I try to “re-blog” as little as possible, except of course when I am the topic of the original posting, but I cannot resist recommending this French violin-making video to you.
I was sent to it from Steve Branam’s Close Grain blog which is one of my “must read” chronicles of woodworking. Steve’s essays are uniformly insightful, and my only complaint is that Steve doesn’t write them often enough. I read his blog faithfully and it has improved my own work considerably.
My schedule for the second day of Woodworking In America 2015 had a few anchors — giving the breakfast banquet address, a 2PM booksigning at the LAP booth, and Chris Schwarz’ 4 o’clock talk updating his ongoing workbench research — and a lot of open time. Sure, I could have spent every minute in the multiple superb classroom sessions that would have no doubt benefited me greatly, but frankly I was weary of the conference center seating,which no doubt won an award from the Marquis de Sade Design Institute. Even with my own cushion added to the chair “padding” I needed because of the diminution of the muscle mass of my kiester from inactivity in the previous six weeks, I decided to take a break from the sessions and spend much of the day in the Marketplace. It’s a mind blowing extravaganza of tool purveyors, teachers, and woodworking suppliers that is not to be missed.
After breakfast Mrs. Barn and I headed off to the exhibit hall, where she stayed with me for a few minutes before heading off on her own in Kansas City. I chatted with many friends and acquaintances old and new.
As has become customary, the dueling tool pushers of Lee Valley and Lie-Nielsen are about the first thing you encounter upon entering the hall, that is once you clear the bibliofetish temptations of the PopWood booth. Over the years I have become friendly acquaintances with the crews of both outfits, and I am responsible in some part for their burgeoning presence. Not because of anything I actually did other than send them money when they send me tools.
Among the folks to greet me was the effervescent Anne Bohnett of Ann of of All Trades blog fame, who radiates enthusiasm and encouragement. I feel much more optimistic about the future of the skilled crafts with newcomers like Anne in the mix. We talked mostly about rural life and shellac.
I spent a fair bit of time visiting with James “Stumpy Nubs” Hamilton and his dad, Mustache Mike, as they were right next door to the Lost Art Press booth. Somehow I failed to record the event photographically, but it seems as though I spent a half hour chatting with them on a variety of topics.
Chris Vesper on the left and Jason Weaver, my webmeister, on the right. In the rear at the center of the frame is Chris from Sterling Tool, and at the right edge is Mark from Plate 11.
Directly opposite Stump was the inestimable Chris Vesper, who seemed to be attracting steady traffic of visitors ogling his squares, bevel gauges, and marking knives.
Rounding the corner brought me to the four-plex of booths with Jeff Hamilton selling his marking gauges next to Chris Vesper (I bought one of Jeff’s small gauges in tulipwood but have yet to employ it in battle), Scott Meek with his ergonomic high performance planes (and he is beginning to experiment with surface texture on the plane bodies), Mark Hicks of Plate 11 workbenches (he had both a workbench and a chevalet to show), sharing a space with Texas Heritage woodworkers and leatherworkers, and Chris Kuehn of Sterling Tools. I do not know how much commerce was being conducted in this cabal, but I do know a whole lot of fun was going on.
Next to this batch of galoots was the new friend I feel like I have known for a lifetime, Vic Tesolin. Vic and I met first only a couple of years ago but it seems like our temperaments and world-views harmonize so completely that one of us should be afraid, very afraid. Vic has a new book due out any day and I will be ordering several copies as gifts.
Of course my friends from Knew Concepts had a presence there, not only featuring their ultimate coping and jeweler’s saws, but premiering a new lighting fixture for detail work. One of these is one my Christmas List now. (And if my reference to Christmas offends you, get over yourself.)
In the other rear corner of the hall was the Hand Tool Olympics being run by the Minnesota crew of the SAPFM. I wound up sitting and visiting with those guys for a long time.
Some of the best fellowship and learning at WIA occurs in the Marketplace. Don’t miss it.
These images are all courtesy of Jameel Abraham.
A month from now we will be convening the second French Oak Roubo Project wherein Jameel Abraham, Jeff Miller, Will Myers, Raney Nelson, and I will be helping a dozen participants to construct workbenches true to the vision of Roubo’s Plate 11.
The white oak timbers we will be using were harvested sixteen years ago following the infamous Christmas Day 1999 Ice Storm across Europe that felled hundreds of thousands of mature trees in French and German forests. One amazing fact is that these trees were alive while Roubo was writing his treatise!
Another amazing thing about the timbers are that they are, well, amazing. If I recall these have been slabbed at six inches thick, with widths up to almost three feet and lengths of more than twenty feet. Yes, that is a real adult human next to the pile.
Yeah, we ought to be able to manage to get some decent benches from that. Perhaps this winter I might even complete mine from theinitial workbench gathering two years ago.
Several months ago I received the distinct honor of being invited by Popular Woodworking Editor and Major Domo Megan Fitzpatrick to be the speaker for the WIA 2015 breakfast banquet on Saturday morning. Even though I had lost my bout with the wheelbarrow in the intervening period and could not fulfill my commitment to teach, mostly because I knew I simply would not be able to maneuver behind the workbench enough to demonstrate, giving a banquet speech allowed me to stay in one place and talk. That, I can do. Especially since the requested topic was The Studley Tool Cabinet and Workbench Project. Actually I can talk about that one a very long time!
As the event was commencing I was greeted by the other Studley fellow in the audience, Vic Tesolin, who was sporting the pair of Studleyesque suspenders I gave him at the exhibit in Cedar Rapids. He looked so dandy in that pair that I thought he needed another pair and at his session the next day gave him the ones I was wearing.
The audience was large and well mannered, by that I mean they laughed in all the right places.
Thanks again, Megan, for the invitation to speak. It was a delight.
Last week I spent some time puttering in the balcony library in The Barn, arranging books and adding door latches and what not in order to keep critters out of the collection.
But Monday was my first real full day or serious work in the studio, an appropriate celebration on the eve of the two month anniversary of the broken hip. Since I was working in a relatively defined small-ish space with workbenches and other supports around me, my cane spent most of the day hanging on the hook with my hat.
I spent the morning working on client’s projects, and around lunch time my friend Bob came over and together we worked on a small table top we started fabricating three or four months ago for a salvaged sewing machine base for his wife (hmm, I hope it is not a surprise). It was a great time of fellowship and shavings, as I am teaching him about my way of woodworking, as he will continue to teach me about his way of gunsmithing. We worked until quitting time, at which time I drove down the hill and helped Mrs. Barn move another load of firewood from the lower barn to the firewood shed alongside the cabin.
As we watched a documentary DVD after supper I noticed the general ache throughout my body from such a (comparatively) vigorous day. Even the muscles in my hands were sore from hand-planing boards and rasping some joinery!
I woke the next morning with the delightful stiffness felt after a deep night’s sleep following a day of physical labors.
It was wonderful!
Two months ago as I was in the hospital awaiting the surgery to bolt together my broken hip I called and left a message with Megan Fitzpatrick (when you call a shaker and mover like Megan it is likely you will get her voice mail rather than her actual voice) that I would not be able to fulfill my commitment to teach two lengthy session at WIA 2015. My topic was going to be “Roubo Parquetry.” I was a bit chagrined inasmuch as Megan had made a special dispensation to give me two very long sessions at WIA (3 hours) rather than 3 two-hour sessions and here I was bailing on her.
When we spoke in real time the following day she asked, “Well, who can do it in your place?” I immediately put forward the name of Freddy Roman, the hard charging and brilliant (and apparently indefatigable) young furniture maker from the Boston area renowned for his Federal style inlay work. She called him and much to our relief he said yes, although knowing Freddy a little bit I was sure he was already overbooked in every facet of his life.
Freddy taught the session the afternoon of the first day, and the morning of the third day and I made sure to be there in the seats to both encourage him and learn from him. I’m not sure he actually needed any encouragement, but certainly I learned from his teaching. It was quite fun to see the topic I had presented many times before being presented by someone else. While the information was essentially the same, the order and emphasis was different, and I plan to purloin some of the points and demonstrations he made and incorporate them into my own teaching on the subject.
I apologize for the pictures, but as I said the lighting was dreadful, and I did not want to drag my bigger camera around.
Thanks Freddy! Your account in the Bank of Don is burgeoning.
I have become increasingly fascinated with serpentine curvilinear forms of contemporary woodworking, so naturally I found myself in Jeff Miller’s session on Friday morning. Jeff has delved so deeply into the world of design, integrating the curve into his creations to such a degree that he considers it part of his fundamental lexicon. Even a cursory browsing of his portfolio reveals his exquisite use of curves.
This was a particular pleasure for me as it seems like in previous WIA and similar events every time Jeff was presenting it was opposite either a session I was teaching or some other commitment I needed to fulfill.
In this session Jeff led us through the concepts and practices of creating curved forms that would be nearly impossible to achieve, particularly from an engineering perspective, through any other means than glued up laminations. I especially appreciated his demonstration of creating perfectly matched gluing cauls for these shapes. I have done this myself but his method struck me as being a lot simple and more precise. Basically he creates the exact profile he wants for the curve, then builds a stacked caul by tracing each layer off of the original with a router and a precision trimming/tracing bit. I will definitely by giving than one a try the next time I need to complete some fabrication requiring matched cauls.
My only gripe about this session, and in fact all of the demonstration sessions, was that the lighting in the classroom was abysmal. That is often the case when attending a hands-on demonstration in a conference center which is set up for corporate bull sessions and PowerPoint-only presentations. So, much of what Jeff was showing was not readily visible to me. Fortunately he had a lot of examples to pass around the room. But, my photos of the session stunk.
It was an important reminder for me to make sure I always travel with my own lighting system when demonstrating. That would have been immensely helpful for every one of the sessions I attended all weekend.
You might recall my recent post about Ray Larsen’s piano maker’s workbench, probably with one degree of separation from Studley himself. Ray recently contacted me to let me know he was considering selling the bench to someone who would restore and use it. If you are interested in connecting with Ray about this bench, drop me a note via the “contact” button on this page and I will forward it to him.
I am an entirely disinterested party in this affair, seeking only to match a grand work bench with an enthusiastic new owner.
I am not a morning person, and thanks to the WIA home page hotel reservations we found ourselves staying more than 20 miles away from the conference hotel. Check: lesson learned. Make your own reservations.
This all comes together in that the first session on Day 1 of WIA was one I very much wanted to attend, and in fact I made it only a few minutes late. Mostly that might be due to the facts that 1) it was Friday morning rush hour, that 2) the road signage in greater KC is among the worst I have ever encountered and Google and Mapquest merely compound the problem with incomprehensible directions, and 3) my ambulatory speed was set to 0.1. I think it took more than fifteen minutes for me to get from the parking garage into the exhibit hall, then up a flight of stairs and across the long balcony to the conference room.
Nevertheless I get to the presentation of James “Stumpy Nubs” Hamilton probably five minutes after he started. The title for the session was something like “Make Your Own Woodworking Machines” and based on the riches of information from his web site I figured it would be a lot of fun. And it was! Two hours of jigs and home made devices was a total gas. Yes, I have been steadily moving towards hand-tool primacy in my own work, but I do have a pretty complete machine capability in The Barn, and to quote hand tool star Vic Tesolin, “Of course I love machines, I’m a guy!”
The Stumpy Nubs session was indeed a trove of motivational treasures. In particular I am prompted to finally build the horizontal drum sander I can use when preparing the yards and yards of veneer strips I produce for executing Roubo-style parquetry. I’ve already thought of a couple of ways I can tweak their design to better suit my own needs. This will please ol’Stump to no end as he probably views his role as evangelist and innovation encourager, taking delight in seeing his ideas taken to new heights. I’ve already got the basic ingredients in-hand: hyper-curiosity, a stash of electric motors and machine parts, and lots of Baltic Birch plywood.
Mrs. Barn and I also had a wonderful time later chatting with Jim and his dad Mike in their booth over in the Exhibit Hall.
The lead-up to WIA, in fact my very attending it, was predicated on the Monday morning appointment with the orthopedist. Much to my (expected) delighted, he noted that my recuperation was progressing excellently, and that at the six-weeks-and-four-day mark he released me to resume normal activities. I was now free to progress through the stages of bipedal locomotion, casting the walker aside and moving through the crutches and then a cane and then nothing.
We hit the road the next day, winding up in Kansas City on Thursday. Mrs. Barn was not sanguine with the idea of me driving, so she spent every mile of the trip behind the wheel.
Along the way we even took the time to do something we almost never do, we actually stopped and engaged in tourism. Since it was only 25 miles off the interstate we took the detour and spent a half-day at Pleasant Hill Shaker Village just outside Lexington KY. I was walking for four hours with the assistance to my pair of crutches. It was exhausting.
Worse than that, the almost nonexistent on-site programming and tepid presentation at Pleasant Hill was disappointing. We learned from the one fellow we saw working there that the plan to eradicate craft practices from the site will be complete in the hear future. To me that removes a return visit from the list of things to do.
Still there were some noteworthy encounters, beginning with the remarkable circular staircase at the building now serving as a restaurant and hotel.
My steadiness on crutches was iffy, so I did not get the perfect picture from the bottom.
While walking around, probably my favorite thing of the whole place was this amazing stone wall.
Among the pieces of furniture these two caught my eye. The first one has a one-piece side board, eight feet tall by about twenty inches deep,
with this one being my all time favorite. I might have to build something like this some day.
Even though I was mobile, it was not sprite-like and my motion was super slow motion. This rendered much of the place inaccessible to me, but still it was terrific to spend the day upright and moving..
That night as I drifted off to sleep I had the delightful experience of aching from a day of “walking.”
© 2024 Don Williams
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