A few people have written me asking for advice on starting a woodworking club. While I don't have a magic formula, I do belong to three clubs—the Susquehanna Area Woodworkers of PA (SAW-PA, website coming soon), the Susquehanna Trails Woodworking Guild (STWG), and the Women's Woodworking Club of Harrisburg (WWC).
Please offer your own advice/ideas regarding what works well for your club so that others can benefit.
Some questions from Michael H.: How is it structured? How often do you meet? What do your meetings look like? What kind of things have you found to be successful?
SAW-PA: I'm a founding member of this one. We meet once a month for about two hours, start the meeting with business and upcoming events, followed by show-and-tell, then our main topic. We have a president, vice president, treasurer, and planning team, which meet on occasion to brainstorm ideas for future meetings/events. Many of our topics are presented by members, but we have paid speakers a couple times a year. There are formal by-laws, which are commonly ignored. We take Saturday field trips a few times a year to workshops, ww businesses, and lumberyards, usually followed by a meal at a restaurant. Dues are $25/year. Usually about 20 in attendance at meetings.
What works for this group: friendly, laid-back atmosphere, small meeting room (cozy). Field trips give us an opportunity to chat/bond outside of meetings.
STWG: I don't know as much about this club, but it meets once a month for about 2 hours and is structured in a similar fashion to SAW-PA, regarding order of meetings and officers. They often have outside, paid speakers and a larger member base which can afford them. They get involved in some community events and shows where they have an informational booth to promote the club. The meeting room is very large, so it seems more formal, but it provides lots of room for demos and show-and-tell tables. This group has a 50/50 raffle each meeting and a video and book library which (I think) is free for members. Dues are $25/year. Usually about 30 in attendance for meetings.
What works for this group: more money and more connections/resources for outside speakers, website, more perks for members.
WWC: This one is totally different from the "boys" clubs. Eight or so women meet once a month for about an hour and a half to discuss projects. About half our meetings include something hands-on, and sometimes we meet at a member's shop to build something. There is no structure; everyone has ownership. We usually sit around a table or circle, and there is an inordinate amount of jocularity and raucous laughter. On a rare occasion we have an outside speaker, preferring instead to rely on each other as teachers. There are no dues and no perks. But there is lots of bonding.
What work for this group: casual "structure", lots of opportunity for camaraderie, ease of operation.
Jögge Sundqvist packs a huge amount of information into one hour and shows you with complete clarity how to make a dough bowl and spoon using only hand tools.
First, he splits a log in two and explains why he chooses one half over the other for the dough bowl. Then, he uses his axe to create a flat surface on the convex side that will become the bottom of the bowl. He rough-shapes the inside with an adze and explains the proper tool grip and stance for maximum leverage.
Next, he uses gouges to finish the inside, then works the outside with an axe. Jögge talks during the entire film, explaining safe procedures, bowl design, and tool use.
When the outside of the bowl is shaped, he refines it at the workbench with spokeshave, drawknife, and plane.
I was surprised to see that he did not use a shaving horse. Instead, he worked the dough bowl on a workbench and tree stump and carved the spoons in his lap.
The second half of the film shows how to carve spoons. He shows two ways to rough out the shape: with a turning saw and with an axe. He explains what to look for when choosing a branch and how to shape the spoon for ease of use.
Always safety conscious, Jögge spends a lot of time explaining proper knife grips and how, by using these techniques, you cannot cut yourself.
He shapes the spoons with straight and crooked knives and gouges, and then shows how to carve decorative elements.
Jögge uses linseed oil (not boiled) on spoons and bowls for a natural finish.
The photo above shows all the tools you need if you'd like to make your own woodenware. And the first "tool" on your list should be Jögge's video. I cannot say enough good things about it.
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If you're interested in learning from Jögge in person, there is still room in one of the classes that he's teaching this summer at Country Workshops: Swedish Sloyd Craft
A friend who's into medieval life and renaissance fairs asked if I would make a shield for him to hang on the wall that would include the first letter of his and his girlfriend's last names (H and Z). He wanted the two letters to be connected.
No prob. I got this.
The shield is 15.25" wide x 18" tall and I created the interlocking letters in Illustrator.
Roughing out the blank and planing the curved slopes so that the shield is convex was easy.
Then, I rubbed graphite on the back of the printout and transferred the design to the blank. Piece of cake.
I struck all the center stop cuts with chisels and gouges, and I was ready to start carving. Here's where it gets ugly. If you're going to carve a sign, it's much easier if the grain is running horizontally. Those upright posts that create the letter H were a bear to carve in the vertical grain. That's because the chisel wanted to follow the grain.
Then it got uglier. Cutting the crossgrain serifs resulted in pock-marked tearout. Big chunks of pine popped loose.
That's when I reached for the wood putty.
The other mistake I made was in trying to carve too deep. If you use my technique for lettercarving (here, here, and here), you need to stick with about a 25º angle. I carved a 50º angle so the shadows would be very pronounced.
This resulted in more tearout. And more putty.
Alas, I pray my gentle friend doth paint the shield, whereupon he wouldst saveth mine arse from ruin and restoreth mine honor. Prithee, Bobby Z?
The shorter list would be to ask Jim Leamy what he can't do.
Truly, he's a talented fellow. And he and his wife hosted a tour of his newly-built 1,100 sq. ft. shop for our woodworking club yesterday.
One room contains all his metalworking machinery. Another is his office. The main room holds, among other things, an enormous display cabinet that houses much of his antique plane collection and other tools.
Jim makes all the parts for his reproduction plough planes, and his perfectionism and meticulous eye for detail are apparent. Even the number and size of the threads of the knurled knobs are historically accurate.
For 30 years prior to making planes, Jim spent time with another type of plane—in the airforce. There, he worked for the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) where he dismantled bombs. "I loved it." he said.
After that he worked in a cabinet shop, then a retail store repairing furniture.
He collected antique tools all the while and one day decided to reproduce one of the plough planes from his collection. Then, someone asked him to build one for them.
For two years he built planes part-time and has been making them full-time for ten years.
Jim uses legally-obtained ivory in many of his planes. He's also used artificial ivory, but has found that it yellows with age (as seen in the close-up image of the plane's gears at left. The yellowed parts are artificial). Real ivory stays brilliant white. It stinks, he says, but it machines nicely.
In his wall-size display cabinet are many of his antique tools, plus some new ones, and a few dovetailed boxes made by Jim that are just as beautiful as his planes. In his home are period furniture pieces, a living room suite, and a soon to be garage-converted-to-master bedroom—including the plumbing—all built by Jim.
Jim's talent doesn't stop with deactivating bombs, building reproduction plough planes, metalworking, making furniture, and remodeling his home.
High on the walls of his workshop hang a dozen or so framed illustrations of airforce planes, all drawn by the planemaker himself. What an inspiration.
In anticipation of this year's Woodworking In America conference, I'd like to highlight some of the toolmakers you will meet in the Marketplace.
Last year I met Ron Brese, maker of exceptional infill planes. Ron left a career in engineering to pursue planemaking, and the woodworking community is all the more fortunate because of it.
If you plan to attend this year's conference, stop by to talk with Ron in person and try his planes. And if you're in the market for a handplane that can tame the most highly-figured surface with ease, read on.
Here is Ron's response when I asked him what distinguishes his planes from the competition:
There are several unique features to the tools that I make and some of them are not always very apparent on the surface.
(1) My tools are assembled with a riveting process that allows me to assemble very accurate and quite rigid and strong plane bodies. This also creates near invisible joinery that keeps the lines of my planes very clean looking. This process allows me to utilize different alloys of metals that don't always react well the double dovetail peening work involved in other assembly methods.
(2) Thicker irons and no cap iron configuration. We don't make any surfacing planes with a bed pitch of less than 50 degrees and have found no difference in the surfaces that these tools leave in their wake with or without cap irons. At these steeper angles, more heat is generated at the cutting edge of the irons, and the thicker iron serves as a heat sink to draw this heat away from the edge and help extend cutting edge life.
(3) We have worked hard to find the optimum mass factor for our tools. Adding mass to a tool for mass sake is not a good idea. There is a point of diminishing returns. We have worked hard to find the optimum ratio between weight and balance.
(4) Visually there are some very distinctive features that make my tools recognizable as a "Brese Plane". (A) The small safety button at the top of the iron. The single iron configuration creates a situation that would allow the iron to fall through the mouth of the plane if the lever cap screw was loosened while the plane is held above the surface of the workbench. This button will catch on the lever cap screw or lever cap, preventing the iron from passing through the plane.
(B) The rear tote of the full size planes has a distinctive shape with the top of the horn tapering to a thinner, elegant edge at the very top. This, coupled with the option of the diamond-shaped, mother of pearl inlays, creates a distinctive look for these tools. The front bun shape on our 875 Series Smoothing planes is unique to these planes as well.
(C) The overall look of the 650-55 "J" overstuffed version of our small smoother is a unique shape that is only seen in this line of planes. The side cutout and "J" configuration of the 650-55 "J" overstuffed design was the vision of Jameel Abraham of BenchCrafted.
We are in the process of developing a new line of very refined, very precision-made, stainless steel non-infill planes. The first of this line was a 13.25" long panel plane that was on our bench at the WIA conference in Valley Forge. We have two other sizes of the stainless plane in the design process and are developing one more infill smoother as well.
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Ron plans to have at least two more planes that will be part of the new stainless steel line ready to debut at the 2010 WIA.
Coopering is a trade that dates back 4,000 years and involves making wooden, rounded containers made of tapered, beveled staves.
Some containers are “bellied”, called casks, while others are straight-tapered, like buckets. All have hoops, made of hardwood saplings or iron, that hold the staves together.
You may have heard the term “barrel-maker”, but a barrel is only one size of cask; it holds 31.5 gallons of wine. Other wine casks are Rundlet (18 gal.), Tierce (2 gal.), Hogshead (63 gal.), Puncheon (84 gal.), Pip (126 gal.), and Tun (252 gal.).
Beer and ale casks, depending on size, include: Firkin, Kilderkin, Barrel, and Hogshead.
In the 18th-century, casks held dry and wet goods, such as flour, grain, and tobacco (especially in Virginia), gunpowder, wine, beer, milk, and butter, and were used to ship all manner of items like food, spices, nails, and clothing. So, the burning question is: what’s the secret to cutting the bevels on the staves so the pieces fit tightly together to be watertight?
The secret is a careful eye. Coopers use a broad axe with a short handle to rough out the bevel and then use a large jointer, positioned upside-down, to shave the staves to the perfect taper and bevel. All. By. Eye.
That, according to Ramona Vogel, journeyman cooper at Colonial Williamsburg, is the most difficult part of learning the trade.
No glue is used and all the staves are butt-joined. The hoops, which are hammered in place with a driver, cinch the staves together to make them tight.
Ramona makes the task look easy, but then, she’s been doing this for years.
Coopers at Colonial Williamsburg apprentice for 7 years—the traditional period—before becoming journeymen. Or women.
Were there actually female coopers in the 18th-century? Absolutely! Although, for most, if not all, it would not have been their first lifestyle choice. Most women would have wanted to be married and have children.
Ramona, who has done her own research on the subject of female coopers, found that historical documents indicate that orphans, including girls, were taught a trade. It was better to teach them to be productive citizens rather than allow them to become beggars. The youngest apprentice recorded was three years old.
Women became owners of cooperages upon the death of a husband or father, or became apprentices if they were unmarried.
She and the other coopers at Colonial Williamsburg use traditional tools to make all types of containers for the village. By using straight-grained and riven Atlantic white cedar, white oak, and yellow pine, they shape the outside of the staves with a backing knife (or drawknife) and the inside with a hollowing knife. Well-worn shaving horses, based on 18th-century models, figure prominently in the small shop.
A metal bit attached to the front of the shaving horse head digs into oak staves so that the board doesn’t slip out and injure the cooper. Conversely, white cedar, a much softer wood, requires a small piece of scrap to act as a cushion between the head and workpiece, otherwise, the metal bit and head would mar the wood.
How is the head (top and bottom) of the container made to fit so snugly? Once the container is shaped and the staves are held together with hoops, Ramona uses a compass to determine the diameter of the head, builds it to fit, cuts a croze (groove) in the top and bottom, loosens one end of the container, and slides the head in until it snaps into place. Then, the container is tightened with hoops that are hammered in place with a driver.
“Bellied” casks undergo a heat-treating process, called trussing, where a metal cresset, that is packed with pieces of hardwood, sits inside the walls of the open container (no bottom), and is lit on fire. Experienced coopers feel the outside of the barrel, watch the color of the smoke, and keep an eye on the sheen of the wood to determine when the staves are pliable enough to bend. Halfway through the procedure, the barrel is flipped end-for-end so that it’s heated evenly.
Once the cask is bent to its final shape, it undergoes another heat-treating, called pomping, so that it retains its shape. Various shaves are used to clean up the “gunk” inside.
Coopers’ tools are often heavier than comparable tools from other trades. Axes, for example, have short handles and beefy heads. They are much heavier than a hewing hatchet. In the film, you’ll see Ramona lift the cutting edge only a short distance from the workpiece. She lets the heft of the axe do the work.
The same thing goes for the metal driver and hammer that are used to tap the hoops in place. Both are very heavy and short-handled. Making the hoops is also the job of the cooper. They purchase large coils of wrought iron (low carbon steel today) and cold-rivet them together. All hoops are flared to match the shape of the container.
Final touches to the containers include using a topping, or sun, plane to flatten the tops of the staves. When completing a cask, an adze is used to cut an inner bevel, called rounding off, along the top edge of the staves. The staves are made flush with one another on the outside of the container with a shave called a Buzz, so that the hoops create even pressure all around the circumference.
If you’d like to know more about Coopers and Ramona Vogel, visit the Colonial Williamsburg site. Or, better yet,visit Ramona at the Cooper’s shop. She’ll be happy to answer all your questions.
All material on the Village Carpenter blog is original and copyright-protected and can only be used with the express permission from the author, Kari Hultman.
n occasion to brainstorm ideas for future meetings/events. Many of our topics are presented by members, but we have paid speakers a couple times a year. There are formal by-laws, which are commonly ignored. We take Saturday field trips a few times a year to workshops, ww businesses, and lumberyards, usually followed by a meal at a restaurant. Dues are $25/year. Usually about 20 in attendance at meetings.
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