College of The Redwoods Fine Furniture: Week 9

 I spent Monday rethinking my jig for boring out the mortises in my bench legs. It wasn’t really complicated, but amazingly took up most of the day. I guess I am working slower with my recent handicap. I brought the thickness of my legs down a bit in order to remove a bit of sap-wood and then re-did my jig based on the new dimensions. That Carpenters song, Rainy Days and Mondays was stuck in my head all day.

Johnny and Tom hard at work.

  Since I won’t have my full grip strength back for a little while yet, on Tuesday Laura gave me the go ahead to use the XY machine for my mortises. Dan Wacker showed me how to set all the various stops on it and after a fair amount of setup I was ready to cut my mortises. Well, the machine was ready. I was feeling a bit anxious to be cutting into my “real” wood, my walnut. This isn’t a mock up anymore, if I made my jig wrong or if I set the stops a little off there’s no going back. Despite the ease of using the XY machine and the fact that I don’t smoke, I felt like I needed a cigarette after making those 8 mortises.

Mollie working the Oliver bandsaw.

    On Wednesday I found that compound angles are directly correlated to compound headaches. Man this is confusing. I need my mortises to run parallel to my bench top for maximum strength, I need the legs to sit in a particular order so as the grain graphics feel and look right. I need each leg to sit of 10 degrees parallel to the bench and also 7.5 degrees perpendicular to the bench. And the feet of the legs must be parallel to their tops. None of that actually makes sense to me either, and after looking at trigonometry equations for five seconds I understood why David told me I was doing it wrong. This isn’t math; it’s woodworking. It’s about the wood, seeing what looks right, not calculating it.

Derek demonstrating proper homage before using his Japanese dovetail saw.

  On Thursday I’m in front of the table saw most of the morning. After about 17 trial and error cuts I know how to get the compound angles in the legs. Make cut 1 with blue tape up, turn the leg 180 degrees and then either rotate in or out depending on where it’s supposed to sit on the bench. Don’t ask me why that worked. I have no idea, it just did.

 David brought in a cabinet made by Krenov on Friday. It was inspiring to hear more stories of the man who many of us are indebted to for helping to find our way into woodworking. It was even more inspiring to see and handle his work.            

A James Krenov cabinet.

For a few weeks I’ve been telling myself I need to stop and take some time to reflect upon what I’m doing and how I’m being affected by it. It’s clear I’m learning and my skills are improving, ever so slowly. But how am I outside of the shop being affected by what I do in the shop?

         I’ve found myself looking to the “next”; the next step, the next cut, the next project. Almost everything I’ve done in the shop has been centered in the idea of a finished piece of furniture, my finished bench. This is something I’ve experienced in climbing too, always moving in my mind to the next move, to the next pitch, and with that movement the focus rests on the top, the summit, the end. Summits, fine pieces of furniture- they’re great things, but being a woodworker or being a climber does not happen in that passing moment of completion. It is happening in every breath before that. I want to be more present in the movement of my plane, not the step I’m trying to move on from. What is the value of my work if I am always trying to move away from what it is that I’m doing? The movements, the feelings, and the thoughts that come from this craft are what have drawn me to it. It would be a great loss to always look past them, even those moments of frustration or dismay. It’s those moments of challenge that make the process that much more worthy, that make room for growth as an aspiring woodworker. I hope in this next week I won’t be thinking so much of completing tasks, but of being present in them.


"Comrades of the [shop]! I call upon you to bear me witness. When have we felt ourselves happy men?"
                                                                                           Anotione de Saint-Exupery
                                                                                                     Wind, Sand and Stars

Johnny being present in his dovetails.

The pieces to my piece as they are now.

College of The Redwoods Fine Furniture: Week 8

I'm trying to catch up with a late post here. I feel like I've been trying to play catch up after a pretty dang slow week 8. I was feeling pretty good Monday morning, glad I hadn't gone to the Hardly Strictly festival in San Francisco and worn myself out, and generally looking forward to getting a lot done in the coming days. I spent most of the day working on a jig for boring out my mortises in the legs for my bench. There was a bit of head scratching in trying to configure the thing with the martises having a 7.5 degree tilt and so that I could duplicate the cut 8 times.

The shop here is ran with very safe guidelines and principles, and the machines are maintained to high standards by the skilled hands of David Welter. David does a great job communicating with us the ins and outs of what we're using and is always happy to help figure out how to do a tricky cuts. There is alway the wild card of operator error, and  unfortunately on Monday afternoon while working on my mortises I did a little boring on my left index finger as well. No fault of anyones but myself and the jig I'd put together. I spent a few hours at the ER with the good company of Chris Lesser getting stitched up. More than anything I was pretty dang pissed off that I messed up. I've always felt I stay aware of what I'm doing, but now I'm even doubly aware. Have respect for those machines!

A big bandage for only five stitches.

Five days later, healing up pretty well.

The rest of the week passed pretty slowly. I couldn't do much with my hand for a few days. I sharpened all my tools, practiced some dovetails and walked around looking at everyone else's projects. There are some cool things being put together.

Post beach nap time.

College of The Redwoods Fine Furniture: Week 7

I'm back to my bench first thing Monday morning.  More and more people are cutting into the wood for their projects. Some four-letter words have been bouncing around in the machine room after one cut or another.  After looking at several boards of walnut and wearing my shoulder sore planing on them to see what was hidden beneath all the oxidization I’ve finally decided on a board. Behind all the other boards of walnut in the back corner of the wood room, there is one board that I’d overlooked, one mammoth piece of walnut, 3 inches thick and 7 feet tall. I could get my box, my bench top, and maybe my legs out of this one piece. I get David Welters blessing and am cutting it down with a bow saw minutes later. My next four months will be committed this piece of wood. Heck, that’s longer than most of my romances.

My Piece of Walnut.

After cutting it into a more manageable size.

Now that I’m committed to a piece of wood it’s time to really cut into it. After cutting it down with the bow saw it’s time to resaw it and see what the grain is doing in there. I’m going to cut the wood along its length horizontally and split the section of wood for my bench top from the section used for the box. I wonder what the wood is doing there, inches under its surface. What does it look like? There is neither a bandsaw nor a jointer in the shop big enough for my board at 16 inches wide. So it’s off to Brian Newells shop with Laura to use his massive 24-inch jointer and his 36-inch Oliver bandsaw. It takes an eternal 15 minutes to ever so slowly resaw it on the bandsaw. And then it’s there, the colors and grain that will make up my bench. It’s a different board than I thought. And it is beautiful too.

Wednesday. I woke up at 2 am thinking about the grain graphics of my wood. I have a feeling that this kind of thing is going to happen more and more. My board sits on my bench, split into 4 pieces. A bench top, box carcass, and legs. I don’t know what to do with it now. I do know, I just don’t know that I’m ready to start running it through all the blades. There’s no going back. I’m living in apprehension of my next cut.

There may be some legs in there somewhere...

Thursday and Welter stops by for some honey roasted peanuts at my bench. It’s my secret strategy to keep snacks out. I get more bench visits. While pouring out some peanuts Welter asks me how I think through tenons will work with my piece. Damn. I was pretty set on them, but I’ll think hard about them now. I cut a leg out too. Not going to work. Back to the wood room to get another board that's more riff sawn and straight grained.

Darrick looking into some wood.

Friday and I’m getting Welter’s blessing on another board and then into the machine room to cut it up with the jigsaw. My bench is looking a bit overwhelmed with all this walnut. And I’m doing loose tenons. Welter was right (no surprise there), the through tenons don’t seem like they work with my piece. And when it came down to it I wanted to do them for the sake of them, not for what they would add to my bench.

Hank getting a bath with V8 after meeting a skunk.

 The rest of the afternoon and Saturday I’m working up jigs for the mortises on my legs and bench. The overall concepts and purposes of joinery stay the same, but how it’s achieved is different for every piece. I’m going from moments of “oh shit” to “ah ha!” and “oh…okay.”