In this series of posts I will be sharing with you my favorite videos that I watched this week. Do you have a video that you would like featured here? Leave a comment below and let me know about it!
First of all I want to let everyone know everything is fine here, because I haven’t posted recently I have been receiving a lot of inquiries. I have been busy finishing up my next book on Spinning Wheel Repair. Here is a mock up of the hand set type title page, still in need some adjustment, it is being done by a friend. The forward was written by a friend. I am having the cover art finished up by another friend and one more technical part being done by another friend, thank goodness for friends. The book will be out in time for the holidays, but I am thinking of taking orders earlier. Stephen
At the end of February, I moved to a new place about 15 minutes from where I was previously. Of course, the shop moved as well and it is now living in a one-car garage (formerly about 450 sq ft – approximately the space of a two-car garage). The day before the move, I installed the same anti-fatigue mats I had in my last shop to cover the garage’s floor. By the end of the move, the entire floor was covered with cabinets (wood boxes), tool boxes (plastic and/or metal boxes), moving boxes (cardboard boxes) and unboxable tools and accessories (not in boxes) stacked wherever convenient for the movers. Currently, I am working on hanging cabinets on …
These days my life revolves around the lastest addition to the farm, our daughter. I spent the last few months franticly finishing some renovations so she didn’t grow up in a construction zone. Right before she was born I finally got around to finishing up my Japanese Workbench that I started over a year ago. I finally procured a large slab of ash a couple months ago 12″ wide 12/4. It took some working getting it flat and square (dont even think about trying to pass a slab this big over a little 6″ jointer). This was a case of you must take the tool to the wood! After it was square and flat I dovetailed a slot into the…
My wife is a drummer, and her snare had a thin, brass shell. While she liked the attack, it was “ring-y”, and she wanted a more solid sound. I thought I would try my hand at a stave snare, and founds lots of info online on how to build and calculate the pieces. You woodworkers will notice a sort of “mistake” in the build photos. I approached this like a piece of furniture, so of course, I used a nice board, and wanted to cut the staves so that the grain was continuous around the shell. So the “mistake” (after I’d already cut the parts) was that the glue joints were all end grain to end grain. The “correct”…
The Lie-Nielsen tools on display and available to try out.Last Friday and Saturday, December 4th and 5th, was another great Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event at Phil Lowe’s Furniture Institute of Massachusetts.The front room was the main LN display. The back room had additional demonstrators:FIM instructor John Cameron, http://johncameroncabinetmaker.com/.FIM instructor Joseph Karagezian.Freddy Roman, http://periodcraftsmen.com/.Tico Vogt, http://ticovogt.com/toolworks/.Matt Cianci, http://www.thesawwright.com/.Peter Follansbee, https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/.Visitors trying out the tools. LN staff member Roger Benton is at the back bench.Danielle and Deneb manning the register.They had this lovely toolchest next to the planing bench.Outside, Paul Lelito demonstrated custom milling of …
At this point, over half the frames made prior to our Scottsdale Adventure have been carved and gilded. You may recall that before Diane and I left Las Vegas I had prepared about a dozen frames from the moldings we bought at Foster Planing Mills seconds area. They are a minimum of 3-3/4″ wide with a rabbet suitable for a canvas. We’re enjoying our adventure here and are even considering a move from Las Vegas! There is a thriving art scene here that is centered around the Scottsdale Artist School where Diane has made many connections with like minded artists. Although my first love is designing and creating one of a kind furniture pieces, carving and gilding frames is …
Stepping Outby: Diane Eugster This is the final frame for the upcoming show at the Meyer Vogl Gallery in Charleston, South Carolina. Diane was invited to participate in this show a few months ago. This frame is the one from my previous blog called the Water Lily Frame. This picture shows the painting “Stepping Out” in the frame. I have to apologize for the quality of the picture, we just don’t have a good spot in our temporary Scottsdale apartment for taking them. I’ll talk more about the final steps leading to the completion of this frame but first let me tell you about this show. I have no problem admitting that I’m Diane’s biggest …
Carving, let’s talk about it! My main focus in carving at this point is for picture frames. That means they need to be fairly low relief and able to be gilded without the leaf faulting too much and showing the sealer undercoat. A little of that is good as it replicates age but too much of that is crude. All that being said, when I carve my goal is to keep the carving low relief while still trying convey a lot of depth. Here’s a recent example taken from a Mary May Carving School lesson: The depth on it is about 1/4″ and I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t easy — stressful actually. …
Without a doubt, much of what you and I do as woodworkers is the result of “self-teaching” and a lot of experimentation with a bit of frustration thrown in for good measure! Even with today’s technological advantage of just Googling It, we still need to strike out and follow our intuition to figure stuff out. A case in point is my own quest on learning how to carve a closed corner picture frame. Yes, there are many examples of others carving them on YouTube and other sites but they don’t give a step by step procedure and many are in stop motion slide show format. You get the general idea from them but not all of …