…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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’ve been a Norman Carver fan-boy ever since the Fine Homebuilding profile of him decades ago. This video reminds me to dig out that back issue and reread it for inspiration. At the time I also bought the Carver book on Japanese folk houses. My fascination with Japanese carpentry and design almost got me in trouble at work when I did an online search for “Minka” vernacular architecture. (“Minka” architecture is characterized by massive steep thatched roofs on Japanese farmhouses. Minka is also the stage name of a, uh, “model.” I still remember the heat on my face when a gallery of her “performances” popped up on my screen.)
A colleague of mine at SI knew a lot about Carver and his houses, and if I recall correctly had some relatives who owned a Carver house. I should probably plan a trip to Kalamazoo some time to see any that are open to the public.
This is a bit of an explanation as to why the blog has gone dark for three weeks or so.
Three and a half weeks ago the weather forecasters shocked the snot out of us by getting the “what, when, and how much” guesses right on the mark. I mean dead in the bulls-eye. We got the “eight to fourteen inches of snow” exactly when they predicted.
The next morning I fired up my monster snow blower and got to work. I was thinking it would take me two or three hours to get the driveway and parking spaces cleared. At the end of my first trip to the cattle gate at the entrance to the driveway down by the road, the blower snapped both of its auger/blower drive belts. Okay, I’ll just go into town and get a couple more.
Mrs. Barn and I did just enough shoveling to get my truck off the property and into town. Unfortunately, my experience was replicated many times in the county as this was the first time in four years we needed to get out our snow blowers, and a lot of them broke their belts on the same day. As a result there were none in town. Anywhere.
Okay, I’ll find some close by on the interwebz so it can be here the next day or two. Alas, my phenomenon was apparently replicated thousands of times across the mid-Atlantic and none were close by. Eventually I found a place in Milwaukee that had them “in stock.” It’s been three weeks and they have yet to arrive.
Meanwhile, we spent dozens of hours shoveling the driveway and parking area by had so that life could proceed with little further disruption.
This was not the worst snowfall we’ve seen since buying here 25 years ago. I remember planning to come for a long weekend in maybe 2009(?) or thereabouts to work on the barn, and when I checked with my pal Tony he told me not to bother. “The snow is as deep as the top of the cattle gate. You aren’t getting in.” Two weeks later I got in, no problem.
You see, our normal weather pattern is for a storm front to come through and dump some snow, followed by a couple very cold days, followed by a couple weeks of mild (above freezing in the daytime) weather.
Not so this year. Yes, we had a storm front with the snow, exactly how much is unknown because the howling winds moved it a bunch even after it fell. Yes, I saw and shoveled snow that was 8-inches deep. But, I also saw and shoveled snow that was more than a foot deep.
Patiently we waited for the mild weather to return and take care of the snow cover on the driveways.
It never came. It still hasn’t
Once we started getting the long range forecasts for last week and this week I knew we were in trouble. If it got as cold as predicted we would be using a week’s worth of firewood every day. Every day.
Fortunately I had about half of next winter’s firewood already cut, split and stacked. Unfortunately, it was up next to the barn. This meant I had to get a truck up to the barn to retrieve it. And for that to happen, the whole driveway to the barn and much of the parking area next to the barn had to be shoveled by hand so we could replenish our firewood inventory at the cabin.
So I did. Shovel the complete driveway. This meant that from beginning to end I/we shoveled almost a quarter mile of driveway. By hand. Much of it twice as there were several subsequent weather fronts coming through dropping more snow. Sunday’s yield was 5-6 inches, fortunately light fluffy snow so the shoveling was easy and (comparatively) fast. Still, I would guess that in the ten days between two weeks ago and yesterday I estimate 50 hours with my hands on the shovel. I make a point of going slow and steady. Almost every night I was almost asleep by the time supper was over.
This is by far the most and longest-lasting snow cover we have had in our years here. This coming weekend we will have a few days at or above freezing, with sunshine, and that should cure all the ills. It follows two really cold weeks, including this REALLY cold week with five consecutive nights near or below zero at night. This morning was -10 when I checked at 8AM. We haven’t used a week’s worth of wood per day, but still it’s been a lot. Around a dozen arm loads per 24 hours rather than the normal half dozen.
All that Light has been why the blog has been dark.
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.
© 2024 Don Williams
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