Sometimes you eat the bar...and sometimes the bar eats you...

Recently I finished up a bar for a local bakery that got me back to work with my 5 1/2 and my Spiers smoother. Good tools make a big difference and the juxtaposition between the drywall and construction work I was also doing for the bakery made this project quite a relief. The whole bar including legs was done in 3 days, so it was quite a rush job. Not my absolute best work, but not my worst either. It's been over a year since I've been able to do a big project like this and it was awfully nice to get back to doing some real woodworking.

The wood is a 2" slab of cherry with a couple of butterfly joints to hold the cracks together. Cherry is a nice wood to work with, sort of like walnut. In an ideal world I would have liked about two weeks to put everything together, but for the timeframe I think it came out pretty well.

Sharp

I'm back at it again....finally. After a BUSY term in my PhD and the Christmas rush I'm finally going to get back to doing some woodworking. Before you can do any woodworking though you have to first do your sharpening. I'm still developing my sharpening skills, but the back of my hand is missing some hair right now, so my blades are getting razor sharp at least.

Like a well oiled...

...walnut table! Well, it's not quite well oiled yet, there's only one coat on, but you really get a great sense of the walnut contrast to the sapwood and the curly maple butterflies. Here's half oil, half no oil:

...and the full monty:

..and a close up of one of the butterflies:

Shoji

So we had our show and sale this weekend at the Globe and it all went really well.

Aside from the tables and lamps I had already built I wound up finishing a shoji screen that I was really happy with.

It also features a nice little asanoha inset.

It's a complex piece that takes quite a bit of detail work, but a nice thing to work on.

Spring Show and Sale

This weekend, May 1-3, there's a great arts event going on at the Globe Studios in Kitchener. It's their spring show and sale and a number of great artists will have works available for purchase. Jewelry, bookbinding, pottery, painting, sculpture, and photography will all be on offer along with some nice woodworking ;)

This is another spalted slab that is now a little coffee table.

The top is just a beautiful piece of wood. It's hard to capture it in a picture, so why not pop down to the Globe on the weekend!

Cleaned Up Good Wood

So I cleaned up that nice spalted maple slab and it's looking pretty fantastic. It's going to be a bench, but don't worry, those aren't the legs, it's just sitting on my workbench!

These are the the legs!

Curly maple is one of those woods that sort of makes your eyes bug out when you look at it. These pieces of wood are very curly and I think they'll make a great base to the bench. The curl comes from the tree growing in a wavy pattern that when planed causes the light to bounce off and reflect in the striped pattern you see above.

I also just got a whole bunch of poplar today. Poplar in my opinion is quite an under appreciated wood. It can vary in colour from purple to white to green and brown, and it can have streaks and grain patterns that are both unique and beautiful. It's a soft hardwood that works easily and responds well to your saw and chisels. A good wood.

Good Wood and a Little Lamp

I picked up some nice wood this afternoon and I'm excited to get working on it. First up is a big spalted maple slab. I've got it sitting on my workbench right now and it looks kind of right...

My electric thickness planer is definitely not wide enough to handle it, so it looks like I get to use my hand planes!

I also got some nice walnut slabs that will make some nice coffee tables.

I also just finished up a nice little fir table lamp. I had found this giant 12x4 piece of fir in a factory where I had my old workshop and had been lugging it around for about a year now. It's a beautiful piece of quarter sawn lumber and combined with a shoji paper screen I think it makes a nice little lamp.

Walnut Trees

I finished up my first project in my new workshop today, a curvaceous walnut lamp. I really liked working with the walnut, a wood that responded well to my planes and my saws.

Shop..ing

This is my new workshop located at the Globe Studios in Kitchener. I just moved in last weekend and I finally got everything sorted and built and ready to go. I'm starting on some lamps tomorrow and I'm finishing off a little shoji cabinet too.

Odate

I was recently told that this book by Toshio Odate was a good one, so I picked it up and I have to agree. There’s something about the way that Odate writes that displays his passion and ethics without being boastful or over the top. This book is a narrative about the shokunin (a master craftsman and artisan) and their tools and workspace. One of the most interesting things I’ve found is how Odate emphasizes that a shokunin is not just a craftsman, but one with a social consciousness and a certain attitude about their work. Respect and honour seem to be very important parts of everyday life, be it in the sharpening of a blade, or the making of a door. I used to work at a window and door manufacturer in one of my engineering jobs, and looking back now there was definitely something absent in the way that they made doors. When you stamp things out by the hundred each day its very hard for someone to have some kind of moral basis upon which to base their daily efforts.

Okay, before I get too long winded...

I’m definitely a person that learns by doing, and usually that means I screw up the first couple of things I do...well maybe more than a couple. Here’s my take on a simple marking gauge...just a couple wedges really and an old exacto blade, but I’m excited to get to use it.


I’ve started the process of making a lot of my own tools, which will in turn allow me to make better tools, that will then allow me to make even better tools. It’s a neat process to be caught up in.

Sour Patch Kids

So I went to talk with Kate's cousin Konrad the other day about woodworking, and making stuff, and how this kind of business can make sense in the end, and a bunch of other things.

Konrad makes planes!

Now when Kate told me about her cousin at first I thought he made airplanes, but in fact he makes the kind of handplanes that make woodworkers like me drool.

You can see his work on his website:

www.sauerandsteiner.com/news/

Konrad is a master craftsman, there's no other way to describe what he does. I got the tour of his workshop and even got to use some of his planes, which, to be honest, was a little bit intimidating. They were simply amazing tools, it was just incredible to see how fine the shavings were that they could produce.

The only bad thing is that I have to go back to using my own planes now...once you've had steak...

MB

Roger Rabbit

Here's another plane, this time a rabbet! Building your own tools is kind of a neat thing. Up next is a jointing plane...I just need to get my hands on some Lignum Vitae!

Chip off the old block...

A well setup block plane is a wonderful thing. It's a tool that takes some practice and care, one that can you can always get better at using.

I recently picked up some cheap blades from Lee Valley and I'm in the process of making a couple of my own wooden block planes. My first one came out pretty well and I'm excited to get to use it.

Poplar, Joints, and Uwe Senka

I just finished up a new lamp and some tables. I'm starting to use Japanese paper and I have to say that I'm really enjoying it as a material. 

This side table is based on the Fibonacci spiral. Usually I don't like things like this, but I think this  table is really nice and simple. One for all the math geeks out there.

Finally, this coffee table is made of poplar and beech. I had never used beech before and I really liked it for this table. After gluing the top together I hand planed it, one of the more challenging skills I'm still working on. The corners have some nice joinery and the bracing underneath takes some inspiration from my guitar building work.

That Wood is Rotten!

I recently completed a table that featured spalted maple, a very unique and beautiful wood. Spalting is basically a process that certain woods undergo while they rot! Who would have thought that letting something decay could actually make it more beautiful?

Insects and fungi are the two main mechanisms of decay in wood, with fungal decay causing the most deterioration. These parasitic fungi feed off carbohydrates and leave behind waste products that can stain and colour the wood. A certain kind of "white rot" is responsible for the spalted maple you see above, leaving behind black pigments as waste. The lines indicate zones of decay where the wood has been attacked by the rot.

If left in the right conditions for the right amount of time you can get some incredible results, but if left too long the wood will completely decay and turn to dust. To stop the rot is actually fairly easy, you just need to dry the wood below 20% moisture content and since most finished lumber is dried to 8-10% you don't need to worry about the rot once it has been properly dried.

So think about using some rotten wood next time, the results can be stunning! 

MB

Innovation (ie doing something NEW)

It's probably a cliche to say, but it seems that innovation isn't that easy afterall. 

A chair is a fairly simple object. It's not a space shuttle, it's not a quantum computer, it's not a carbon nano-tube; it's just a chair. It's been rebuilt, modified, extended, reworked, cut, carved, bent, and molded...and after all of that it's still just a chair. 

Stephen Hogbin is an artist/woodworker with incredible skill and, more importantly, an incredible ability to innovate. In the 70's he decided that he wanted to try turning really big pieces of wood (like 76" in diameter big) because he believed that taking slices of these massive turnings would reveal cross sections of tremendous beauty.  At the time there was no way to turn a 7' piece of wood on a lathe, but with his father in law's help Hogbin pieced together a variable speed lathe to realize his vision using the differential and rear axle from a truck. 

Hogbin's work is valuable because it's both beautiful and inspirational. It may seem simple, but what Hogbin did in creating his truck axle lathe is what innovation requires: a vision and the tools required to realize that vision. If the tools don't exist you just have to go out there and create them yourself...

Here's a link to his website where you check out some of his work:

http://www.makersgallery.com/hogbin/

I know it's just a chair, but to me it's more than that. To me it's an example of what it takes to create something that is truly NEW...and you know what, to me innovation is a beautiful thing.

MB