-wood. Why in the world would you say cherry-wood? Do we not know that cherry is a wood? If the script would simply read “cherry smoked bacon” would you have thought that some dude known as Cherry was smoking the bacon? As interesting as that mental image is, I think not.

Please, help an aging woodworker. Don’t say or write (I have read this many times in woodworking forums) or refer to cherry as cherrywood. It’s not a word. Spell check is telling me that.

On to pet peeve number two, "Amish-built." This is something I hear from a bedding manufacturer. Its frames are handcrafted, Amish-made frames. Like that’s suppose to make me think the construction is so much better than frames made by non-Amish. No offense to the Amish, but many woodworkers build better than the Amish. While there are very good Amish woodworkers, there are Amish woodworkers that build junk.

First of all, I’m not so sure the Amish build those frames. It could well be the Amish or it could be some person in a factory in Kookamunga using an air-powered nail gun to bust out 90 frames per hour. How would we know?

And, if it’s proven that these frames are Amish-built, should that impress us? Do you think we’ll visit museums in the future to view Amish furniture the way we study Shaker work? Again, I think not.

These are but two of my woodworking pet peeves. I’ve heard others suggested in the office, but now is the time for you to add your favorites. Go ahead, it’s Friday, cleanse your mind for the weekend. Leave a comment to post your woodworking pet peeves.

I hope we get an ever-growing list. I need a few more things to listen for while I make way to and from work.

— Glen D. Huey

This is the third part of a series – actually it's the fourth part because I slipped the Mortise Machine Mortises entry in without a mention of the bed (read that entry here) – about my wife's new bed. Read part one here, and Part two here.

In all the furniture I’ve built in the past, I really feel there are two projects that were exceptional. Translation: I would almost always change something about each and every project I build. Never would I build that same piece the same way.

Most times, I have the project finished before I make that assessment. However, after the holiday weekend – during which I had completed a good part of the work – something bothered me about this bed I’m building. The design was stuck in my thoughts. Where I was at that point with construction is shown below.



What bothered me were the rails of the bed running from post to post and the stiles fitting between those rails. Of course the center stile would fit that way, but the outer two stiles – if viewed without the added posts – would not. Think about a door. The stiles run from top to bottom, not between the rails. It was bugging me, so I made the change. Take a close look at the top photo and you can see the difference. Also, the close up of the headboard (below) shows the construction change.



By the way – I blame this on all the blog commenters who didn’t point out this error in my SketchUp drawing (Hey, I can’t blame myself!). I burnt a Saturday in the shop making the necessary changes, but, as you can see, I did move forward on the project.



I also had a chance to use my favorite router technique, a square platform jig (watch a video here). The rails are too long to stand up and two-step cut the tenons as I normally do. And, before you say it, it’s not easy to push king-size bed rails over a dado stack if you don’t have a sliding table at your table saw. So the jig is the perfect answer.



What’s left on the bed build is to attach the posts. As you can see in the photo above, that’s not an easy process due to the length of assemblies. I have two 84"-long pipe clamps, but those do not stretch the entire length of the head and foot boards. Shown in the photo is my idea as to how and make this happen. I plan to cut a couple biscuit slots into the post and end stiles to help hold things in position as I add the clamps as shown. The problem I have with this scenario is the time it takes to complete. I’ll have to add one post at a time.

Anyone have another suggestion? If so, post your thoughts and let’s see if we can’t knock this build out next weekend. If you remember from the first post (read it here), my client is losing her patience.