Although there are several in the pipeline, I do not have any active workbench projects in the barn at the moment. I am delighted to feature other folks’ work, though, and here is a video from Bob Rozaieski on his new magnificent workbench.
I don’t think Bob and I have met but I plan to rectify that shortcoming the next time I pass near by his shop, which does happen on occasion as we head up and down the highways. We correspond with some regularity but thus far no in-person fellowship.
I’m never sure how yootoob executes searches, as I frequently have something pop into my Recommendations that I had unsuccessfully searched for many moons ago. Much to my delight this is one such example that showed up last week.
As I have already indicated I could listen to Delphine Galou sing the phone book. I am no fan of operatic music but somehow this oratorio by Vivaldi is captivating. I am such a fan of hers that were she to tour the US I would make every effort to attend a concert. Even if it meant going to NYC, especially if Congress manages to pass CCW reciprocity.
Mrs. Galou is firmly ensconced in my current pantheon of female vocalists along with Jennifer Warnes and Eva Cassidy, with Alison Krauss, Gloria Lynne and Deborah Holland in the bullpen. Full confession — I just don’t get Billie Holliday.
Against the glory of Mrs. Galou’s singing is the ridiculous visual of the chamber music ensemble wearing face diapers in keeping with the edicts of the Fauci Flu fraud purveyors and their gullible myrmidons. Was the Fauci Flu a real thing? Of course, I spent nearly two weeks in the hospital with it. I know folks two degrees of separation who died from it, usually in forced isolation as they died. Was Fauci Flu something “special” epidemiologically? Other than its sponsorship and source, not particularly. Periodic lethal respiratory flus sweep the nation with only slightly less mortality.
I have a good friend who was a BCN specialist in the military. That’s Biological, Chemical, and Nuclear weapons. His expertise indicates that the only protection against viruses the size of Fauci Flu would require a full, sealed hazmat suit with independent air source. Face diapers are futile, as the unfolding medical literature is confirming. (Mrs. Barn is a trained scientist and reads the stuff)
Thus, the sight of this instrumental ensemble performatively wearing completely ineffective “protection” is more sanctimonious virtue signaling than anything else. I wonder when or if we will look back at such posturing with the ridicule it demands, or if any of the perpetrators will ever receive justice..
Ironically, one of the guys who got this exactly correct, and was systematically silenced and defamed by the “smart people,” will soon become the most powerful person in the US medical establishment. Karma, baby. Karma.
If my comments about the Fauci Flu disturb you, I will give your concerns all the gracious consideration is appropriate.
Okay, I’m done with those considerations.
And if you are not enamored with the voice of Delphine Galou? You just might be a barbarian.
One of the great things about possessing and occupying the barn is that I have 7,000 square feet of space. And occupy it I do. Lots of storage, lots of work space(s). As a matter of fact, I have more than a dozen work stations allowing me to set up multiple projects, moving from one to the other as needed. Or more truthfully, moving from a cluttered one to a less cluttered one.
Thus the down side to occupying the barn. It needs more regular cleaning than I am inclined to do.
I have two dear friends, MikeM and MartinO, whose shops are so neat and orderly at all times they are what critics of shop videos would say, “It looks like no one ever works there, they are too clean.” I can attest that Mike and Martin are indeed so orderly their shops do look that way. Whether it is by necessity or temperament, the shops reflect the orderliness of the men themselves. Everything is in its place, put away immediately after use. Everything is kept clean, all the time, beginning with the moment a task is completed.
I will resist the churlish temptation to brand this as some sort of psychosis (smile). Alas, I do not possess the traits these two neatniks have as my operating system.
For the past few months I have been paying the price for my own poor housekeeping habits, working my way back into regular shop time by cleaning the place, one work station at a time. The end in in sight but I know well enough the trial of messiness will return soon enough.
Here’s a partial montage of my work stations. I apologize in advance for the photography; trying to get good images when the space is ambient light and blinding snow reflection is blasting through the windows.
On the east wall, directly underneath a double row of windows is my FORP monster workbench, 8-1/2 feeet long and probably close to 500 pounds. This bench gets used almost every day, currently is is the working platform for assembling my parquetry units for the big tool cabinet I’m making. Underneath the bench is a cabinet full of marquetry/parquetry tools and supplies, and my stash of adhesives. They are located here to be near the wall propane furnace.
Turn around from Roubo and you’ll find my third child. If I was a Viking I would have this one buried with my in the mound. This bench, with one of my Emmerts on board, is my most used piece in the whole shop. I’m currently using it tp layout the doors of the parquetry tool cabinet.
One step behind and parallel to this bench is an early Roubo, not really successful but good enough to use as my metalworking and tool repair bench. It has an Emmert machinists vise on it, and many jigs underneath.
Midway along the north wall is another Roubo bench, now my primary finishing station. Underneath are cabinets full of brushes, pigments, and tube paints, etc.
Turn around from my finishing bench and you will find the Studleyesque bench I built for the exhibit now almost a decade ago. It is perfectly usable as a general bench, but I mostly use it for my sellable inventory underneath, and packaging orders to ship out.
Down in the northwest corner of my shop is my “fine work” bench, a salvaged and renovated Sjoberg I use for all manner of small scale work. Gunsmithing, engraving, checkering, silicone mold making, chasing, etc.
Literally adjacent to the Sjoberg bench is my writing station. You might not think writing is work, but I promise you it is. The chair frame was made by my Roubo translation collaborator Philippe Lafargue. I use a turned over seat deck from a long gone project as my lap desk.
In the corner opposite my engraving station is my waxworks, encompassing all manner of wax processing. It’s on top of a large map case unit full of veneers, mother of pearl pieces, and other exotic material. Keeping the waxwork tidy is an unwinnable proposition, I just try to keep it usable with minimal fuss.
And this is just some of the stuff inside my 15′ x 35′ heated shop.
Stepping outside the heated shop is the “great room” in the center of the floor. In the center of that is this Nichiols that I use whenever I am traveling to demonstrate traditional hand tool work. It gets used here too, currently for making a Japanese planing beam and the base frame for the parqutery tool cabinet.
The north side of the great room is just tool and supply storage, but along the south edge is the space for my lathe, chop saw, and a vintage machinist lathe I bought at Donnely’s and then it was restored by my long time friend Jersey Jon.
At the east end of the room, in front of the wall o’windows, are two rolling benches with a variety of power machines, and next to them is my drill press.
On the opposite side of the floor from my shop is a space I originally designated as a classroom. It contains several work stations for students, but now serves as an intermediate space for things in process of being “put away.”
Then on the fourth floor is my Gragg chair workshop.
At one end of the 40 x 24 space is my Roubo workbench, steam box and many bending and assembly jigs.
I also have a couple of large assembly tables that can be situated as the need arises.
So there is a truncated account of all the work stations I need to clean.
I’ve never been a “New Year’s Resolution” sorta guy; either I do something or I do not. That’s not to say I don’t articulate goals, which is itself a fluid undertaking. The primary manifestation of this is a large “DO, MAKE, BUY” whiteboard always on display in the shop. This gets updated by erasing items once completed or new ones added when they pop into my fertile brain. Remember, manure is fertile, too. There is no hierarchical organization to the contents, things just go where there is space.
As of January 1, 2025 this is my set of reminders.
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God.You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David,and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
And they said, “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary?”
And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
I pray for you to have a blessed Christmas with loved ones and that you are celebrating the Incarnation, through whom we can be reconciled with The Creator.
As I approach the end of the year I am reflecting/projecting on the projects ahead of me. In addition to diving deeper into writing I’ve got a large number of things on my plate, including the mini-Gragg for Li’l T’s March birthday (coincidentally the month for the arrival of grandson #3, all of them March boys), outfitting my 18thC tool chest collection for on-site interpreting and re-enacting, doing some casting and patternwork, some possible private tutorials at the barn, several new workbench builds, blah, blah, blah.
High on my list will be resuming work on my ultimate tool cabinet, the one that will take me along until my ashes are scattered on the mountain. Since the presentation surface of the cabinet will be parquetry in the fashion of the Roentgens, and made from scraps left over from the French Oak Roubo Project, I still have a lot of veneer to saw to complete that. I’ve written about that some, but it has been so long I will probably start the account all over again.
To enhance my veneer sawing I am thinking seriously about another upgrade to my bandsaw using the roller guide set from Carter.
Have any of you tried this product? If so, please let me know. It is not cheap, around $200, but if it works as well as they say I will plunk down the money without hesitation. Given the fact that I originally bought the saw for $100 at a yard sale, I can afford to tart it up a bit.
Thanks to the generosity and tech savviness of a blog reader and dear friend, I’ve had my favorite version of G.F. Handel’s Messiah playing on my pocket mp3 for some time now. BTW, I have my favorite mp3 player model Mrs. Barn bought as a gift more two decades ago, and I especially like the feature of external battery power (one AA lasts a week or more) and external memory (a single 2G SD card, the maximum this ancient model can support, holds about 40 hours of audio). IIRC it was so long ago she bought it at a KMart! Since that model is no longer available, of course(!), I keep browsing ebay to get replacements when they get worn out (or too banged up). I rue the day this model is no longer available. Sometimes I score a NOS unit in the original unopened package but used ones are more likely.
This Messiah is most sublime in its medieval setting using period instruments. All the musicians and vocalists are superb, but alto Delphine Galou is simply hypnotically radiant.
As I ease back into work in the shop, mostly cleaning and organizing which I find to be the best way to get into it, I have this music running through my ear buds more minutes than not. It puts a sensory smile on my face to accompany the transcendent smile in my heart as I reflect on the incomprehensible grace of The Incarnation.
Over the past year I have been working on getting my inventory of the Historic Woodfinishing DVD replenished as I was quickly running out of inventory, which I finally did several months ago. But still the orders came in.
The first step was corresponding with the good folks at Popular Woodworking, who produced the original videos, to inquire about their warehouse inventory. They had none, but did release the rights to the contents to me. A very generous and classy gesture on their part.
Then I spent a lot of time contemplating the revisions of the cover art and text. I wanted to simultaneously accomplish three things:
Revise the descriptions of the video content
Promote The Barn as the new distributor of the DVD
Recognize F&W Media as the original producers of the video and retain the general visual presentation of the product
This process took me a surprising amount of time, mostly because I do not have a state-of-the-art graphics and layout package on my compewder. Once that was done Tim and I sought a fulfillment company to accomplish the task.
Here’s the strong bidnez advice: do not select a fulfillment vendor who is located in the path of both hurricanes plowing through Florida. The business we were working with just disappeared.
Still, Webmeister Tim worked his magic and got things moving again, and this week I received the first box of new DVDs. A second box is due after the holidays.
So at long last I was able to finally get all the back orders sent out. All should arrive at the customer’s mailbox on Dec 19, just in time for Christmas. In fact, all the orders for all products have been sent, unless something came in over night I am all caught up!
My recent post about apple butter making was an account of a “public” event at our friends Pat and Valerie’s place a month ago. A couple weeks ago we learned that there was going to be a second episode of apple butter making, this time pretty much restricted to a close circle of friends. We are, fortunately, part of that circle.
The appointed day for the apple butter rendering was a brutal cold, raw, windy and rainy day. In response Pat and Valerie set up the cauldron inside their boiling hearth, normally holding the sugar water boiling pan for making maple syrup. Being a creative guy, Pat removed the pan and rigged up his cauldron with a propane burner to cook the apple chips. Or maybe it was Valerie’s idea, I don’t rightly remember.
This made the entire event even more charming and cozy.
So there we were in this homey setting, stirring and adding apple chips to the bubbling cauldron until after several hours it was time to add the spices. Normally sugar would also be added but this batch of apples was so sweet naturally none was needed.
The spices were stirred in for another half hour.
At the proper time the canning began with a well-honed assembly line. Once again my task was to take away the full cases loaded with the still-hot apple butter.
Out came the fresh biscuits, made with loving excellence by Pat’s sister. The scrumptious biscuits were used to clean out the cauldron. Yummmmm.
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