Fourth Week of Furniture Making School - July 1 - 7 I typically arrive at school no later than 7 AM, so that I can work on personal as well as class projects, tune tools and think. Jan, the fellow from Australia, arrives next; shortly afterward, Decima, the lady from Canada, and Jenna, the student at University of New Mexico usually follow together next and soon the rest of the class begins to trickle in. Usually at 9 we gather up, sometimes for a discussion or presentation, sometimes just to check pulses and lay out the plan for the day. I am somewhat amazed at Aaron and Austin; they handle the schizophrenia of the class with relative aplomb. Eleven personalities with eleven different projects in various stages of planning or drafting; choosing, milling, stickering and gluing up lumber; pushing the saw horse project forward; continually working the bench rooms, the machine room, the drafting room and the wood bin and all the while providing incredibly practical instruction. Not only are they adroit at building fine furniture, they are fine teachers and rather adept with people and their weaknesses. Perhaps their job is akin to herding cats! If I can absorb, retain and put into practice a small part of what they are teaching, I’ll consider myself enormously fortunate. Next week, I will share links to Aaron’s and Austin’s work outside the school. I think you’ll agree it rather impressive. The Monday night presentation this week was highlighted by Garrett Hack. He is an author of several books, and designs and crafts exquisite Federal influenced furniture. And while his furniture is not my cup of tea, what he does is at the very highest level of design and craftsmanship. My plan is not to copy his work, but I left the evening having spoken to him and definitely influenced, though in ways I cannot yet articulate. As an aside, he is a Vermont farmer who gathers much of his timber from the woods on his farm and tills his land and works his farm with a 9 year old draft horse garretthack A demonstration Wednesday with a router and a jig was invaluable and a case in point. It took infinitely longer to describe what and why Austin was doing something a particular way, but his comment about “doing anything not to have to calculate” was nothing but profound and immensely practical. Described simply, he cut the complex joinery to attach a shelf to a case piece with practically none of the expected complex calculations one would expect. One of those “ah ha” moments when the light goes on. To an outsider, the sawhorse project might seem to have drug on forever. After all, it’s just a pair of sawhorses - unless you are in the middle of building them. It is not that the project is difficult; it is a teaching tool. Every phase of the project prepares us for issues we’ll face in putting together our case piece and the pace is much more sensible than it seems. From my perspective, the curriculum is incredibly well designed. We’re seeing lots of people dropping in and walking through the school to observe instruction and students at work, talking with students and for many, it is likely they are doing exactly what I did several times years ago - imagining myself doing what those students were doing. Guests are respectful, interested and sometimes in awe of what is underway. If they only had a clue as to how rich this experience really is. Perhaps someday some of them will be at my bench which itself has been signed by countless students because it was once their home and bench. The name of Mason McBrien, the facilities manager and one of our instructors for the first two weeks, is affixed to the inside of the tail vise on my bench. On Wednesday a fellow came through during lunch and we got into a conversation; he is a “fellow” for the next six months and a graduate of the two year program at the famed North Bennett Street School of Boston. I sense we are to become good friends. My understanding is that he gets free workbench space for a six month period (others might have more or less time) to creatively explore furniture and wood ideas; in return for the workbench, he helps out with tasks at the school ranging from maintenance, repair, instruction assistance and who knows what all. The work underway in the adjacent building where the fellows work is impressive. Case in point is the work of Yuri Kobayashi, much more art than craft or perhaps craft at the highest level. woodschool.org/images/stories/faculty2013/16.kobayashi.jpg And while I don’t always understand her heavily Japanese-accented English, she is a fascinating, happy, gifted young woman. The school does not observe holidays; the 4th of July was simply another day of school. The work of the week progressed with matching and preparing certain pieces for glue up into panels for the night stand top, cleaning up the glue lines, surfacing the pieces and properly setting them aside for later on my new sawhorses. That’s what they are for! Mine may have received too much attention to detail, but I got in a lot of good, no risk practice on them. One of the things that I love using is a properly tuned plane. I used a great variety for equally diverse purposes during the week. Every flat surface on the sawhorse was perfected with a smoothing plane, skimming off all machine marks, pencil lines and smudges. Again, these are just sawhorses and they will certainly not stay perfect, but poplar is cheap, easy to work and the practice was invaluable. When I turned to smoothing curly cherry toward week’s end, the practice tuning the plane and tackling a difficult and pricey piece of wood - with no margin for error - was very satisfying. At some point in the process I asked Aaron to come over for some personalized hand plane instruction. In about 15 minutes I felt like he shared a lifetime of wisdom. He is so grounded in fundamentals and logical process. I am always impressed. One of the things he told me was there was a much easier way to do what I was setting out to do, and there were great risks with my approach. The term is called “blowing out” when a highly figured or curly piece of wood is planed and the irregular grain blows or chips out when it refuses to be cut by the plane blade. I took it all in, we discussed it and I told him I already knew how to do it the easy way, but I wanted to learn how to do it the other way, regardless of the risk. I pulled it off! The surface was perfect and the sense of accomplishment was incredible. In spite of that high, Friday was a difficult day. I had so much planned to complete, but I didn’t feel well and couldn’t really get on track. I worked at a lot of little peripheral projects, dabbling around the edges of what I really wanted and needed to do. Though I made considerable progress, I never could get to a point where I felt the slightest bit comfortable tackling the detailed laying out the joinery on the legs of the night stand. Sometime after lunch I cleaned up my space, did my chores for the day and told Austin that I did not feel well, I’d done all my chores and the day had been one of trying to fit an oversized tenon into an undersized mortise! Think trying to put too big a board into too small a hole. I went home, wondering when I’d get back during the weekend to catch up. From a global perspective, the shop is a veritable beehive of activity as rough wood begins to take shape as mock ups of case work. Joinery is underway and lots of pieces are beginning to reveal their ultimate identity and personality. It is fascinating to be amidst it all and simultaneously look out on it. The interaction amongst the students is inspiring. By Sunday afternoon, I was back in the shop for a few hours, planing and scraping on the top for the night stand, working on the half-blind dovetails for Nathan’s and Jack’s stools, sharpening chisels and flattening the soles of a couple of old planes I’m trying to restore. On those old planes, I am about convinced I’m spinning my wheels if my time is worth anything! Perhaps some strategically spent resources on just the right planes might end up making a lot more sense. Perhaps the soles are fine!
Posted on: Tue, 09 Jul 2013 16:21:25 +0000
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