wainscot chair

I finished this wainscot chair and delivered it to the Martin House Farm in Swansea, Massachusetts yesterday. I should say I “completed” the chair, I applied no finish to it. They are looking into having it stained to look like the original. Speaking of  which…

I don’t often get to compare my results to the originals that I study. I sometimes don’t want to see the contrast. It can leave me feeling like I missed some obvious feature, muffed another one, etc. There’s a couple of things I’d do differently next time, but not too drastic.

I added some height to mine, to bring the seat more level, or slightly canted to the rear. The original tilts forward now.

The original chair descended in the Cole family in Rehoboth and Swansea. Maybe dates from 165-1700. All oak. Some think it was made in Providence, some think it’s a Plymouth Colony joiner. Hard to say, there’s so little to go on. One very distinctive feature of this chair is the rear of the large panel. Instead of just beveling it to fit, the joiner made a tabled” or raised panel.  Here’s mine before assembly:

Unusual in New England wainscots, but very common in Wiltshire, England. I have seen many wainscot chairs there done with a tabled panel in front, then the raised area carved. Here’s one from Salisbury, not a great photo but you can just make out the tabled/molded raised area, then carved.

Salisbury wainscot chair

A post about the raised panel, and the circular decoration on the carved side.

https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2016/03/31/the-wainscot-chair-panel-more/

loose ends

The days are flying by, and Greenwood Fest is coming up next. I have been poking away at a few things. The workshop project is moving ahead. We’ve been siding it, once Pret & I figured out window placement. I don’t have any shots of it lately; I’ll get some next time I work on it.

Here’s the bowl horse Pret made for Dave Fisher’s class – we saw this the other day. But on last Saturday, Pret & I got to try it out. Plymouth CRAFT was once again presenting their stuff at Pinefest – http://www.pinebarrensalliance.org/pinefesthome.asp 

Here’s Pret using the horse –

and shortly after we started making slight adjustments. We’ll wait for Dave to show us what’s really what with this thing.

While I was carving spoons at the event, a woman came to tell me about a “Rev war” spoon she had in her collection. She later brought it over and I asked if I could photograph it. It looks like this:

I was interested because I often wonder “what does an American wooden spoon look like?” –  so I asked what the provenance was, how she knew it was a Revolutionary War-era spoon. Well, she said, her husband’s father was a pattern-maker, and he lived to be 100 years old. So her husband grew up around this sort of thing.

I said nothing. A rare moment…

It’s Daniel’s baseball season again – here is an epic-looking swing, but I think it was a foul ball.

I get a good bit of spoon carving in during the batting practice before the games…not only am I the only carver in the stands, I’m the only one I can see doing anything not involving a smartphone. Sad…

 

game spoons

And while working on the shop, every day the hawks get harassed & chased. It’s a hard life..

Greenwood Fest is coming right up – 2 new openings

one of the pavilions at Pinewoods, before the leaves came out

You wouldn’t know it’s May here in southeastern New England lately – very cool today. But the calendar says May 16th, which means in a few weeks, (3 1/2) several of us will be running around like the proverbial chickens with their heads cut off, getting ready for Greenwood Fest 2016. We’ve never done this before, and it sure has been a learning experience! One thing we’ve learned – get on the waiting list. The event sold out quickly, but that was a long time ago (January) – and for several folks life has intervened, & they have had to give up their seats. That was good news for those on the waiting list. Paula told me today that there’s 2 new slots open now.

here it is with some leaves

So if you’ve been wishing you could have made it, you still can. Shift your schedule and head to Plymouth June 10-12. This page in the link says 5 slots, but that’s out of date now. There’s 2.    http://www.plymouthcraft.org/?page_id=2272

While you’re at it, extend your stay and take in Jogge’s class after the main event. The distaff is just the vehicle for practicing the cuts and vocabulary of patterns and shapes. This is Jogge’s only US class this year – and we have 2 spaces left. Somehow I’m going to try to be in 2 places at once during this 2-day class -like that girl in Harry Potter. I’ll check with my kids, maybe they can help me. Otherwise, I’ll be there when I can, because I always learn a lot when I’m with Jogge – his work is like nobody else’s.  http://www.plymouthcraft.org/?tribe_events=distaff-the-passion-of-carving-with-jogge-sundqvist

Photo by Jögge Sundqvist

 

 

 

 

here’s where I got this week

working on the shop this week. In this view, you can pretend it’s finished inside. Except if it was, I’d fill it with stuff.

 

 

I did take one day to re-assemble the lathe, and turn some chair stiles. I hadn’t turned ANYTHING in 17 months! Thus, it went slowly. But this is generally where the lathe will reside; yes – my back to the river view.

Here’s about the last time we’ll see this mistake-brace, until the shop is re-sheathed, or taken down.

 

We sheathed the corners, so the building wouldn’t float away when we did the roof. Spaces left so we can figure out which windows go where. 

Pret has a huge supply of various windows, seemingly all rescued from inevitable trips to dumpsters. so lots of head-scratching to figure which ones where & how.

The shop space brings me closer to the birds – here’s one of the spring’s first catbirds in our yard.

 

and an un-flummoxed chickadee.

When he isn’t guiding me through all phases of building the shop, or helping every workshop at Plymouth CRAFT, or playing banjo in the band The Dinghys – Pret Woodburn is doing other stuff. This week, he built a bowl horse for Dave Fisher’s class at Greenwood Fest – just awaits tweaking directions from Dave now. You’ll see Pret at the Greenwood Fest – and you’ll be amazed. He’ll be working with Rick McKee – whom you know but might not know you know – https://blueoakblog.wordpress.com/

 

 

 

 

a couple of birds have shown up…hopefully more this week

Spring is slow to come here in southern New England this year. Cool & rainy so far. The birds I saw in North Carolina two weeks ago haven’t made it here yet. But some are trickling in now – of course this turkey is resident, but he’s got his springtime stuff to strut now…

 

 

The day we saw the turkey we also spotted some newly-arrived purple martins. Soaking wet.

Then yesterday at home, the sun came out briefly. As I was puttering around the yard, I heard, then found this northern Baltimore oriole. (I didn’t realize it was back to being the Baltimore oriole. Nothing to do with the city, https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Baltimore_Oriole/lifehistory ) Anyway, fresh back from Central America, it’s always a great sight, the first sightings of the spring…

trip to Roy Underhill’s

barred owl “Who cooks for you??”

Some photos from my trip down to the Woodwright’s School & Woodwright’s shop, aka Roy Underhill’s place. Always a highlight of the year. we had a 2-day spoon carving class during which I apparently took zero pictures. so just imagine that class…otherwise, just photos & captions.

desk box & 1/2 for the show

 

I have a feeling I’ve been here before

After rehearsal, we stopped by the school & crashed Tom Calisto’s saw-making class.

1 1/2 saws

a saw handle getting refinements

At the mill, we had 2 days of spoons, then set up for hewing & carving bowls.

Katy has seen it all before, so she turns her back on the work

 

bowls, tools, shrink pots & more at the workshop

 

out in the country, you can spread the action out…

 

Janet was a confirmed spoon freak, until she hewed a bowl

 

in town, at the school – with a spokeshave

 

a school group came by, it felt like old times for Roy & me

 

boring out for the optional bonus shrink pot project

 

I prefer this type of auger – here Roy gives it a spin

 

these chips have some substance

 

I can’t wait til my shop looks like this again, except the mini-shaving horse

 

the Wren of Carolina

 

pictures from Plymouth CRAFT’s weekend

we had a basket-making class at Plymouth CRAFT last weekend.  http://www.plymouthcraft.org/

I shot no photos, but Colin Hayward kindly sent me ones he shot during the weekend.

pounding the log for splints

 

pounding billets for splints, quicker – more wasteful

 

Martha peels one

 

it’s good to have help when you’re new at it

showing how to peel them apart

 

now it’s over one under one. mostly.

 

Some weave on the floor.

Martha & her rotten scissors

a typical Paula Marcoux Plymouth CRAFT lunch offering

 

Some basket-makers break out in song mid-basket…

 

each class has its ringer…

Marie always shoots a class photo after lunch on day 2

 

Meanwhile, there were two other gigs going on at the same time – Marie Pelletier shot these photos of Arraiolos Embroidery…

And the group photo from the 2nd session of Amelia Poole’s Shibori indigo dyeing

The joint was jumping – goin’ round & round. Next up for Plymouth CRAFT is our Greenwood Fest 2016 in June. whew. Better rest up.

 

 

Stupid me – I forgot Tim Manney!

he’s not holding a cricket, he’s carving a spoon!

Sorta. Tim will be an integral part of our Greenwood Fest next month, and way back when I was posting bios about the presenters, I asked Tim for a blurb. One thing he stinks at is self-promotion. So I asked for more info, and somehow it got past me & I once in a while kept thinking “I gotta write up Tim…” – So sorry, Tim, it took so long. Look forward to seeing you in Plymouth next month. 

Tim makes excellent chairs, tools, and spoons. He’s particularly passionate about spoon-carving.

I’ve written before about one approach he uses, which is to steam-bend blanks for spoon carving. Don’t dismiss this as some whacky notion – it’s another example of using spoon carving to learn some further-flung techniques applicable to many woodworking tasks. Tim knows wood technology very well, his chair-making is top-notch. https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2014/10/08/what-if-a-chairmaker-made-spoons/

At the Festival Tim will lead some students through the process he uses for steam-bending spoon blanks, and demonstrating some ladderback chairmaking techniques. Make sure you get to see Tim in action.

Here’s what he wrote:

“I started carving spoons on a stump behind my college dorm, quickly got obsessed, and started tracking down everyone that I could learn anything about spooncarving from.  After meeting Curtis Buchanan at Country Workshops, he invited me to live and work with him in Tennessee and learn to make Windsor chairs.  Working with Curtis in his small chair shop gave me a model of how to run a small production workshop and I’ve been building my life around that model ever since.

After leaving Tennessee and moving to Maine I started making chairs, but with the help of another Windsor chairmaker, Pete Galbert, I found a niche for myself making hand tools.  Pete and I collaborated on the design of a reamer and an adze and I have spent the last four years producing those tools to order.  The tools are a product of the combination of our experience in building chairs, prolific prototyping, and endless experimentation.  It’s a fun process.  The results are tools that are easy to control and, we hope, intuitive to use.

I currently work out of a small workshop in Maine where I produce the tools that Pete and I designed, make Windsor and ladderback chairs, and continue to obsessively carve spoons.  Spoon carving is the foundation of all of my woodworking and it continues to provide a playground for shape, form, function, and aesthetics that informs everything else.”

a gallery of some of Tim’s work:

His Instagram page is here: https://www.instagram.com/tim.manney/