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Sunday, February 23, 2014

A YEAR IN REVIEW

A new year is almost here and its time to reminisce
about all that has happened in the past 12 months.

I have repurposed enough night stand to populate a small city.

I travelled to work with dozens of woman to up-cycle their pieces of furniture

My back has felt the best it has in years ... except after working with those dozen women!

I wrote some very important tutorials that you had asked for ... that I had been putting off.

I spent my summer setting up displays in a home décor store ... just to get out of "working"

I competed in a local recycling challenge ... and took 3rd place!

Annie Sloan came to meet me in person ... and thousands of others in Vancouver too!
I got George to change desk chairs a half dozen times ... dont look at me that way a year is a long time

I donated my work to a Charity auction ... only to watch ppl fight over something I made

I have been teaching ladies in other countries through email ... thanks to Google translator

Phil Robertson got booted from Duck Dynasty only to be reinstated 10 days later

and more importantly

I quit smoking ... but I have taken up eating.

2014 bring on the next chapter

Thank you to everyone who follows along with my adventures!

Thursday, February 20, 2014

The Cats In The Cradle and The Smoking Table

I was at my in-laws home with my oldest daughter Chloe. We were helping move some things around and rearranging a few rooms.

"And that small little table by the bed is so old and broken, just put it out with the trash." My mother-in-law instructed.

I picked up the little table for a closer look at it. It sure was a cute little thing, old and fairly well made, but not old enough looking for me to consider it a true antique. I considered bringing it back to the shop and mending its broken wings but this was late June - early July. We were still unpacking a house and I was still setting up a shop so I could get moving on the backlog of work I was facing there. I decided I could let it go.

Then Chloe, 17 years old and full of energy, grabs the table. "Oh cool grandma, what kind of table is it?"

"Its a smoking table, the little round drawer is where you were supposed to keep your wacky tabacky." (Yes my mother-in-law talks like that, she is the crowned queen of making up words.)

Chloe then looked at me and I knew the outcome before she even said a word. The table came back to the shop so she could fix it, with my help of course.

It really is a pleasing little table to look at and the round drawer adds just the right amount of whimsy and flair. There was a fair amount of grime and water damage to the finish, I suspect it spent years with a potted plant resting on it at some point and the little leaks and spills from watering made trouble.

The top was pegged and nailed into place but had developed two cracks along the grain.

At one corner of the lower shelf the leg had broken and separated from the shelf.

There was other evidence of past repairs. Glue lines and hardened drips on three of the four legs. Probably not all done by the same hand or at the same time.

The drawer was the coolest part of the piece. Two pieces of thin sheet metal with the edges folded into opposing "J" channels. The channels mate together to allow the drawer to slide and support itself.

The downside is the thin metal has no rigidity and relied on the wooden rounds at the front and back to stay stable. Unfortunately the tacks that held the metal in place has worked their way loose over time as well.

We popped the top off the table and glued it up into one piece again. After it dried I put her to work with a scraper to clean of the squeeze out and remove the damaged finish.

Then we got to work tacking the sheet metal drawer back in place.

Then I helped her repair the finish. We used Dark Walnut Danish Oil to refinish the table top followed by several coats of thinned shellac and paste wax The end result was very satisfying.

But more satisfying than the finished table was spending some time in the shop with Chloe. Its difficult to not get into cliche overtures when it comes to the precious and finite amount of time you really get to spend with your children. I will spare you the over-reaching prose that would undoubtedly fall well short of the mark.

Instead I will simply say that I find opportunities like this to be incredibly special. I didnt take a lot of pictures because I was having too much fun being there with her, in the moment.

My children are all big readers, it was important to me that they should be. My parental strategy was simple. I never made them read a thing (with the exception of homework), and I rarely read to them. Instead I would often talk about how important I felt reading was, and I made sure they saw me doing a lot of it. As theyve grown all three have taken to books as precious things and reading as a skill to practice.

In recent years Ive taken the same approach when it comes to being "Makers." I hope that parental gambit pays off in dividends as well. Time will tell, but I love watching the story unfold.

Ratione et Passionis

Oldwolf

Thursday, January 30, 2014

woodworking 5 in 1 machine

Nice woodworking 5 in 1 machine must see

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Sunday, January 26, 2014

Grandpas Workshop in Greenwich

With his seminal work Workbenches: From Design and Theory to Construcion and Use, Christopher Schwarz had me hooked. It is a fantastic tome about workbench theory. Within my limited workbench use Ive come to agree with virtually every point Chris makes about the design & use of workbenches.

The Cover, in its wonderfully decorated glory (image from the Lost Art Press site).

With the later release of The Anarchists Tool Chest, I strayed from the ways of the Schwarz. I could never wrap my head around using a chest in a shop as small as mine. Floor space is far too precious to waste on a tool chest when a tool cabinet frees up the floor and keeps the tools closer to hand. As for the philosophy of a limited tool kit espoused by The Anarchist’s Tool Chest, I own 10 routers. Need I say more?

A fuzzy photo of Chris holding court in my kids Grandpas workshop with fellow
woodworkers at the Northeast Woodworkers Association Showcase 2011.

It was in that mindset of respecting Chris’s projects while not thinking they were for me that his publishing house, Lost Art Press, printed the English translation of Grandpa’s Workshop by Maurice Pommier. Initially I was uninterested in Grandpa’s Workshop, thinking it was simply the French children’s version of The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.

Wesley in my shop.

I began to warm to the idea of Grandpa’s Workshop when I saw many glowing mentions of it by my friends on twitter and google+. When I met people singing the book’s praises at Woodworking In America, I decided to walk across the aisle of the marketplace and finally buy a copy.

I’m glad I did. So are my kids.

My Kids Grandpas Workshop, filled with the Long Island Woodworkers Club
during the Northeast Woodworkers Association Showcase 2011.

I was initially taken by the beautiful illustrations of Grandpa (Pèpère Grosbois) and his tools. It was once I sat down and read the book with my three (3) sons that I really fell in love with it though.

The stories that the tools tell are so captivating, fanciful, pragmatic and instructive that even my 4 year old’s attention was held through the entire 48 page book (read over 3 sittings). The tools tell of history, use and the often tragic lives of the Grosbois family that owned them. By the end of the book you feel you know Pèpère as well as the young narrator does. You’ll also know what all the tools are and what they do.

The translation from French by Brian Anderson is wonderful and captures the poetic nature of the text (not having read the original French I assume this to be true, otherwise Anderson added poetry to the English, either way, its poetic).

The illustrations are the perfect compliment in tone to the text. Through images large and small, in full color and in silhouette, the action of the text plays out across the pages for all to see.

Pèpère shows the besaiguë to Sylvian (image from the Lost Art Press site).

For any woodworker with children, Grandpa’s Workshop is a must have. Even for woodworkers without children, it’s a great tale of the tools we use and some of the people who’ve used them.

After enjoying Grandpa’s Workshop so much, I feel I may have to revisit the Anarchist’s Tool Chest. While I don’t think I’ll be taking my tools down off the wall, there may be more to the Anarchist woodworking philosophy than I had given it credit for.

Sunny Sunday in the School Shop

Sometimes, working on the weekends feels good...