I’m losing time to Sweden

Twice in the past two days I have spent over an hour reading websites from Sweden…

The first one I got to through my blog, someone sent a link or something. I have forgotten now. But it was thoroughly enjoyable. A British fellow, Kevin Warrington, moved to the north of Sweden. Has woodwork, reindeer (a big deal in my house this week) and BIRDS. Her’es one of his photos, this reindeer is not on the Jones River!

http://naturallore.wordpress.com/

 

The 2nd one I got to through a post in the bodgers forum – and it’s a doozie…don’t click the link unless you have time to spare. But when you do, you’ll be amazed. Great stuff. I’m revisiting this site a lot, I know.

http://www.slojdeniskogen.se/slojden/

 

 

 

I don’t have a “blogroll” on my site…just never bothered to set it up. But while I am mentioning stuff I have read on the web, here’s some other sites I read regularly. Most of you have heard me go on about these before.

 

Robin Wood

I never skip nor skim Robin Wood’s blog – http://greenwood-carving.blogspot.com/ His was one of the inspirations for mine.

Kari’s carving in progress

Kari Hultman’s http://villagecarpenter.blogspot.com/ was also one I looked at regularly when I was trying to decide whether to dive into this blog stuff..Kari doesn’t write as much now as formerly, which means she has more time for her life & woodwork. But it’s still worth watching to catch when she does…plus you can read the old ones there.

Doug Stowe

Doug Stowe writes a blog about woodworking and education.  His woodwork & mine are miles apart. But I don’t miss his posts. Lately his work has been driven by what happened in Newtown, CT -here’s his site:  http://wisdomofhands.blogspot.com/

 

tico

I have no idea what a shooting board is. Nor what it’s for. But through the Lie-Nielsen crowd, I have met many folks who now count as friends. One is Tico Vogt, who makes great shooting boards. Disregarding my ignorance of these things,  I read his blog without fail. The stories about his father, recently one about a potter friend, these are great pieces of writing. Plow through Tico’s back pages, there’s great stuff there. http://www.ticovogt.com/?p=846

riven word gang

Of course, the riven word blog – essentially my friend Rick McKee at Plimoth Plantation, but it features the work of a bunch of folks. Rick’s approach is fun, funny, interesting & informative, without being drybones about it… http://blogs.plimoth.org/rivenword/

Louise

Likewise, I’ll say it again. Louise’s blog. If you eat food, just get it. http://louiselangsner.wordpress.com/

HN painting

My all-time friend Heather Neill keeps a blog about her painting, gardens and whatever runs across her cranium down in central PA. Her paintings are astonishing. http://heatherneill.com/studio-blog/

There must be more – I read Chris’ blogs, but like many, these cost me money when he posts a book, etc that becomes a must-have. http://blog.lostartpress.com/

 

 

peeling ash splints

baskets old & new

Remember those ash splints I pounded out this season?

I’ve been little by little working some into baskets lately. But to do so, I have had to re-learn much of what I used to know in spades. In the mid-to-late 1980s I made lots and lots of baskets, but since then I have only made a few each year. And those were fairly simple examples. But lately I have a renewed interest in them, so decided to get more involved in them. First thing, that meant re-acquiring some reference books – I had kept a couple of these, but then went out and ordered replacements for Shaker Baskets by Wetherbee & Taylor and A Key into the Language of Woodsplint Baskets.

reference materials

In the short video that my friend Rick McKee shot, I pounded the growth rings apart, then showed how to peel them in half, leaving a smooth, shiny surface for weaving. You  can peel these bit by bit with your fingers, holding the  splint between your knees like I do in the video, but it’s faster if you make a device that I think of as a tiny riving brake. It’s two pieces of white pine, with a 2″ wide groove plowed in  one, about 1/4″ deep. Then they are glued face-to-face, so the groove is now in the midst of the thickness.

Soak the splint in warm water for a few minutes. Then score the splint near the end to create a tab to begin pulling it apart. Slide it up through the slot in the pine boards.  Now pull quickly, spreading your arms full-width. Presto!

peeling the splint apart at the tab

pull

pull quickly

Here’s a detail shot, showing the surface of the inside of the splint.

satiny finish

Here’s one of my old basket, showing a detail of the attachment for the swing handle. I learned this one from the book Legend of the Bushwhacker Basket, by Wetherbee & Taylor. I’m going to make a couple of these this winter…the basket is ash, the handle & “ears” are white oak. Lashing is hickory bark.

swing handle detail

A small favorite over the years – it’s made it on the blog before here & there. Ash, with hickory rims and bark lashing. So there will be more of this when I get a bit further along.

ash basket, 1989

 

a joint stool from a reader…

This note from Craig D touches on just why we used a joint stool as the project in our introduction to 17th-century joinery book…you only need a short section of a log. Many find it daunting to go out & secure a large oak log. But Craig says he used an “urban” white oak that had already been cut to firewood lengths. Here’s his note & stool:

 

Hi Peter – I thoroughly enjoyed the Joint Stool book and used the information to build this stool from an urban white oak that had been cut into long firewood logs. Quite enjoyable and very informative.

Thanks to you and Jennie for writing the book and your blog.

Craig

Perfect. Thanks, Craig.

 

If you still need a copy, get it here: http://www.lostartpress.com/Make_a_Joint_Stool_from_a_Tree_p/bk-majsfat.htm

 

the Green Wood project

We could all use a hit of positive news – and I got some from Scott Landis in my inbox this morning. Scott you might remember as the author of the Taunton Press book on Workbenches (yes, there were workbenches before C. Schwarz!) – I met Scott when he, Alexander & I were all students in a class Curtis Buchanan taught on making a bow-back Windsor chair in 1987 at Country Workshops.

Nowadays Scott is the president of Green Wood, an organization that trains (mostly, but not only) young people in places like Honduras and Peru to make sustainable wooden products from rain forests. Curtis Buchanan, Brian Boggs and other craftsmen have made trips down there to begin training folks in these woodcrafts, starting back in 1993.

 

 

“The photo … shows Curtis at work in El Carbón in the mid-1990s. And the middle photo shows some of the new furniture that is being made today by young artisans whom Curtis and Brian have never met. In fact, GreenWood has not visited this community for at least five years, and we have not conducted a training workshop there in nearly twice that long. These are the fruits of seeds we planted two decades ago in what could best be described as hardpan clay. El Carbón is beset by every manner of hardship—from crushing poverty and natural disaster (Hurricane Mitch) to massive hydroelectric development and the pervasive violence that plagues the whole country. This vulnerable Pech village illustrates the simple but enduring truth that, even under the most challenging conditions, good ideas will eventually take root. If that’s not sustainable development, what is?”

 

Rather than me trying to write about it, just follow the link and see for yourselves. If you are signed up for the newsletters from Green Wood, then you’re onto it. If not, now’s the time to see what these folks are up to. There’s a button where you can donate $$ via paypal. It came at the right time for me. Some of Alexander’s extra tools might make it down there, who knows…

http://www.greenwoodglobal.org/dev/

 

 

 

 

This blog is usually about woodworking…

Jones w frost

This blog is usually about woodworking. Or birds. Sometimes my kids. But not today. The sun is beaming across our frost-covered marsh this AM, and the same sun will shine in Newtown, CT. But the people there are so hurting it makes no difference.

I don’t care about sports. I don’t care about movies & “entertainment”. I only listen to music I’ve heard before. Here at our house, we have no TV connection. I never even play the radio. We get no newspapers. We get to about one movie every three years. We’re falling behind that average & that’s just fine. Few dinners out. Our life revolves around our home & our kids.

Mostly I think about oak furniture. Wooden spoons. Birds of New England. Kids’ education. Handcrafts.

Last night, we got our two 7-yr olds kids to bed, after much talk about Christmas, they tallied how many days were left, – what did they hear last year on Xmas eve, footsteps? Jingle bells? Reindeer? etc.

As out of touch with modern society & culture as I am, I do read the news on the web. I read it last night, after my two were asleep. And it hurt like mad. And I’m sick & tired of reading this shit in the news. Will we ever wake up? My thoughts go out to all who are affected by this tragedy. That should be all of us…

17th-century carving workshop, Feb 9 & 10, 2013 at Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking

My first workshop of 2013 is practically right around the corner. You know how time speeds up around the holidays, so it’s almost February now!

I’ll teach a weekend class in carving 17th-century style patterns at the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking in Manchester, CT. (near Hartford), February 9 & 10.   There’s no project, just learning the tool use, layout and execution of a number of different designs, based on studies of period pieces. I’ll have photos of period works, and boxes and loose carvings like this:

 

carving samples

Here’s the blurb from the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking. This is one of my few New England classes this year.

http://www.schoolofwoodworking.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=446

It will be a great time. Students work through several stages of these designs, and usually the second afternoon is dedicated to carving a design that could be a box front or a chest panel, something more involved than some of the repeating patterns we begin with. Here’s more:

“strapwork” patterns on box fronts

opposing lunettes

 

chest front

Send Bob Van Dyke an email & sign up, it will be great fun…hope to see some of you there.

 

the endless look at hewing hatchets

Even before the Joint Stool book came out, and certainly since then, the number one question I get is where can I get a hatchet for joinery? What do I need, etc.

If you can stand some more about hewing hatchets, here goes. Last time I discussed a few ideas about how to use both single-bevel and double-bevel hatchets for joiner’s work. https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2012/12/04/new-to-me-hans-karlsson-hatchet/

 

While it’s true you can make either work, the single-bevel hatchet is ideally suited for hewing stock prior to planing it.  Joseph Moxon’s  Mechanick Exercises (1683) wrote:

“its use is to Hew the Irregularities off such pieces of Stuff which maybe sooner Hewn than Sawn. When the Edge is downwards, and the Handle towards you, the right side of its Edge must be Ground to a Bevil…”

Here’s my everyday hewing hatchet.

 

Fuchs hatchet

I was a bit vague last time about its configuration, and Robin Wood chimed in, helping to clarify some stuff. The back of the hatchet I often have called the “flat back” but it ain’t that at all. So I shot some views illustrating how it’s shaped. Think of it as a very large, very shallow, in-cannel gouge. Here is a straightedge held along cutting edge on the “back” i.e. the side w no bevel:

straightedge on hatchet’s “back”

The benefit of this shape is readily apparent when you try to use one that is NOT shaped like this. Then the tool digs into the wood, and here it scoops the chips out. I next put the straightedge perpendicular to the cutting edge, to show relief in that direction as well. Some of this is the shape of the tool, some is exacerbated by honing:

the other way

I have another hatchet, same maker, JFR Fuchs, Cannstat, Germany, c. early 1930s. This one has a cranked eye, to keep your knuckles safe when hewing. This leans the handle away from the plane of action, without having to make a bent handle. I use this one particularly when hewing wide panels. Here the back of the hatchet is sitting flat on the board, and the handle is lifted off:

the “other” Fuchs hatchet

The shape of the back of the head is about the same as the previous.

BUT – you ain’t gonna find one of these hatchets in the wild. I doubt it anyway. Nobody gets rid of them. Mostly. When I recently discussed these tools with Drew Langsner, he said “probably the best hatchets ever made” or words to that effect. A strong & un-provable statement, but it gets the point across that these are mighty fine tools.

One type of hatchet you will find readily in the UK and US is the so-called Kent pattern hatchets. (A hairy-handed gent, who ran amok in Kent…)  This one weighs about 3 1/2 lbs, about the same as the Fuchs…

Kent hatchet

Similar shape:

Kent w straightedge

 

Nice thing about these hatchets – you can find them. They aren’t expensive. They can work. and they are reversible for lefties. Knock the handle out, and put one in from the other end. Often the cutting edge is straight. I prefer a curve to the cutting edge. So do others, I didn’t do the alteration on this one.

Here’s an earlier post about some of the same tools:

https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/the-hatchet/

Spoons & more for sale: updated pages

I added some things to the static pages on the blog tonight.

white oak box, detail

This box I just finished photographing the other day, I had finished the box up in Maine when I taught at CFC in Rockport last summer. https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/carved-boxes-fall-2012/

a few spoons

I had great plans to make a slew of spoons for Christmas presents…but that didn’t happen. The road to hell, etc… As a result, there are only a few spoons available this month. Here’s the sampling:  https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/spoons-for-sale-the-only-ones-i-will-have-this-month/

A reminder about the Joint Stool book, and the DVDs, including the newest one from Lie-Nielsen about making a joined chest…

https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/book-dvds/

This one doesn’t need its own page, but I have another turned book stand for sale. Once again, it’s part of the “here’s the end of that walnut stash” department. This one really is the end, unless you count the four wide but short quartersawn pieces I found while cleaning the other day…

I end up crating these inside a cardboard box to protect them during shipping. So the total is $180 shipped in the U.S. Email me with questions if you are interested… SOLD

H: 18 1/2″   W: 14 1/2″  D: c. 15″

the kids’ seasonal return to the workshop

With the winter season here, it’s time for my kids to get some woodworking in. I had plenty of fun. They’re making boxes, and just learning some patience, in that the box will be a multi-session project. Tough lesson to learn for little kids, especially in December.

 

 

paneled lid on joined chest

carved chest, paneled lid, 2012

Now that the Joined Chest DVD is out & among us, https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/new-dvd-is-back-again-make-an-oak-joined-chest/ In the video we included a photo gallery that has a paneled lidded chest, but I don’t go into detail about how to make one…Now I am shifting back to work on the accompanying book. In the book, I plan on having variations that were beyond the scope of the video. One variation will be detailed discussion and illustration of paneled lids. I wrote a bit about them a while ago https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2012/10/15/joined-chest-till-parts-paneled-lid/ but I finished this chest a couple of weeks ago & got some final photos of it yesterday. 

detail paneled lid

This one I made with the front and rear “rails” full-width of the chest. Sometimes the left & right “stiles” run the full depth of the chest, so the long rails fit between them. There is no right or wrong on the formatting of a paneled lid like this. I recall one which has the rear rail full-width and the front rail fits between the stiles. That’s complicated when it comes time for layout. 

I used chamfers around the panels, moldings on the framing parts. Then a thumbnail all around the lid. 

another view

It wasn’t’ until I was viewing these photos that I noticed some carving details that I guess are mistakes….but I can live just fine with them. Notes on this photo:

carving details picked out

(Agghh – WordPress switched gears on me & now I have to go re-figure how to make photos able to click & enlarge…I like the pictures to go BIG. My apologies) – THANKS TO ERIC IT’S FIXED. YOU CAN NOW SEE THESE PHOTOS LARGER IF INCLINED. JUST CLICK ‘EM. THANKS, ERIC.