Third Week of Furniture Making School - June 24 - 30 Monday morning found me in the shop quite early sanding the stool to remove the scratch I commented on at the end of last week and apply sufficient coats to be ready for glue up at 9. Shellac takes about 20 minutes to dry, so finish build up is quick, albeit more challenging. Needless to say, I was ready at 9. That really felt good. Because of the challenges of gluing my project together, I moved toward the end of the line and spent most of the day working on the stools for the grandsons, imagining the details of my next project and tuning my tools. That term typically means sharpening! The focus of the day was the introduction of ourselves to the new instructor, Austin Matheson. His resume is extensive as well as impressive; his roots in this school are deep, but he is also an alumnus of the famed North Bennet Street School of Boston. He then introduced us to carcase work, or case work as they sometimes call it. Conceptually, this is building a box. Think hope chest, night stand, desk, etc. We walked through lots of options and after a bit, it seemed like the firehose had once again been turned on! Prior to attacking the six week project, we are to simultaneously work on finishing up our projects, doing research, consulting with the instructors on our project and beginning the process of building saw horses. Yes, saw horses. One, we will need sawhorses to store our project pieces close to our workbench. Two, building the sawhorses will require an intensive session working with 2-3 other classmates in the machine shop. New procedures and processes will be introduced to each group, though not everyone will create all the parts for their own sawhorses. The glue up went reasonably well with only minor problems and shortcomings. It felt very good to get that done and figuratively out of the way. As the day drew to a close, my project concept, expressed in very crude drawings and conversation, had been critiqued and approved to begin drafting full size drawings. Erasers are very important tools! I tried details on paper and made adjustments; periodically instructors would come by the drafting bench and we’d play with new lines, new spacings, adjust our thinking. Back to work I’d go with an eraser and a pencil. I realized part way into this that I typically visualize a project, think through the structural issues and then work on the details. How I conceptualize a project is not their concern, but the encouragement is to “draw it the way you want it to look” and then work out the details. Of course that makes sense; I just didn’t see it. It is much more freeing. We took an informal interpretative tour of the on-campus Messler Gallery, currently showing the work of the school’s instructors. We gazed in amazement and admiration, touched, crawled under and discussed design, spirit and construction. While nothing compares to seeing the work in person, take a look by going to woodschool.org/wood-school-gallery/current-exhibitions. The work is spectacular. The Monday night presentation was fascinating. One of the instructors, Tim Rousseau, who had arrived that same day to teach a two week course is a name that is well known, well published and highly respected. Our lead instructor had worked in his shop for a couple of years. The other fellow had just arrived to teach a one week course on using Sketchup, a CAD (computer assisted design) software program, to design furniture. He designs projects of his own to sell to companies for their own production, he consults on industrial design and he designs projects for firms that bring him ideas. He doesn’t build furniture. I knew of him through Fine Woodworking magazine. I walked away from the evening impressed by their spirit and work and somewhat star-struck that I’d just spent an evening with gurus in the field I enjoy so much. Amazing! We also had a slide show presentation during lunch for two days this week to look at slides of furniture styles ranging from Egyptian days through today. Though there was time for only brief comments, it was clear the purpose was to help us visualize possibilities, admire craftsmanship and encourage creativity. It worked! It was so inspiring. Around the slide shows and infrequent group sessions, I focused on finalizing the front view of the night stand with periodic consultation from Aaron and Austin. Delight was the word when they both dropped by the drafting table, spontaneously and simultaneously announcing “I like it.” Oh, we tinkered a bit more on subtleties, but we were there. I happily turned to designing the side and back views and once cleared to move on, I began to create the “bones.” By the way, that is a Roger term, not an accepted classic furniture making term. I spent several days thinking through and drafting the jointery of the night stand as well as wearing out an eraser. The frequent suggestions from Aaron and Austin were helpful and revealing. It often seemed as if they were innocuously casting pearls. I gathered them. Little epiphanies! So encouraging was that none of us always got it right, but we always moved toward solution and improvement. What a fascinating way to learn. These guys are not perfect, but they are so good. What a privilege to learn with them. Almost overlooked in all this was the completion of the Stool for a Princess. After unclamping the glue up, I planed the half-blind dovetails and wedged through tenon, reworked the finish on that end and took it home to show off. It is not A+, but it is beautiful and I’m rather proud of it! As an aside, I chose ash for the boy’s stools and that was a mistake. It is so hard to work by hand and this is a hand tool project. Oh, it will work out, but the effort will be twice what it should have been. I didn’t want to learn this way! Name a school kid that doesn’t love a field trip. That’s what we did Friday, heading first to the plant of Thos. Moser in Auburn about an hour and a half from the school. An alumnus of the school is a part of their corporate executive team; he welcomed us, raced us through an hour-long rather impressive and detailed slide show as well as a frank discussion of the company, their products, the challenges and their survival. He then divided us into two groups and sent us on a tour of the plant, each group led by a furniture maker who had just come from his bench. Each was appropriately outfitted with wood shavings on his shirt; these guys were the real deal. Several things impressed on my mind. One was the commitment to quality throughout everything they do; this is part of their heritage, their corporate values, their marketing, their work and their conversation, but I got to see it for real. Nothing was held back; we could look into anything we wanted and ask any quesiton. Second, then blend of old hand tools and new technology was striking, perhaps no better exemplified by seeing a craftsmanship fitting a drawer turn to his old Stanley #4 hand plane to tweak a piece while standing near a 3 axis CNC router that probably cost as much as $100,000 or so. Third, I saw obvious pride of workmanship all over the plant floor, but none more poignant than a fellow marking flaws on a chair with white chalk. “How do you spot these flaws? By sight or by feel?” I asked him. “Oh, about 50/50” as he pointed to three small chalk ovals on the front of a chair “I couldn’t see these, but I could feel them.” His heavy New England accent, which sounded like New Hampshire to me, was overflowing with pride in his work. The fourth thing to strike me was the obvious continuing adaptation of lean manufacturing, selective outsourcing of certain functions they felt others could do better and what must be a constant struggle between new and smarter ways of working versus the way it had been done. Thos. Moser has a flair for design, makes beautiful furniture and the way they do it is impressive. thosmoser Kevin Rodel was our next stop, about an hour away in Brunswick. He, too, is an alumnus of the school, an author and a continuing instructor at the school who is held in high regard by other instructors and students. His operation was the antithesis of Thos. Moser. Kevin is in a basement of a 175 year old textile mill, his shop being only about 1200 square feet. In spite of being in a basement, the west end is 15’ of window! He talked about the business of running a small shop - how he gradually focused his business on Arts & Crafts influenced work, how he markets, how marketing has changed, where he buys his wood, how he charges for his work, when payments are due, how he acquired his tools, how he does everything himself, how he set up his little space for work flow and a myriad of details. For me, whose next career is building fine heirloom furniture on a full time basis, Kevin provided valuable perspective. Someone in the class asked him about where his customers came from. “Not where you think. I get maybe one order from Maine every three years or so. Transportation costs have killed my West Coast business, I’ve never sold anything in the mid-west, but much of my business comes from the East coast all the way down into North Carolina.” Kevin’s work has a distinct focus and style, he is a renowned authority in his field and his work often takes on architectural dimensions, in which case he might design a room and its furniture, or architectural features to a home. A very likable guy who work is impressive. kevinrodel To close out the week, Linda and I attended the 20th anniversary celebration of the school’s founding. The crowd was eclectic - patrons, alumni, staff, instructors and students - and the atmosphere was convivial. There were masterpieces on display in the Messler Gallary and student projects underway in all the buildings. Due to the weather, our workshop, the Satterlee, had been converted into the grand hall for the brief speeches. There was food everywhere and a bar in the drafting room! Sunday I spent much of the day in the shop, selecting and milling some really nice cherry for the next project, moving as far forward as they’d let me run on the saw horses and working on the stools for Nathan and Jack. Can’t wait for the next week to start. This is so much fun.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Jul 2013 10:27:39 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015