Recently for the umpteenth time (25th? 30th?) over the past four decades I taught my Introduction to Historic Woodfinishing workshop, this time at Joshua Farnsworth’s Wood and Shop School near Charlottesville. I have already related the transition from teaching at The Barn once my insurance underwriter yanked the plug on liability insurance for students, bringing the “school” component of The Barn on White Run to an end. Joshua graciously invited me to teach at his place, for which I am very much appreciative. I’m teaching a Parquetry workshop in a couple weeks, there are openings.
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The odd thing about teaching workshops at The Barn is that I still have personal liability insurance, the building and its contents are insured as before, but no insurance for students attending classes. The underwriters would never say why that insurance was being canceled, but my agent thought it was because the nearest full-service hospital is almost 90 minutes away. Oddly enough I can still host visitors for one-one-one learning experiences, and in fact I have one of those upcoming as soon as we can work out our scheduling hiccups.
One of the great benefits to hosting all the workshops in my own Barn classroom was that everything I needed was right there. When I teach elsewhere I have to pack up everything for the course. Everything. All the supplies, tools, workpieces, everything. I learned my lesson the first couple times I taught almost forty years ago and sent the students a detailed list of everything they would need. Every class there was a student or two who arrived unprepared, saying “I didn’t think you meant that,” or “I decided to substitute this or that.” In every instance the whole class was delayed repeatedly while I tried to come up with a reasonable substitute, but it never worked out to my satisfaction.
Now I just bring everything necessary for the full experience of my syllabus. Yes, it takes me a week or longer to compile the pile, yes it takes a day to load my truck to overflowing, yes it takes me about four hours to get set up wherever I am teaching. But it yields the learning experience I want to impart.
And the title of this post? It took me 26 trips to move everything from my barn into the truck, then 26 trips from my truck up the stairs into Joshua’s shop. Three days later I had only 23 trips from his shop to my truck as the students consumed the “missing” three tubs worth.
Recently my friend B invited me to accompany him to a day in Waynesboro at the Virginia Institue of Blacksmithing for their “open shop” session during which he was going to fabricate a replacement part for his wood stove. It was a most impressive facility and I am browsing the class schedule to attend some myself.
There were more than a half dozen former and current students ranging from young teen, working with his mom on a project, to geezers like me. They were all working on projects doing broaching, hand forging, power hammering, riveting, plasma cutting, welding and a lot more.
On a recent trip to Maryland I needed to address the almost-giant crape myrtle that seems to grow a half-dozen feet a year. It is at that awkward stage, too big to snip from the ground or even a small step ladder, not quite big enough to get from an extension ladder leaning against the house. Using my small extension ladder against the tree trunks is a bit hairy as the ladder rocks back and forth depending on which of my feet is bearing my weight.
Then came a blinding flash of the obvious; what if I create a crook at the top of the ladder so it nestles nicely against the 6-inch trunk, and stays put while I am climbing up or down, or working?
So I pulled out a piece of 1/8″ x 1″ aluminum bar stock from my stash and bent it with just a bench vise and arm power to fit the space above the top rung. 1/8″ x 1″ aluminum is pretty wimpy stuff until you bend it and screw it to a fixed frame, then it gets pretty stout.
Viola! It sits nicely against the trunk, not wobbling back and forth, allowing me to climb, descend and work with my Japanese pruning saw with much greater comfort.
Another win for the blinding flash of the obvious.
Recently the Venn Diagram of Life had enough overlap that I was able to address the problem of the blanched finish on the sill/shelf of the new bay window in the dining room. As you may recall, I trimmed out the window with antique cherry I had in my stash, and sealed the shelf with epoxy because there was a 100% chance that Mrs. Barn would be using it to hold plants. In order to unify the overall appearance of the window and shelf, I glazed the veneered pine shelf with an oil stain to match the cherry.
It looked grand until I varnished over the glazing with P&L 38 that then blushed overnight as it dried. I mean, the kind of blushing when we were spraying cellulose nitrate on a muggy July day in South Florida.
A reader wrote to tell me that an amine component of the epoxy hardener was the culprit. Despite several efforts to mitigate the whitened surface it remained in place, leading me to the inescapable conclusion that the oil varnish and the oil glaze underneath it had to come off.
The time for that to occur had finally arrived and the combination of a low-odor stripper with the open windows inflicted minimal affect inside the house. A very small test area worked well, a larger test area confirmed my path of execution.
My method was to brush on some low odor paint remover, cover that with aluminum foil, and let it work its magic for about three hours.
At the end of that time the foil was peeled back and the now-dissolve varnish and stain scraped/wiped off slicker’n cat snot.
My original plan was to introduce a colorant into a new application of the varnish to achieve the same cherry tone, but the fact is we like the contrast so much I am going to leave it looking just the way it is. I’ll rub out the epoxy finish and call it “done.”
My friend of 35 years, broadcaster Brian Wilson, just posted our latest conversation over at his Brian Wilson Writes Substack. Feel free to find and give it a listen unless you dislike pungent (but not vulgar) commentary on the current state of affairs, with topics ranging from Self Irrigating Planters in the garden to “Just War Theory” in the world at large and many points in between.
Things have been popping in the orbit of Shangri-la, what with summer gardening (soon to be complimented with winter gardening), visiting the grandsons (and their parents), preparing for the upcoming woodfinishing workshop and historic trades fair, and a multitude of other stuff disrupting my writing and blogging routines.
The greenhouse is currently the home for a series of Self Irrigating Planters Mrs. Barn asked me to create for her. We built five different versions and in keeping with her background as a plant scientist she was conducting a standardized experiment to determine which version is the one to go with in the future. We plan to use SIPs almost exclusively inside the greenhouse so her efforts are well worth it.
These images are from a month ago, so the plants are all bigger now and burgeoning with tomatoes or eggplants.
In addition to the greenhouse experiments she’s been harvesting the seeming bushels of green beans we love so much. Nothing quite like fresh green beans, and her dilled beans are the best.
The asparagus season is long in the rearview mirror but was savored intensely in its time. The asparagus plants are now full-blown bushes about ten feet tall. Mrs. Barn sez this is one of the keys to keeping an asparagus bed thriving. She must be right, ours is many years old.
As much as I enjoy browsing yootoob, I am often perplexed about some of the things that do (or do not) show up in my recommendations. To be sure, I get videos reflecting my interests (I get a LOT of woodworking, homesteading, theology, economics content as you would expect from my subscription list and browsing history) but sometimes something shows up that has me scratching my head, either from relevance or timeliness. This video is one of the latter.
Nine months ago while building the greenhouse I was frustrated by the uneven ground and its affect on my sawhorses, so I screwed two of them together at a right angle as I blogged here. This video would have been helpful to view at that time but never showed up in my feed. Until now.
I learned recently that the first Roubo volume, To Make As Perfectly As Possible — Roubo On Marquetry has sold out! Plans are underway to revise the book format into a semi-deluxe edition as was done with great success for the Roubo On Furniture volume. I am currently reviewing a couple text passages that I thought might need some wordsmithing (to quote LBJ, “I reserve the right to be smarter than I used to be”), but otherwise the redesign and printing are in Lost Art Press’ hands.
Last year when prepping for the Labor Day weekend 18th Century Trades Fair down at Fair Lawn Farm I included a stripped-down Nicholson workbench. As useful as the bench is for demonstrating and didactic exposition, it needed to be stripped down further.
What I’m subtracting is two feet from the length of the original 8-foot bench; one-half foot from one end, a-foot-and-a-half from the other. There are a couple reasons, not the least is being an 8-foot bench is a little bit much for this 70-year-old to rassle solo. Also, the larger bench took up too much space in my work area at the Fair. I also will refrain from bringing a large display table for my pile of joinery samples. Absolutely no one took a look at them so out they go, at least for this event.
The Nicholson bench has many benefits to providing a heritage work station, including simple and fast making (I can make one in less than a day), in addition to ease of both assembly and disassembly. In this case It was a piece of cake to disassemble one end of the bench and cut off 18-inches and move those legs two feet.
At the other end I just marked off six inches and sawed it off.
In the end I had the same bench, only two feet shorter.
But, I’m not just subtracting. This year I will be adding a leg vise to the workbench along with a Moxon vise.
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