Two new boxes for sale: SOLD

UPDATE:

Both boxes are sold. More are in the works, thanks as always for the interest and support,

PF

—————–

I finished up two boxes in the past couple of weeks. Both are white oak, the one on the left with a pine lid, the other with a white oak lid.

They’re for sale – $900 for the white pine lid example, $1,000 for the oak lid one. Plus shipping. Leave a comment if you’d like to order one. I’m making more in a week or two.

These came about because a friend gave me some fabulous white oak; the best oak I’ve had in ages & ages. Both use wooden hinges (like most of my boxes, and a few period boxes…) – carved on the fronts & the ends. Till inside each. (click the pictures to enlarge.)

Here’s a look at each. The pine lid one first. A pattern on the front that I really like. I’ve never seen the original carving; it’s in Victor Chinnery’s book Oak Furniture: the British Tradition. I’ve done it a few times; it works best with a pretty wide piece of stock. Both of these boxes are 8 1/2″ high, the oak boards that make up the carcasses are 7″-7 1/2″ wide. Overall dimensions for this one are:

H:  8 1/2″  W: 24 1/2″  D: 15 1/2″

Here’s the general form:

And the end view, showing the pintle & cleat wooden hinge. This carving is based on some I saw in a Wiltshire church w Chinnery almost 20 years ago.

This is the one with a figured sycamore till lid. Flashy.

Now the oak lid example. I had some nice quartersawn white oak to glue up to make this lid…more work than a pine lid. Heavier, but tougher too. I like both, I more often use pine lids, just to conserved the oak for carving.

This pattern is one I copied from a photo a student brought to the Lost Art Press workshop in the summer. He got the photo off an auction site…I think the original was part of the Devon group of carved oak that I have studied so frequently. I adapted the pattern to become a running band, then added S-scrolls below it.

Just a plain ol’ red oak till lid.

Is

I stood the S-scrolls upright on the ends. This is a common pattern from that group…

a few period details in oak

I didn’t take any photos in the shop this week. So I sat down & looked at folders that I haven’t seen in ages. There must be stuff there we can look at.

Here’s a scan I made from a book that fell part – the Gate on the Stairs at Haddon Hall, Derbyshire. this picture is from Henry Tanner’s book “English Interior Woodwork of the XVI, XVII & XVIII Centuries” Batsford, London, 1903.

Here’s the actual item, I shot this at Haddon Hall over 10 years ago.

This one was maybe the same trip, a row of spindles above panelling – a church at Great Durnford, Wiltshire. The arcading carving is what I was after today; but then I noticed there’s a row of punch marks just above the spindles, between the dentil carvings. Shows how many teeth the punch had…(but I didn’t measure the impression.)

That reminded me of this detail from a New England chest, showing the punch used on the background, also used as a decorative accent on the solid. That one is about 1/4″ x 1/2″ maybe a bit fatter, 5/16″?

From a related New England chest, here it’s on its head showing the bottom boards. They fit into a groove in the front rail (top of the photo) and the side rails (on our left) and are nailed up to a higher rear rail. Riven oak, tongue & groove between the boards. Note the sawmarks where they trimmed these boards after installation. Also visible are the layout lines locating the mortises on the faces of the stock.

chest bottom 

This next one is a rear rail of a chest, missing its drawer runner, thus the empty notch. That’s a side lower rail coming down into this stile. It features a barefaced tenon – no rear shoulder. Stock needs to be accurately planed to thickness. But fun to do sometimes…

rear stile 

One more – scribed layout lines remaining on a Lake District carved panel.

 

 

Summer’s over, I go to the beach

Once summer’s over, we head to the beach more frequently. It’s the best place there is. I pored through a bunch of photos I’ve taken there lately. Some came out better than I thought at the time.

Low tide is the best for walking. A bunch of gulls just hanging around.

Higher tides are best for bird-watching. Semi-palmated plovers (Charadrius semipalmatus) coming in for a landing.

Sanderling (Calidris alba) on the run.

And in flight.

This was last month, one of the osprey (Pandion haliaetus) making a last-minute appearance before migration.

More sanderlings, with a dunlin (Calidris alpina) mixed in

and no, I don’t know all these Latin/scientific names – I look them up on Cornell’s site – https://www.allaboutbirds.org/

PF chair class at Pete Galbert’s chairmaking shop

I’m slowly getting my 2020 schedule together. Each year, I swear I’ll travel less but so far it still looks like about once a month I’m somewhere. I wish I could be in two places at once.

But this one’s easy – teaching chairmaking in a chairmaker’s shop. Not just any chairmaker, but Pete Galbert. July 13-18, 2020. Only 6 slots, they go on sale at Pete’s site Friday Oct 18 at 8am eastern time.

https://www.petergalbert.com/schedule/2020/7/13/make-a-chair-from-a-tree-with-peter-follansbee

 

Plymouth CRAFT’s weekend of spoons & bowls

It’s taken me a while, but here’s my post about Plymouth CRAFT’s recent weekend of woodworking. We had JoJo Wood back for her Pocket Spoon class; and Darrick Sanderson came back to help folks dive into bowl turning on pole (really bungee) lathes. That’s JoJo’s students above, deep in concentration, also following the sunshine as the day went on.

If Plymouth CRAFT had a spiritual home, it would be Overbrook House. http://www.overbrookhouse.com/  It was here that we had our first workshops, and we’ve returned many times. In real life, it’s a wedding venue & more, but we turn it into something altogether different. The Ingersolls, our tolerant hosts there, are the greatest. The students know they’re close when they see this sign by our board member David Berman http://trustworth.com/index.shtml

It points them up to the house; which is the center of our world there. Paula’s lunches happen here…

All right, back to the woodsy bits. JoJo’s pocket spoon is a revolution in the making. Go read what JoJo says about it, I don’t need to repeat all that. She started the whole idea of pocket spoons, as I recall…  https://pocketspoon.co.uk/

Here, she’s showing (at my request) the 7 blanks she just split out of this one quarter section of black birch. She squeezes out a lot of spoons from a small section of wood.

Hewing the shape with her hatchet.

A new pocket spoon in the making.

Meanwhile, down at the dance hall, the bowl turners were hewing out blanks

Darrick Sanderson showing them how to rough-turn the outside of the bowl.

A shot showing the hook as Darrick comes up toward the bowl’s rim.

We (well, Pret really – I had nothing to do with it) recently adapted our 8 lathes so they could work without a pole. Two uprights are dropped into mortises in the bed, then heavy-duty bungee strapped between them. The lathes worked very well, and the students worked very hard. Two full days of kicking that treadle is no joke.

Our friend Marie Pelletier always shoots photos at our events, and they end up here: https://www.facebook.com/PlymouthCRAFT/