New Roubo Version

Although I have yet to see and touch it in person, my long time friend Jersey Jon sent me this picture of his new copy of the new Roubo on Furniture.

It’s not R2D2, it is R2V2.

As always. it is available over at Lost Art Press.

Latest Gabfest With An Old Pal

I interrupted grandpa mode for a bit and engaged my friend of almost 35 years, Brian Wilson, for a freewheeling conversation on social/political the status quo.  If pungent conversation about forbidden topics intrigues you, you can find it over at the Substack “Brian Wilson Writes.”  I’ve been told that it is unseemly to discuss politics, religion, and economics.  Hit the trifecta here.

Enjoy.  Or not.  You have been warned.

Website Overhaul

It will soon be 12 years and almost 2,000 blog posts since donsbarn.com made its debut.  In chatting with Webmeister Tim yesterday he informed me that the original platform had not been updated since the beginning and was beginning to show its age.  In fact, the basic platform Jason built for me is no longer supported, but is still working!  Well done, Jason.  Nevertheless the site is occasionally having the burps, hiccups and sneezes that geezers often get, requiring periodic troubleshooting by Tim to get things back to running more-or-less smoothly.

All that to say that Tim will be constructing a new web site platform and that transition to “live” will occur some time next month.  With luck the site will remain visually unchanged.  The new site will be, well, new, and with greatly expanded capabilities I hope to begin exploiting.  At the same time, I will be reworking some of the foundational documents, maybe giving more of the donsbarn.com back story.

If it all goes well the redesign and migration should go smoothly once underway.

Stay tuned.

As Good As It Gets…

…at least in the corporeal realm.

Grandson #3 joined us a few days ago (a week early) and it is every bit as wondrous as you imagine.  Both of his grandpas are Woodworking Grandpas with a lifetime of woodfinishing experience, so at least part of his path is already known.  He will grow in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord” and seventy years from now will reflect on the multitude of glorious hours spent with his grandpas in their shops of wonder.

50(!) Years (not woodworking)

I recently noticed that it’s been FIFTY YEARS since the musical duo of Richard and Linda Thompson released their heartbreakingly luminous song “Dimming of the Day.”

How did fifty years flash by so fast?

Notwithstanding the dynamics of their marriage and splitting (the breakup was so traumatic that Linda was hysterically mute for a couple years afterward) their seven-album output from 1974-1982 was as good as it gets.

Just more captivating music to listen to while imposing organization of the first (basement) floor of the barn.  There are times when having 7,000 square feet of space is not a blessing.

Changing Horses In Mid-Stream, or, Tool Cabinet Parquetry Diamonds By The Dozens

My original full-sized design sketch.

My proof-of-concept panel with the parquetry pattern at full scale. Rendering this was an extremely instructive and useful exercise that changed my approach to every step of the process.

In prepping for the tool cabinet parquetry mock-up — that is as exact as I can make it rather than my previous proof-of-concept — plus the actual parquetry on the cabinet, I was going to need dozens if not hundreds of the diamond units.  A task that large is similar to eating an ox.  You do it one bite at a time.

Here’s that first bite.

My starting point was cutting hundreds of 30-60-90 triangles both with the grain and across the grain.  My veneers were all white oak cut from leftover scraps from the French Oak Roubo Project, and man was it dense.  I tried cutting the triangles using jigs and handsaws (that is how I teach introductory parquetry workshops like the upcoming one at Wood and Shop near Charlottesville VA), but soon came to the realization that this ox needed a little prodding.

Given my recent success using my Delta benchtop bandsaw with a fine blade, combined with a new strategy for working the parquetry, I decided to do all the sawing on that little machine.

Soon enough I had two plastic shoebox-sized tubs each filled with hundreds of the slightly oversized triangles I needed for what would come next.

Changed horse #1.

Even though I wasn’t sawing the triangles by hand I was determined to edge plane each one using precise shooting jigs fabricated especially for that purpose.  A few dozen of those, especially the ones that are primarily cross-grain, and that determination flagged.  I needed a different system if I was to get the ox eaten.  That “new system” will be the focus of my next post on the project.

Changed horse #2.

In addition, once I first established the size of the parquetry pattern I created a brass template to make each diamond the perfect size and fit.  I was so intent I used trigonometry calculations and a vernier caliper to get the dimensions and angles really precise.  (If you ever wondered when you would use what you learned in 11th grade Trig class, now you know.)  The frustration of this fussiness soon depleted my enthusiasm for this approach.  The alternative I devised will be demonstrated in a post a way down the road.

Changed horse #3.

Stay tuned for “what would come next.”

PS  Posting might continue to be sorta sketchy for another little while as grandson #3’s arrival is imminent, and grandsons #1 and #2 have birthdays right on the heels of #3’s introduction to his share of the national debt.

Magnificent (maybe not woodworking…)

Dr. Elderbarndottir has been a pipe organist since before she could drive, and some of the treasured times of my life were driving her back and forth to the church where she was employed to play.  We had precious time together alone talking in the car coming and going, and I got to sit and listen to her practice pieces for worship.   They had a small pipe organ and she loved playing it, and would frequently exclaim, “It comes alive!” when she turned on the blower.  For a time I thought she might actually go into the business of building and repairing pipe organs.  IIRC the pipe organ company offered her such a job even while she was in high school, troubleshooting is just in her veins.

Instead she went off to college, graduating with a Physics BS (summa cum laud; both daughters were HS valedictorians who went on to be summa cum laud in college, proving that Mrs. Barn fit the description when I was in the market for the smartest BabyMomma), although she did continue pipe organ studies her whole time there.  Then off to more college for her PhD.  She never lost her love for the organ even though she does not get to play much anymore.  I too have maintained a longstanding love for the instrument, and this performance and organ are both sublime.

Now that I think about it, pipe organs are about the most complex wood-and-metal things out there.  One of the most famous organ builders in the world is just over the mountain from here.

And this is just weirdly wonderful.  I think I first learned of this music form from reading Richard Feynman’s autobiographies.

Tool Cabinet Parquetry – Circling Back, Or Maybe “Triangle-ing” Back

After a very long while of not working on it I have resurrected the (very showy) decorative parquetry aspect of my mondo tool cabinet.  I cannot recall exactly where I left it blog-wise and thus presume you don’t recall either.  So, let me go back to the start and endeavor to keep the thread going better than before.  Although with blizzards, greenhouses, and soon-to-be-three grandsons you never know.  My goal is to post every week or so, walking you through my process step-by-step.

The short and sweet re-introduction is that I’m going to use a fancy parquetry composition, one inspired by the works of the Roentgens.  Certainly not as fancy as theirs, and definitely not as well executed (they were perhaps the finest furniture-surface-decorators of their time, or maybe of all time [their pictorial marquetry is without parallel in my opinion]).

All of my base veneers were sawn from leftover chunks of white oak from the French Oak Roubo Project, so though the material is not literally contemporary with the Roentgens it does not miss it by much.

Depending on the piece and my mood (or weariness) I used both hand and machine sawing for the task.

The parquetry pattern is a cluster of four 30-60-90 triangles assembled into both swirl and sunburst patterns into diamond shapes, to be used alternately in the final composition.  An early sketch and proof of concept confirmed my vision for the cabinet.

Once the veneers were cut into their ~1/8″ sheets I began sawing out the hundreds and hundreds of smaller triangles.  These did not have to be particularly precise, and it was more efficient to deal with them ex poste and in the assembly process.  So my little Delta bandsaw was the perfect tool to saw a stack of the veneers into the requisite triangles.  Hundreds and hundreds of triangles.

At first I thought I would plane the edges of the triangles and created several jigs for that purpose.  It turned out to be way more trouble than that was worth, trying to hold on to little pieces of really dense white oak, planing the skew edges.  Did I mention that there were hundreds and hundreds of them to do?

I wound up taking a whole different approach, which will be the topic of the next post in this series.

Latest Gabfest (not woodworking)

My latest conversation with long-time friend Brian Wilson dropped yesterday on his Now For Something Completely Different podcast.  If pungent (but not vulgar) discussion of current events interests you, find it and give it a listen.  If not, don’t.

You have been forewarned.

Scale

Lately I’ve been contemplating the concept of “scale” in great part because I am now incorporating the making of smallish things for smallish people (for 2, soon to be 3 grandsons) into my shop time, building my huge tool cabinet, and touring the largest timber frame structure in the world.

When we visited Li’l T and his family for Thanksgiving I had in-hand a small step stool I’d made specifically for him.  I made nearly identical versions for his mom and her sister when they were little girls, and these little step stools not only served them well at the time but are still in regular service 35 years later.  I expect the same results for Li’l T’s step stool and the one I make for his brother MightyM next year and his new cousin in a couple years after that.  This one was made to fit exactly inside a 12″ x 12″ x 12″ cardboard shipping box in case I had to ship it to him.

On our way home from Thanksgiving we made a couple of memorable stops in Kentucky, again emphasizing scale.  First stop was Mammoth Cave, of which we got to see about 1%, but what we saw was still monumental.  Then on to The Ark Encounter outside of Cincinnati, where an interpretation of Noah’s Ark was presented at full scale.  “Big” does not begin to describe the structure, and if you have any interest in monumental timber framing it is worth the visit.

It is over 500 feet from end to end, and although it has a modern steel frame skeleton the interior structures are built almost entirely of timbers including whole tree trunks.  I believe they employed Amish barn framers for the work.  I spent hours just looking at the structure itself.

Back home I have resumed work on the parquetry for the tool cabinet, probably the largest piece of furniture I will ever make.  Ironically the presentation surface will be a parquetry surface assembled by combining hundreds of small triangles approximately 1″ x 2″ into scores of parallelograms roughly 2″ x 4″, further enhanced in the final composition with hundreds of mother-of-pearl dots and ivory diamonds.  There will be much blogging about this as the project resumes more fully.

This is a pattern for a half-scale version, I decided this was too small.

In addition I am delving once again into the world of Gragg, where I am still working out the details of a 3/4-scale elastic chair for Li’l T’s upcoming birthday (hope I get it made in time).  Again, at least two additional iterations will be manifest in the coming couple of years.

One of the issues with “scale” is the question, “Can something be scaled-up (enlarged) or scaled-down (miniaturized) and still be successful?”

I think I am about to find out.

PS – Warmer and sunny with an inch of rain tomorrow, so the snow should be all gone.