Matthew Harding

Mark from Woodfired introduced me to the inspiring work of his friend, Matthew Harding, a highly regarded woodworker, sculptor, and carver from Australia.








While there are many talented individuals in the visual arts, Matthew is extraordinarily gifted in diversity, as expressed in his broad range of style.










He has command of various materials, including wood, bronze & steel, and stone; and a firm grasp on balance, composition, design, and originality.

Check out his website to see more of his artwork....and enjoy!

Woodworking in America

In just a few days, I'll be rubbing flannel-covered elbows with other handtool enthusiasts, bloggers, & podcasters; famous woodworkers; and handtool vendors at the Woodworking in America conference.

Here is a list of the classes I will attend and blog about in the coming weeks:
1) Japanese Saws in Western Work
2) Master the Spokeshave & Drawknife
3) Rehabbing Old Tools
4) Understanding Western Saws
5) Wooden Plane Technology
6) Setting Up A Handtool Shop
7) Mortise & Tenon—3 Solid Methods
8) Tools for Windsor Seats
9) Modern Tools—Tolerances & Myths
10) Eliminating Tear-Out When Planing

Whew! All that is packed into just 2.5 days. The folks at Popular Woodworking and Woodworking Magazine have put together what will surely be an awesome event. Plans are in the works for another conference next year if you are not able to make it to this one.

While I'm at the conference, my partner will spend time reading, sleeping, watching movies, sleeping, working out in the hotel's gym, and sleeping. In other words, both of us will be enjoying our perfect vacations.

At left is a business card I designed and will take with me in case anyone asks about this blog (my partner's idea). I thought they might come in handy as shims, kindling, or disposal of gum.

Chip Carving

I took a chip carving class this weekend at Olde Mill Cabinet Shoppe with master carver, Wayne Barton, who studied all disciplines of carving in Switzerland, has won both national and international awards, is the author of two chip carving books, has appeared on both The American Woodshop and The Woodwright's Shop, and is a very entertaining and affable man.

Wayne not only taught us several techniques and patterns, he discussed wood choice, finishing, tools, sharpening, design considerations, and the characteristics that indicate a well executed chip carving.

Wood: Basswood, butternut and white pine.

Finishes: Spray-on, satin polyurethane for a natural finish, and General or Bartley gel stains for a darker finish.

Tools: Wayne developed carving knives that are made from high carbon steel, which hold an edge longer than knives made from high speed steel. They take longer to sharpen, but work much better. He sells his knives on his website.

Sharpening: Wayne recommends ceramic stones, available on his website. We used them in class and they are small enough to fit in your hand, easy to clean, and remain forever flat. Wayne's pearl of wisdom: "The world has been made with a sharp edge."

Design: Wayne is influenced by gothic architecture and European cathedrals. He designs his pieces with attention to visual rhythm, negative & positive movement, spacing, balance, contrast in size, variation in line, and focal points. Diagonal lines represent movement & energy. They are lines in transition, as opposed to horizontal and vertical lines, which are stagnant.

Good chip carving: Has single facets and sharp ridges, and does not have little remnants stuck in corners. It is clean and crisp.

We spent several hours sharpening our knives and working on techniques. Chip carving is more fun and relaxing than I had anticipated and the design possibilities are endless. According to Wayne, it's the oldest form of carving, and has found its way into all countries and cultures.

The last two photos are my practice boards along with the two knives we used in class. The knife on the right is the workhorse and the knife above the board is used for decorative stab cuts— the only tools you need if you want to include chip carving in your projects.

During class, Wayne played CDs of various types of music including classical and opera performed by people whose names I can't pronounce, and threatened to play polkas if we got out of line. What an incentive to be studious!

Blackbeard & Vampira

These are our next door neighbors' kids, who stopped by for trick or treat last night.
If I had a kid, I would insist that blackbeard makeup be part of his everyday ensemble.

Spindle Turning

Having turned only pens in the past, I was excited to turn the spindles that will pin the legs to the runners on the sawbuck table.

Owning few lathe tools and possessing a miniscule amount of knowledge about woodturning results in an inevitable learning experience.

I turned two spindles at a time on my mini-lathe. The first spindle took several hours to complete but the second one was turned in about 45 minutes. It did take a while to figure out how to use the tools... and how not to use them. Lesson one: lathe tools will let you know when you've mishandled them.

The first set of spindles were turned facing one another, with the skinny part of the pegs connected in the center. Lesson two: wood becomes springy if the expanse of a thin section is too great; the wood will deflect as you run a lathe tool along its length.

Therefore, the second set was turned with the handles (the fat part) positioned back to back.

The spindles on the orginal table are missing, so I mimicked the shape of the handles on a friend's antique turning saw. I did, however, know the location of the pegs from photos that I had taken at the Landis Valley Museum.

I used inside calipers to measure the size of the hole and outside calipers to check the size of the peg that would fit into the hole. Lesson three: don't regret having purchased an expensive set of calipers years ago, even though this was the first time you ever used them.

5 coats of blonde shellac were applied to the completed spindles while they were still secured, and spinning, on the lathe.

A learning experience it was, but this was perhaps the most important lesson of all: signing up for a woodturning class would probably be a very good idea.

Brown Tool Auction Bonanza

If you've never been to a Brown Tool Auction and Dealer Show, you are missing out on a chance to be in the presence of a boat load of handtools—rare, beautiful, user-friendly, collectible, utilitarian—and scads of other handtool lovers chatting about their favorite subject.

Today, I found what I've been scouting for a few years: user moulding planes with delicate profiles at decent prices. I bought three and they are in near perfect condition.

As I was paying for one, a 70-something year old man walked over and joked that he'd never seen a lady buy a plane before. I told him it was a Christmas present. To which he replied, "Oh, you're buying it for someone else. Well, you had me there for a second."
"It's a Christmas present for me", I grinned.

Later, I saw him again when he was standing with his wife and he pulled me over. "This lady bought a handplane!" To which his wife replied crossly, with hands on hips, "I bought a handplane before! And that's a sexist comment. You could get in trouble for that!"

I thought my day was complete.

Then I ran into Jim Leamy and his lovely wife, Becky, who are always so gracious to talk with me at these shows. Jim told me I could stop by his shop for an interview sometime, so be prepared for some amazing eye candy in a future post.

As I was saying goodbye, Jim reached beneath his display table and removed something that he placed in my hand. It was two of his miniature beech rabbet (rebate) planes. One is 3/8" and the other is 3/16". Both are exquisitely crafted and stamped with Jim's maker's mark and he wanted me to have them.

And that's what made my day complete. I never thought I'd be able to say that I'm a proud owner of a Jim Leamy plane, let alone two. Thanks, Jim!

Back to the Sawbuck

I glued up 5 cherry boards for the table top of the sawbuck table and cut the sliding dovetails beneath the table surface. The dovetail dadoes receive the runners that will be pegged to the legs.

First I squared up the table top and cleaned up the end grain with a Lie-Nielsen skewed angle block plane with nicker. I bought this plane before I knew how to sharpen it and was not very impressed the first time I used it. I hadn't looked at it in years, but took it out, sharpened it on my 8,000 grit waterstone and wow! The shavings in the first photo are from endgrain. Forgive me L-N for ever having doubted you.







I laid out the dovetail dados and defined the shoulders with an exacto knife and chisel, then used a crosscut saw and router plane to remove the waste. The first dovetail dado took 8 hours for a proper fit but the second one took just 4. Still sounds like a lot, but the dovetails are 25" long and 1.5" wide, so I didn't feel so bad.

I followed the same technique as in the past, except I took Stephen Shepherd's advice and flipped the saw guide upside down. This way, you cut on the waste side at all times. It worked very well and it was no more difficult to hold the saw at the inverted angle.












An added benefit to flipping the guide is that the guide itself can be thicker because the lowest part of the saw's handle is opposite the guide (photo #4). A thicker guide provides more support for your saw.

The last photo shows the tell tale marks of gentle persuasion.

Tips on Documenting Antiques

Say you've spotted an antique in a museum that you would dearly love to reproduce. How do you obtain permission and, if approved, how do you go about taking measurements and photographs?

First, you need to contact the museum's curator and ask for permission. In correspondence, be polite, honest, brief, and let the curator know that you will accommodate his/her schedule.

So. Now you have permission to document measurements and photos of your beloved artifact. What do you need? How do you prepare? All you need is a ruler, tape measure, notebook, pen, and camera, right?
Yes and no.

That's all that accompanied me on my appointment with the scheitholts, and I was ill prepared....and nervous that I would take up too much of the director's time. So much so in fact, that I forgot to take the measurements of the overall length of both zithers!

This morning I heard back from the curator at the Gettysburg Military Museum, granting me permission to photograph and measure Robert E. Lee's Medicine Box (after December).

I haven't been this excited since the Christmas I unwrapped my "Space 1999" action figure set and model spaceship.

This time, I'll take a worksheet with me that lists all the parts of the cabinet that need to be measured and columns for wood/other material, width, length, height, and thickness. I'll also sketch the cabinet (it helps if you can take a snapshot before your appointment) and label the parts so I remember what each set of measurements refers to.

The other thing I'll do is not get too creative with the photos (like I did with the zithers). I'll be sure to take lateral, top & bottom, and straight on shots of each part of the cabinet. That way, if I forget to take a measurement, I can refer to the photo and use a known measurement to obtain the missing one.

Have I forgotten anything? Probably. But it's an exciting learning experience of galactic proportions.