Test student Steve (led) and myself (right) at a trial class session. photo by Marcus Mader — Test student Steve (led) and myself (right) at a trial class session. photo by Marcus Mader

I'm Teaching

September 29, 2016

I've been woodworking intensely for the last five years. building, reading, learning, watching, doing. In that time, I've built a shop, an (almost) complete set of tools (ok, there's NEVER a complete set of tools), a workbench, furnished half of my house with custom period furniture (and still going), built projects and furniture commissions for customers both locally and at long distance, and more. And while I still feel new to the craft (and probably always will), when looking back at all I've done, I have to acknowledge my accomplishments. I've built solid skills. I've done my homework, learned from great sources. I completed many difficult and challenging projects. I've marketed, sold, and delivered furniture to customers. I've gone from a newbie -- being unsure, confused, and sometimes struggling, into a pretty efficient woodworker, knowing the steps I need to take, knowing the time and effort and attention required to do them, and applying those to projects that get completed. I know that simply knowing those things vs. executing them over and over again, are not the same. The first leads to the second. To improve my work, I need that experience, and I'll get that with each day I spend woodworking. I'm aware of both my strengths and weaknesses as a craftsman. And so it was with mixed emotions that I began to entertain the idea of teaching woodworking to others.

It all began a couple of years ago, when I was approached by Dave Coulthard, a woodworker from England, living in Des Plaines, a suburb of Chicago, about helping him realize his dream of starting a woodworking school. He had found me online through my website and other places where I had posted my work, and liked my craftsmanship and writing. And in his eyes, my background in IT didn't hurt either. We met and discussed his plans, and how I could help him (setting up tech/IT stuff at first, teaching classes and helping run the school later). As our talks progressed, I was flattered that Dave, a 36 year veteran of professional woodworking, classically trained in the apprentice system as a joiner, loved my work and craftsmanship. But I felt understandably insecure about teaching to to others. How could I presume to teach?

Brett in the shop

two chairs

But I had taught before. I had taught a few one-on-one sessions in my shop, for hire. Those classes were exhilarating and rewarding, for myself and the student(s). And last spring, building the Morris chair was actually a tandem build with my friend Brett. I was sharing my shop with Brett that year, and he had been commissioned to build a Morris chair for a friend, and as that was on my bucket list, I couldn't resist building it along with him. Brett was a newer woodworker, and the build ended up being an extended, multi-week tutoring session, where I spent time helping him through his build as I did mine. As I wrote at the time, helping him was an equally big help to me. It reinforced the lesson that teaching is a great way to learn too. I'd also been a woodworking student on many occasions from excellent teachers, and saw how they worked, and how they paced their classes. I recall watching them teach, taking notes, and imagining myself doing the same.

"OK, OK", I felt ready to teach. I knew I had woodworking skills, experience, and passion to share with students. I knew I would be learning from Dave, and learning from my students. And it was an excellent chance to add more woodworking into my daily life. Dave and I worked on the plan for the school for months, getting together the facility (Dave's space in Des Plaines, IL), putting together the classes, the website & registration system, the social media stuff, the marketing materials, etc etc. It was all a lot of work, but unlike a lot of work I've done in my life, it didn't fell like work. I was so excited for the outcome that I just dove in and did what needed to be done.

So here we are, finally, and the doors are open. I hope this new chapter will become a big part of my life. If you're anywhere in the Chicagoland area, and would like to learn woodworking in a great environment from passionate, experienced people, please take a look at what we have to offer. Classes start in a few weeks!

http://midwestwoodworkingschool.com

I will be blogging over there, as I continue to do here. So even if you can't attend classes but enjoy my ramblings, keep an eye on the blog over there for my writing.

Some Trim Carpentry for Fun

September 21, 2016

Trim carpentry is fun. Sometimes. As a furniture maker, I enjoy being able to work on projects in the comfort of my own shop, with a nice bench, and my whole array of tools and work holding apparatuses that I have gathered together over the years. As a homeowner, fixing up the place is an ongoing series of tasks that is never done. And fixing up things that are in, on, or attached to the house is often in uncomfortable places, with a limited set of tools (always not enough, requiring multiple trips to my wood shop or the handyman bench on the basement), and terrible or non-existent work holding.

Once the tools and work holding situation problem is figured out for the task at hand, I run into another problem: I want to treat things like a woodworker, not a carpenter (sorry carpenters). I get fussy about little details that won't show, or won't matter. I'm not saying that carpenters are more sloppy than furniture makers; it's just that when you change the scale of your work, the requirements change. For you woodworkers, think about how different timber framing is from making little gift boxes. Watching a skilled carpenter do their thing is a great education for a furniture maker, and vice versa. Both trades do things differently, and appropriate to the task at hand. I know I would never be efficient enough as a carpenter.

But recently, I had an opportunity to try my hand on applying some of my woodworking skills on a long overdue house repair project. Our house has suffered from a terrible set of front porch stairs since the day we bought it, and it was long overdue to be repaired. I knew enough to hire a carpenter (and good friend) to do the pro stuff. I did the demo, and then proceeded to assist (or get in the way?) during the (re)build. Not finding any pre-made hand rails that would work for the design, I had a chance to mill my own in the shop, using some hollow & round planes for the profile. I also made the post caps. We were then forced to consider a design change, as we had to remove some of the siding that was applied to the (incorrect) profile of the old stairs, creating an opportunity to add some finished wainscoting around the stairs. I had fun finishing and fitting the finished parts, and after the painter (another pro and friend) was finished, the result was great. It also makes the front door, screen door, windows and ceiling work I did last year look so much better.

Thank you Dustin Christian of Focal Point Carpentry (Milwaukee, WI) and Jacob Levee of Jacob's Ladder for their great work. And thanks to my neighbors, for putting up with 18 years of looking at my garbage steps.

Keep Your Eyes Open

September 13, 2016

I'm not an architect, but as I've grown as a furniture maker, the connections between furniture and architecture is strong and undeniable. Gustav Stickley, a furniture maker, designed homes, and published other's plans for craftsman homes, in his The Craftsman magazine. Frank Lloyd Wright not only designed homes, but often the furniture that went in them (the control freak that he was). So its not surprising to find inspiration in period buildings.

Recently, I went on a walking tour / architecture tour of some turn-of-the-last-century homes and buildings in my neighborhood. As a period furniture maker, a fan of craftsman / arts & crafts furniture, and the history of my city & neighborhood, this was a slam dunk for me. The tour was a mixed bag of highs and lows. There were some places that had been "modernized" by clueless people who had more money than taste, not "getting it", and ruining once classic interiors with horrid sterile choices (me, "they painted the oak wainscoting and built-in hutch GREY!?!?!"). Those places ranged from sad to unbearable (me "what did they do with the the original cabinets, the one's they replaced with those plastic things?"). But thankfully there were several places that, oh boy, they GOT IT. Really got it. Either well preserved, or in one case, lovingly restored - a gut rehab (for damage and structural issues) that looked like it had been that way for 100 years.

The star of the show (for me anyway, most people were oohing and awwwwing over a 1920s garage that had been converted into what must have been an aging rock star's modern man cave. Once color - concrete. sigh) was "the Rose Building", at 2934 W Logan Blvd, Chicago. It was so nicknamed by it's heavy Art Nouveau and Craftsman styled woodwork, art glass, and masonry using repeating rose motifs. (I wasn't allowed to take interior photos, but here are a few expired real estate listings that show interior shots, here and here.). Not only is the interior immaculate, with fantastic built-ins, trim, and woodwork throughout, that a look at this detail. A few decades ago, when this neighborhood was rougher, the original sidelights of the dramatic front door were vandalized, and replaced with simple plate glass...

... but over the last few years, they did research on the original glass, found old photographs, and rebuilt it to look like this...

Simply fantastic. The event was great, and I learned a lot about what to do and what not to do. My own maxim was reinforced - don't fight your home's style, embrace it, or get a different house. Anytime someone tries to think they're clever and quirky trying to make a Victorian home in Swedish modern, or an art deco house into a Georgian, you're going to fail, and it's going to look terrible.

So, keep our eyes open out there, there's a lot to learn, and lot to inspire your woodworking.

Drawing Table, part 2

July 21, 2016

(This is a continuation of the "Drawing Table" series, click here for part 1 )

The top of the table is a classic breadboard top. And as it's the most visible part of the whole piece, I wanted to find boards with some nice figure. I found a gorgeous nine foot wide cherry board, that, when cut into three sections, would be enough for the main part of the top. It had a mix of light and dark wood, but I knew it would look great laminated together. I liked the contrast it would produce. The rest of the cherry was easy source on this run, as the hardwood dealer had plenty on hand, and back at the shop, I got to work.

The lamination of the top went well, and before I cut the long tenons for the breadboard ends, I wanted to make the ends first. Those were cut with a hollow chisel mortiser, and cleaned up with a chisel. I was then able to transfer the mortise locations to the top, and then cut the tenons. I did those with a guide and a router, and then cleaned it up with a rabbeting block plane and router plane. I then cut out the sections to make the haunches and long tenons with a hand saw, and cleaned up with a chisel. Finally, holes were cut for the pegs, and the ends were begged onto the top, with the out two holes on each side elongated on the tenon to allow for wood movement. There's a lot of work that goes into such a top, but it's worth in, as it stays flay, level, and allows for seasonal movement.

Next, I was able to focus on the legs and feet. The base features thick legs, with a dado to house the upper part and allow for adjustment, tenoned into a large mortise in the thick feet. The feet gave me a great opportunity to add an architectural element, and laid out a series of shoulders and curves. The tenons were cut by hand, and cleaned up with a router plane.

The large dados/housings in each lower leg was a tricky cut, as I had a lot of material to remove. I ended up using a large straight bit in a router table to clear out most of the waste, then cleaned it up with a chisel. The last part of the base was a stretcher that joined to the two halves, joined with a wedged through tenon. The top section was similar to the bottom, with two smaller "legs" joined by a stretcher. Both pairs of legs needed holes drilled through them to allow for adjusting the table height. Then the last little bit was the tilting portion that connected to the top. I made two shaped brackets, pre-drilled with holes for the top, and detailed with a simple curve. These were then pieced along the tilt access in line with the tilt access on the top of the top legs. To add rigidity, I added a faceted dowel between the swivel points.

with the base together, I could attach the top, and see how it all worked together, and it did. I then took it apart, and did the fitting for the hardware, including mortising in the casement window stays that controlled the tilt of the top.

Although I still needed the bottom pencil rest, I was ready to finish, and worked on the rest while the finishing process was underway. For cherry, I usually apply a clear shellac. But in this case, I decided to try an amber shellac, which had the effect of "accelerating" the way in which cherry darkens over time. Fresh cherry is very pink, but mellows to a nice medium brown after a couple of years (sunlight depending). Adding the amber shellac gets it closer to that aged cherry look, and will result in a nice blend once the cherry itself ages. So I applied the finish, spraying each section separately; bottom base, top base, and top. After several coats of shellac, sanding in between, I applied paste wax with a 0000 steel wool pad.

I then re-assembled everything, appealing the hardware, and finally screwing on to the front end the pencil rest.

I couldn't wait to get this table installed in my office. But once I did, I soon realized I needed some accompanying parts to make the whole setup work well. So I built a few quick projects. I built a shaker style pine wall shelf for drawing and drafting tools, a cork bulletin board with a cherry frame for the wall behind it, and a little pine tape and pencil caddy to rest on the back edge. And while I originally clamped the drafting light to the top edge of the table, I later made a little wall mounted clamping surface for the light (the lamp clamped to the table made the light too shakey).

And with that, I had a nice little drawing and drafting station on my little office. The only piece I have left to build is a nice stool, as the big box store mystery wood knockoff I'm using now wants to fall apart on my any day now. Having a place dedicated to drawing has been wonderful for helping me work out furniture designs, and slowly my drawing skills are improving.

And finally, I recently had a great photo session for the piece, and posted those on the gallery. Take a look at the final piece here.

Drawing Table, part 1

July 17, 2016

Being able to make plans and drawings is an essential skill in building. While not all woodworkers (including myself) need to slavishly follow measured drawings to make furniture, the process of working out proportions, construction details, joinery, and overall form before making sawdust is a core step in any build.

A popular tool among many woodworkers is the 3D drawing software Sketchup, which they use to (relatively) easily lay out, design, and proportion furniture and woodworking projects. Furniture can be laid out, virtually "built" in 3D, then studied, rotated, scaled, textured, dimensioned, and adjusted easily. Sketchup is a great tool, as it is free, widely used, well documented for woodworking uses, and runs on both Macs & Windows machines. And with my background in IT and computers going back several decades, learning how to use it came very quickly for me. I and fairly handle in it. I once designed my entire kitchen cabinet project to within a 16th of an inch using Sketchup, and it was invaluable. But I'm not so keen on using it as my primary design tool anymore.

The first issue I have with Sketchup woodworking is that using it involves spending lots of time in front of a computer, something I do more than I want to already for work, some entertainment, and of course writing this blog and promoting myself as a woodworker. It's hard to get excited, and remain undistracted, in front of a computer. There's always something else to check, look at, and fiddle with. It's hard to keep my furniture design inspiration going when sitting down at the computer, again.

The next issue that comes into play is that I've wanted to become much better at drawing, sketching, and illustrating by hand. This has been reinforced by the excellent hand drawings I've admired in older woodworking books (as well as some new ones!), as well as in the design ideas expressed in the book By Hand & Eye by George Walker & Jim Tolpin. Back in high school, I chose drafting classes as my elective courses for all four years. This was back before computer assisted drafting (CAD), and we instead used pencil, paper, and mechanical drafting arms to learn drafting skills. I enjoyed it then, and as a result, I can knock out a fairly serviceable technical drawing when needed. But it wasn't art class, and it wasn't drawing class, so when the rulers and T-squares go away, my drawings start to get a little shakey. But the satisfaction of making a good, useful drawing is still there today, and while I need more practice, the freehand drawing I've done is still proving useful and satisfying.

OK, so I wanted to draw more, but now I had another problem: where to do it? The surface of my workbench is a lousy choice. While level, it isn't exactly forgivingly smooth, and any pencil line finds way too many dings and dents along the way, piercing the paper and making drawing there useless. It is also too flat and low. I could clear stuff off my kitchen table, but that's also too flat, and I don't want to stick the ends of my compass into the nice table top a thousand times. I have a self healing mat I could put down, but that's a little spongey, or I could get a piece of hardboard and... and... etc. OK, I'm a woodworker, why not build a nice drawing table?

Right around the time I was mulling all this over, I happened to be in a little shop in the neighborhood, and saw this drawing / drafting table being used for coffee and scones.

I liked the simple design, and the adjustability, and saw I could make one pretty easily from some simple 1" x 3" pine. So, that's was my starting point, and over the next few weeks I worked through what I liked and didn't like about that table's design. The example piece was pretty basic - no frills, not fancy, and designed to get the job done. However, I knew that I wanted something that would be special, and a little more fancy than just-enough-to-get-it-done. My table needed to be a special place where I could feel creative. I wanted to personalize it, and add some extra fit and finish to take it up a notch. I needed to bear in mind that I shouldn't go crazy and have this project take decades to complete - I wanted to get drawing! So I looked for a balance between crude / simple, and fancy / special.

I did research on other drawing and drafting tables, and I found a lot of great (and not so great) examples. I took elements from one or the other until I settled upon my final design. One element that I really wanted to incorporate was the metal hardware for the tiling mechanism. I saw many vintage or antique tables with these great semi-circular tilt support pieces, sort of like this...

... but short of buying a whole antique table and using the hardware, I could not source modern versions of this anywhere. I finally settled on using casement window stays, which work really well. I can't say I like it as much as the semi-circular hardware, but I'm pretty pleased with how they worked out.

So with my design down, I was ready to build. That's coming in part 2.

GALLERY

On Instagram

Drawer slips. Getting back to finishing up this dresser.

Following a 27” haircut after the correct size was figured out, here’s the percussion stand and the musician Bill in situ after the performance of Shank’s Mare at the Art Institute last week. It did not fall over.

A quick last minute project - a percussion stand for a musician performing in this weekend’s Shanks Mare show at the Art Institute https://www.artic.edu/events/4217/performance-shanks-mare , replacing the PVC think in the last picture. #shanksmare . Pine, maple wedges, shellac.