Make a Joint Stool at Roy Underhill’s July 15-19

Well, now it’s April, which means it’s practically May. Might as well be June, which makes me wonder what you’re doing this summer.

What you could do is come to Pittsboro, North Carolina to make a joint stool at Roy Underhill’s Woodwright’s School. http://www.woodwrightschool.com/elizabethian-joint-stool-w-pet/

Out at the mill, we’ll split out an oak, and get to use a lot of wedges, hatchets and other big tools.

splitting oak w wedges

hewing at the mill

Maybe the owls will come out to watch.

Roy’s barred owl

Next, we’ll take the pieces into the school’s bench-room in town and get to planing.

If we make enough shavings, the Bag Man appears.

lots of planing to do

the Bag Man

Mortise & tenon joinery, drawboring, chamfering (turning for those full-tilt crazies) – it’ll be like the book come to life. I don’t remember what’s in the book, so I’ll be making it up as I go along.

chamfered frame

pole lathe practice

There’ll be tools galore, I’ll bring mine, Roy’s school has tons, then there’s Ed’s store upstairs!

If you wanted to know about green woodworking, then a week with me & Roy ought to do it. It reminds me of Twain’s quote about Kipling: “Between us, we cover all knowledge; he knows all that can be known, and I know the rest.”

 

Seriously, it’s a great week there. if you are interested in learning the craft of oak joinery with old-style tools, here’s your chance. My box-carving class at Drew Langsner’s is full, with a waiting list – so this is the only other week-long class I have this summer. Unless you’re in Germany in June! http://www.mehr-als-werkzeug.de/course/KU1631301/Carved-Box.htm

So get going. Get over to Roy’s website: http://www.woodwrightschool.com/elizabethian-joint-stool-w-pet/

get goin’

 

Carving at Lie-Nielsen May 11 & 12

Lie-Nielsen Weekend Workshops

worm eating warbler

 

Isn’t it a coincidence that my next workshop at Lie-Nielsen just happens to fall in early May, when the warbler migration will be hitting down-east? http://www.lie-nielsen.com/documents/Workshop13_Follansbee.pdf

If you’d like to come to Maine to rive, hew, plane & carve some oak for 2 days, I promise we’ll have great fun. I was just a student there myself last weekend at Matt Bickford’s class on using hollows & rounds. It was great.

 

First-rate facility, nice group of people and as you know from reading this blog, I’m a fan of Matt’s work…so it was a winner all around. He’ll be back there teaching later in the summer, I think. https://www.facebook.com/lie.nielsen.toolworks/photos_stream

My class last year made the largest pile of shavings I have seen in some time, and even got a bunch of carving done too. http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150825497703016.396964.100708343015&type=3 

 

So – May 11 & 12. Will I see some of you there? Here’s some stuff I have carved this past week…

 

 

Wille Sundqvist film project

 

I drove home from Maine last night, (507 miles round trip) and was thinking about many things. One was my upcoming trip this summer to Drew & Louise Langsner’s, and what that connection means to me. Then this morning I got the Country Workshops newsletter with the official announcement about this project; …a film about Jogge’s father Wille. So before I go to work, I wanted to let you know about it.  Drew Langsner and Jogge Sunqvist told me the gist of it last fall. You can read it from this link. willeproject

When I know more about the fundraising, etc I will post again. This is a film I really am looking forward to.

 

right from wrong

Snipe w its bill

Got a new snipe photo today, so I will refer you to an earlier post about hinges…this snipe photo is better. Somewhere I have a great one- but no time to look for it now. We saw about 6 of these guys rooting through the grasses in Marshfield this morning. http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/setting-gimmals-you-might-know-them-as-snipe-bills/

I’m all grown up now & I know right from wrong. And the spindle in the bottom of this photo is wrong. These are for a bedstead I have to make in ash. About 12″ long, there’s a row of them at both the head and foot of the bed. 

right & wrong

I blame Curtis Buchanan. I watched him turning his chair parts last week, and all those curves got in my head. http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/how-to-make-a-comb-back-windsor-chair-w-curtis-buchanan/

The bottom one is more curvy than the piece I am supposed to be copying. With such short lengths, I can turn plenty of extras and pick & choose which I want.

defining some shapes w skew chisel

using large gouge to bring it down

Here’s an original:

I need five large & five small, so I’ll turn a bunch and get there in the end. 

Meanwhile I carved some parts for a wainscot chair I’m building. My great big carved one finally sold & I miss having it around. I had some great wide quartersawn white oak to do the panel, 14″ x 16″ or so. I have carved these designs so much now that I make my own patterns by combining bits of this & that. Thus this panel is not a copy of any particular piece, but is firmly rooted in that Ipswich, Massachusetts/Devon England style.  (so yes, David Cawthray, air-dried timber is fine & dandy. Quartersawn is best, but if you must use flatsawn, don’t let that stop you http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/about-flatsawn-stock-again/

 

 

recent work

wood ducks

I haven’t been just goofing around. I have started several things in the shop. One of which is resuming my dovetailing practice. It’s not a joint I have used much over the years; but I have done several in the past two years. The 2nd toolbox is well underway; I started the sliding trays the other day. This time in pedestrian tulip poplar. Oak clapboards for the bottoms.

Last time I put scrap carvings in as the bearers for these trays, I liked that result so much I did it again. http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/it-was-the-rust-that-got-me/

carved bearer for sliding tray

Cutting dovetails is much different than my usual mortise-and-tenon work. Much less physical. Here’s the deep drawer for the chest of drawers I’m working on. I pin the drawer front to the bench with a holdfast in the bench’s leg.

scribing DTs w knife

Last year I bought a knife & awl from Dave Jeske at Blue Spruce Toolworks   http://www.bluesprucetoolworks.com/ . When I ordered the tools, Dave asked me what wood I wanted for handles. I said it didn’t matter…but was pleasantly surprised when I opened them and saw oak!

Blue Spruce knife

But dovetailing ain’t like mortising. The chopping is about the only time I sit in the shop. Feels funny. Back to mortising next week…

chopping while seated

Here’s the mocked-up drawer corner. Good enough for me. I think of the translation of Felebien, http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2013/02/04/felebien/

speaking of joints “blind in one eye.” It’s a big drawer, about 10 1/2″ deep, by 36″ wide. I’ve made smaller chests! Pine front, oak sides. The front gets moldings & turnings. First, it’s off to Matt’s class this weekend…to learn moldings from someone who actually knows what they’re doing. http://www.lie-nielsen.com/documents/Workshop13_Bickford(April).pdf

 

Here’s the help, laying out carving designs on the next batch of spoons. They were like a hurricane; blew in, a bit of a concentrated frenzy, then gone to the next thing. Spoons soon.

they see patterns very well

layout begun, even before the spoon is done

 

half a pair of joint stools

half a pair

I have two joint stools to finish to go along with a table and joined form I am making. For the seven-foot long table top I opted for quartersawn white oak. So I made the tops of the stools and form from the same material. Yesterday I planed the board for the stool tops. I kept it at double-length to make handling it easier while I planed it flat and dressed the thickness. I decided to keep it that way while I ran the molding too.

 I trimmed it to width, then dressed both faces and trued up the edges. I then crosscut both ends and marked out the middle where I eventually would crosscut it in two.

 I marked out the 7/8” wide thumbnail molding spacing with a marking gauge along both long edges. Then I followed the steps I outlined in the joint stool book for making the molding; a rabbet plane (in this case, a filester) to begin to define the depth, then bevelling off the shape with smooth plane/jointer. I fiddled a little with a hollow plane like what Matt Bickford does; I had the rabbet, then I chamfered that, then ran the hollow a bit. It was just a bit shy of the right size, and was not perfectly fettled. So it served to further rough out the shape, but I still did the final definition with the smooth plane.

filester filetster plane

hollow plane

 

shaping molding

I ran this molding along both edges, then did the two outside ends. Here, I marked the width with a knife and square, rather than a gauge. Then cut it apart and finished each seat with one more molding. Usually I do the end-grain moldings first, but in this case it was worth reversing that order.

quartersawn stock

The wood is amazing quality; clear, wide and perfectly quartersawn. Air dried. The next best thing to riven. I then finished shaping the seats, and bored one & fit it on the stool. Just like in the book…. http://www.lostartpress.com/Make_a_Joint_Stool_from_a_Tree_p/bk-majsfat.htm

boring & pegging

 Now, fresh on the success of “Riven Cedrela” I have the phrase “half-a-pair of joint stools” ringing in my head like “four-and-twenty blackbirds…” so stay tuned. It could be my first nursery rhyme. 

 

I have until December…but might need that much time

I have  hard time lately getting things going on the blog. I’m still blaming it on the time-change…but there’s probably more to it.

Anyway, I started working full-time in the shop again. Just didn’t shoot much. I have a small version of Schwarz’ tool chest underway, for when I travel to workshops. I haven’t decided whether to paint it like the first one. http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/?s=paint

One idea is to nail moldings on it, to mimic a joined chest. I’ll shoot some of it next week.

Then I did some tool handles today, an old Karl Larsson hatchet, and a new knife blade. Mark Anderson at Winterthur told me of a great website where you can buy more knives than you can shake a stick at. http://www.ragweedforge.com/index.html#catalog I held back and only bought three blades…but I know I’ll be back there someday.

Meanwhile, I have until December to finish the chest of drawers I started as part of my Winterthur demonstration. I’ll need all that time for sure. I had framed the basic upper case, which will house two shallow side-by-side drawers above one very deep, full-width drawer. The top drawers are about 4 1/2” deep, with a rail above and below them.

nailing the bottom on the drawer

drawer detail

When I framed the side elevation, I forgot that the upper rail at the side corresponds to the top drawers in front, and the moldings that runs above &  below them. So my first side upper rails were only 3 1/2” high, but once I started to look at it, I realized I had to go back & re-do these rails. 6 1/2” is more like it. I hate having to extend mortises, it’s a nuisance. But it’s worth taking the time this early on to make sure this piece is right in the end. (note that in the picture, you can see the pin holes bored for the initial, wrong-sized upper rails. I will put one more pin hole down near the bottom of these rails.) There will be applied moldings run in line with the top and bottom edges of these rails.)

corrected upper side rails

interior view, showing the beveled panels

Mine is not a copy of a particular example, but is based on the one at the MFA and one at Yale. The MFA one is made almost entirely of riven cedrela (Spanish cedar). Mine has an oak frame, but (sawn) cedrela panels. The moldings will be cedrela as well, both those applied to the framing, and the drawer fronts’ decorations. Working with a timber like this is a bit dicey compared to how you can treat riven oak. I beveled the panels without the hatchet, started with a plane, finished with a spokeshave. Easy does it, these can break if not handled carefully. 

(here’s some of the previous mentions of the chests of drawers that I am studying for this work… http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/?s=cedrela )

planing bevels on cedrela

finishing a bevel w spokeshave

Which brings me to the next part. Unfortunately, my classes at the Port Townsend School of Woodworking in April had be be cancelled due to under-enrollment. I appreciated Tim Lawson & Jim Tolpin taking a chance on me, and I’m sorry it didn’t work for us. Maybe my New-England-y 17th-century outlook doesn’t fly out in the newer West. BUT one door closes, another one opens. It means I get time to be a student in Matt Bickford’s class at Lie-Nielsen in April. I’m bringing some cedrela with me, and Matt says we can work on that on the 2nd day. That will give my moldings a jump start so I can keep the chest of drawers moving ahead.

 

UPDATE: I forgot to include this shot from taking the kids to school today. In the Home of Applied Paranoia, it’s good to have someone watch your back. Here, it’s a case of “you watch my back, I’ll watch  yours.” – Red-shouldered hawks.