One of the perks of my job is there’s sometimes interesting people around with arcane skills. And the kids can come & have behind-the-scenes fun, wreaking havoc now & then.
for example, today. How can a kid have more fun?
Thanks to Brian for making it happen.
I’ve forgotten now just exactly how it all went; but making the rail stock, then cutting tenons was among the first order of business once we had the riven pieces in the shool/bench room. Here’s an example of just how dead flat this wood was; these tenons in the first photo have not yet been pared – they were this flat and even from splitting the cheeks. When the oak works like that, the joinery is a snap.
Here’s Jerome sawing shoulders, prior to splitting the cheeks. the students learned about working with stock having an irregular cross-section. Sometimes it does not lie flat on the wooden bench hook for sawing. This can make things confusing when you are trying to saw to the line – sometimes you’re not sawing parallel to the bench top, because of the tapered cross-section that stems from riving.
Then splitting with a chisel. Here’s Tony giving it a smack.
Bill caught looking at the camera – he’s supposed to know better.
A few rails with scratch stock moldings cut on their lower corners.
Then came making the stiles, and mortising. Well, layout before that. The old “two-consecutive thoughts” situation…
The guys really bore down & chopped & chopped. 16 mortises is a lot if you’re not used to working this way. Here’s John & Kelly having at it.
Then while packing to go to Lie-Nielsen, Roy took some time out to show us the passer drill that he & Peter Ross collaborated on. It’;s based on a British version, used to cut out the cavities for inlaid brass or other metals in the stocks of squares and similar tools.
Here’s a link to the whole story pretty much. I think he did it on the show one time, or in Popular Woodworking. I found this one on the web…
As many of you know, no visit to the Woodwright’s School is complete without a trip upstairs to Ed Lebetkin’s tool store… http://www.woodwrightschool.com/the-tool-store/
I long ago gave up the notion of trying to get away without spending any money; it’s easier to just accept your fate if you go there. I really don’t know of many physical places anymore that have this many tools worth plowing through. At Ed’s it’s not like you have to sift through boxes of junk to get at the good stuff. It’s all worthy, good stuff.
Here’s some general views
I came away with an interesting plow plane, and my usual half-dozen piercer bits. I was looking at a European model, when Ed showed me this very simple one. So back went the Euro plow, and this one’s now here in New England, ready for tinkering at some point – next month. I have no time for fiddling with it right now. Looks like birch to me.
First there is a joined chest
then there is no joined chest…
then there is…
Ahh, the miracle of television (& ear worms…)
Just back from teaching the joint stool class at Roy Underhill’s Woodwright’s School. This class went better than any joined stool class I have done. My thanks to all the students who came from near & far (Dave from New Zealand took the mileage prize -if there was one. Other than he had to eat all the local food they put in front of him. “What, no possum?”) Very nice people, and all worked very hard in tough weather…
When I travel I don’t usually check email, blogs, etc. It’s nice to be disconnected, but also I have lots to focus on when teaching. We had 9 students making joined stools at Roy’s last week. That’s lots of chances for stuff to go wrong. So night-times I was trying to figure out the next move. And recover from the heat & humidity. So now I’ll run down some of what we did. Here’s a look at the first day’s work. First off, we had a great batch of oak logs. Three sections that were 24″ long, and almost that wide. AND they split flat in the radial plane. That meant no twist, thus easy planing. But these guys didn’t know that yet.
It looks like this one got opened into thirds, then broken down into the eighths I had marked out. I only saw this now while sorting photos. And I took the picture! The humidity was so high that my camera lens fogged up at one point.
Here’s Jamie using a very large froe to bust out some stiles from the 1/8ths. We wanted 40 stiles and got ’em.
Then it was into town for lunch, then some bench work begun – starting to plane the rail stock. Very green oak, with an extremely high tannic acid content. We learned about cleaning tools quickly.
http://www.woodwrightschool.com/
http://www.lostartpress.com/Make_a_Joint_Stool_from_a_Tree_p/bk-majsfat.htm
Packing to go to Roy’s this week. Joint stool class, followed by TV shooting…so I have been very busy, but not much to write or show…
here is a neat little thing a friend brought in the other day for me to look at. I had nothing concrete to say about it, other than it’s really nice. Said to have been brought from England or Wales, guessing by the family story late 19th/early 20th century. Looks like it’s seen a lot of use, for some reason or other. Hung on the wall…
Here is my small joined chest. It was really hard to not carve this. It’s semi-assembled, but I knocked it apart today to pack in the car. We’ll build it on Roy’s show. If all goes well…
Meanwhile, at the house – “PLAY BALL!”
Just read Phil House’s book Perfect Once Removed. A reminiscence about 10-yr old Phil, finding out his cousin was Don Larsen, who later that year (1956) pitched a perfect game in the World Series.
Found this while picking up the living room tonight…
some catalpa trees that just won’t quit. Blown over in a storm last fall/winter, hauled away & piled up in my woodpile…hollow, rotten, – but look – new trees growing from them. Even blossoms. amazing. I was going to cut them up, but maybe I should leave things as is.
Once again, I have to thank everyone for the support in my spoon work. For a long time, my main bag has been the carved joined work, but I’ve been carving spoons even longer than that…and this gets me doing it even more. Without a workshop at home, the spoons are perfect to keep me occupied.
This month’s batch got posted today – I just finished photographing and listing them. If you’d like to see them, here’s the link. Also on the top menu too. Ordering details on the page, any questions, leave a comment & I’ll try to sort it out.
https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/spoons-for-sale-july-2013/
Slogging through some progress on the small joined chest. Here you can see its simple decoration – chamfers around the panels.
Looking into the chest, I have yet to fit the rear panel. The two outer floor boards (white pine) are test-fitted, and after assembly a final tapered board will fit between them. These all will have tongue & groove treatments on their edges.
yesterday I worked on joining the frame for the lid. Today I will put panels in this and the rear section of the chest.
But it was so humid yesterday that the shavings didn’t curl as I was planing the oak. They came limping out of the plane, all wet & weak. I felt just like them…
Here’s where it is now. Off I go.
PETER FOLLANSBEE: JOINER’S NOTES 