Practice Makes...A Little Bit Better

I'm still trying to figure out carving in the round. This is a practice piece for one of the items on my bucket list. It doesn't resemble the original very much, but I'm learning a lot in the process:

1) Keep the center pencil line until you're finished. It helps with symmetry.

2) Sharpen your knife all the way to the tip. I used the very end of my knife more than I ever thought I would.

3) It might help to sketch the project first. I was using a photo, but I think it would have helped to draw the project in profile and straight on.

4) Eyes are hard.

Another thing I've found with carving—maybe the best thing—is that even if you have only 5 minutes at hand, you can sit down and work on your piece.

Imagine the time you waste waiting for your spouse to get all gussied up to go out to dinner. That's time that can be spent working on your project.

You may discover that you enjoy it so much, you'll find yourself saying to him/her, "Why not wear that red sweater instead? You know, the one you packed away last year. In the upstairs closet. Under the boxes of books. That's right, behind the entertainment center. No, no, I don't mind waiting."

Hans Herr House

If you live in South Central PA near Lancaster County, you often hear terms like Mennonite, Amish, Moravian, Quakers, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Pennsylvania German. And until I visited the Hans Herr House yesterday, I had only a cursory understanding of the differences between them.

The Hans Herr house was built in 1719 by Hans' son, Christian, a Mennonite minister who came from the Palatinate area in Germany, along the Rhine River, to acquire religious freedom and land. It is the oldest home in Lancaster County and the oldest Mennonite meeting house in the United States.

The house was used both as living quarters for Christian's family and the community's church. Much of the original building was intact when it was sold to and renovated by the Mennonite Historical Society in 1970, and is now furnished with period-accurate originals and reproductions.

A thin paperback, A Modest Mennonite Home, which I purchased in the tiny gift shop, explained all the aforementioned terms that have until now befuddled me.

A bit of history:
During the Reformation (1517), religious reformers, including Martin Luther, broke away from the Catholic Church. In 1525, a small group of them in Switzerland advocated "believer's baptism"—baptism of adults—which was in opposition to the Church. They became known as Anabaptists, meaning, "rebaptizers."

Anabaptist movements appeared in both the Netherlands and northern Germany, independent of one another. In 1536, a former Catholic priest named Menno Simons, joined the pacifist, Dutch Anabaptists. He became a leader in the movement and united the Anabaptist brethren in Northern Europe. From this, a group emerged called the Mennonites, who believed that faith must be demonstrated through good works. This term became associated with the Anabaptists in Switzerland and southern Germany.

The Anabaptist movement also spread northern Italy, Austria, France, the Russian Ukraine, and Moravia.

In the 1690s, a group of Mennonite churches near the French-German border came to believe that their brethren in Switzerland and Germany had become too lax in their strict belief of "shunning" unrepentent members. Led by Jakob Amman, they split from the Mennonites, and became known as Amish.

By 1700, many Anabaptists had moved to the Palatinate area in Germany to escape religious persecution. Here, they were tolerated, but could not own land and could not build churches. Instead, they worshipped in small groups in their homes.

In 1677, when a number of Mennonites had settled in this area, William Penn traveled and preached throughout the Palantinate. Because of this, some Mennonites joined the Quaker movement. In 1683, a group of German Quakers and some converted Mennonites journeyed to Pennsylvania and founded Germantown, the first permanent German settlement in North America.

The Herr family was among the Swiss Mennonites who had moved to the Palatinate. In 1709, desiring to be land owners and having heard of religious tolerance in William Penn's colony, they joined a small group of 29 Mennonites and traveled to and settled in the Conestoga Territory, named for the Conestoga Indians, now known as Lancaster County.

Since many Mennonites orginated in Switzerland, they were sometimes called Swissers. However, most Mennonites and other Pennsylvania Germans came from southern Germany.

The term Dutch Mennonites was used for those originating in the Netherlands and, I'm surmising, may be the root of the term Pennsylvania Dutch. Although, I have also heard that "Dutch" in this case is a derivative of "Deutsch".

A bit about the house:
Pennsylvania Germans built homes that were divided into 2, 3, or 4 rooms on the main floor. All had a stuben (stove room) and küche (kitchen). The massive fireplace was centrally located in the structure and the kitchen was the room that was entered from the outside, and therefore doubled as a corridor. This style became known as a corridor-kitchen house. PA German houses had steep roofs, often had one to four attics (which were mainly used for storage), and arched cellars.

A bit of humor:
On the property was a blacksmith shop, where men were taking a class. As I was walking by, I overheard "Ouch! That's hot."*

*Isn't that the point? ; )

Perfect Light for Carving

Natural light from my south-facing windows clearly shows every facet of a carving and I raced out to my shop today to take advantage of it.

It reminds me of something Harrelson Stanley said in his presentation on Japanese saws at last year's WIA Conference.

He knew a woodworker in Japan who would park his white car in front of his shop window (which did not face the ideal direction for sunlight).

In late afternoon, the sun would reflect off the car and into his shop. He would stop whatever he was doing and move to the bench nearest the window to take advantage of the natural, angled light, and would work on the carving details of his project.

So, if your shop does not have south-facing windows (or north-facing, if you live below the equator), don't despair! Just paint your car white.

What Kind of Woodworking Do You Do?

Wasn't it Will Rogers who said "I never met an aspect of woodworking I didn't like."?

I'm all over the map with woodworking. There are just too many things I'd like to try.

I call myself a woodworker, but when people ask what I make, I always hesitate. Well, I've built a few handplanes, I've made a few pieces of furniture in different styles, some home accessories, a few pens, and then my voice trails off with a shrug. "Stuff", I say.

I've tried chip carving, string inlay, turning, rustic woodworking, spoon making, and now I'm trying carving-in-the-round.

I've mastered nothing, but I'm sure having a good time playing at woodworking.

I've found my passion in a general sense, but can't say that I've discovered that one aspect of woodworking that is really "it." I even totally stink at certain things, like my latest craze, carving-in-the-round. But I'm determined to "get" this. I would really like to be able to reproduce the antique handplane in the photo.

Understanding carving and making your knife or gouge do what your brain wants can be two different things. I know you rough out a shape, then work in levels, from high to low, gradually removing more of the waste area. I also know you always carve downhill, from a high spot to a low spot. But that's all I know. It's a challenge, but I would like to be able to claim to be a Woodcarver someday.

Some people can readily answer the question "What kind of woodworking do you do?" Some cannot. And for those of us who love every aspect of woodworking (except for turning--I'm not wild about that one), perhaps there's another term for what we do.

Jack-Of-All-Woodworking, Swiss Army Knife Woodworking, Everything-But-The-Kitchen-Sink Woodworking, Evolving Woodworking?

I know....FUN Woodworking!

WIA Handtools Conference II

This October, rub shoulders with these guys: Roy Underhill, Toshio Odate, Peter Follansbee, Mike Wenzloff, Chuck Bender, Don McConnell, Larry Williams, Ron Herman, Adam Cherubini, Mario Rodriguez, and Chris Schwarz.

The 2009 WIA Handtool Conference is in Valley Forge, PA, October 2-4, and if it's anything like last year's conference, it will be the best 3 days you've experienced in a long time.

Hard to decide which is the best part—the informative seminars, the hands-on sessions, the marketplace (where you can try out and buy handtools and talk directly with the makers), or just hanging out with fellow woodworkers.

I'm planning to go and all I ask is that you not give Don McConnell a heads up that I'm attending. I bugged the crud out of him last year with questions and if he new that the annoying lady was going to be there again, he might bag out! I'm only thinking of you guys. Really.

See you there!

2 Housings for Scratch Stock

There are benefits to making both small and large housings for your scratch stock, including making multiples of each.

The small body is merely a block of wood with a kerf, threaded insert and thumbscrew, and it takes about half an hour to make. The small size fits comfortably in your hand and can be used with just one hand. You are, however, limited in the size of the profile you can make since the scratch stock is only supported on one end.

Conversely, the large body can hold a longer piece (larger profile) of scratch stock, because the "arm" supports it along its entire length. Two drawbacks: you need to use two hands with this housing, and the fence (the part that rides along the edge of your workpiece) is not as wide as the one on the small body. The larger body also takes a little more time to make, but is still very easy.

With both housings, you can alter the shape of the fence to match a set curve. You can also bevel the fence on the large body so you can follow any curvy edge.

Making sure the threaded insert is seated squarely in the small body is the trickiest part, but there are methods to ensure it's done accurately (search online for "installing threaded inserts"). I just used a T-wrench and went very slowly.

Now back to making multiples of each. Once your scratch stock is positioned perfectly in a housing, you don't want to remove it until your project is finished. But in the meantime, you might need to add a different profile with a different piece of scratch stock to another project. Rather than remove the original scratch stock and risk not being able to reposition it, just make another housing.

It's the same idea as using multiple routers while working on different jobs at the same time. And how many routers do we hybrid woodworkers have? Mine amount to all the digits on one of my hands. (Hint: I still have all my fingers. Knock on wood.)

If anyone finds an error in the illustrations, please let me know so I can correct it and repost. You can experiment with the position of the screws on the larger body— another arrangement might work better for you.

Social Networking

I started this blog almost 2 years ago because I wanted to find "my people"—those who love to work with handtools. (Also because my partner, in a desperate attempt to free herself from listening to me drone on and on about woodworking, begged me to.)

In the process, I've made lots of friends, connected with people in other countries, been directed to places, links, and adventures I might never have discovered otherwise, and learned a ton of new things.

Then I joined Facebook and Twitter and made even more friends and contacts.

As advertisers and marketers are scrambling to find effective ways in which to make use of social networking, many of us have experienced immediate benefits.

Fellow blogger, Rob Giovanetti, The Tatooed Woodworker, recently decided to distance himself from blogging and the entire woodworking community because of some very nasty emails he had received. Several people wrote him to reconsider.

And then it hit the Twitterdom.

Twitter was ablaze today with people in support of Rob, including people who had never read his blog. Twitterers passed his link to their followers and they passed it to their followers, and so on and so on.

Consequently, Rob has been getting lots of positive comments on his site and I'm hoping he's feeling the love.

Social networking is a lot of things (including the reason I spend too much time on the computer). You hear about the latest tools, see others' projects, learn new techniques, get ideas, share information, and as long as you avoid lightning rod topics like politics, religion, hand tools vs. power tools, and the reason for the nib on a handsaw, you can find a fabulous community—your people.

Frontier Culture Museum

Even on a rainy, dreary day, the Frontier Culture Museum is a fabulous place to visit.

What a cool concept for a museum: on several acres, you walk along an undulating path from one century to the next, from one country to the next, each building authentic and filled with some original pieces, but mostly fantastic reproductions.

The farmhouses were brought here from each of the countries that represent the immigrants who settled in this section of western Virginia—England, Germany, and Ireland. Another village is currently under construction which represents the 4th group—the Igbo tribe from West Africa.

Within each of the houses are knowledgeable interpreters who tell you about the people who might have lived in the home, their customs, what they were experiencing in their native country that

prompted them to move to America, how they survived and made a living, and the ways in which they influenced their new neighbors.

On every day but Monday, the interpreters are dressed in period costumes. And throughout the year, the museum hosts special events.

We spent 4 hours on our self-guided tour, and because of the rain, we had the entire place to ourselves. That is, the two of us, and all the farm animals.