Descending Ashtray

Now that he has his own coveralls and tape, Ethan is ready to come help out in the shop.

I went to Miller’s hardware today to look for something to split firewood, when I came across this ingenius invention. For only ten dollars more, I just had to try it. So I took it home and it was splitting incredible! The wood just exploded off the chopping block. The wings on each side of the blade are spring loaded and expand out on contact.

I am looking for tips on making knives, specifically kitchen knives. I would like to incorporate a custom-handled kitchen knife into a cutting board idea I have. Something like a chef or cook’s knife, with a blade about 7 or 8 inches long with a straight back that goes all the way through the length of the tang. I’d like to rivet some wood handles to a pre-made blade blank, but have never done anything like that. Links to vendors would be awesome, or videos that show how the riveting works.

Gabe and Brandy were here in Oregon last night, stopping over on their West coast road trip. Gabe’s sister lives near San Francisco, and they drove up with baby Ethan yesterday. They’ll be back in Portland Thursday through Saturday (stay tuned), but I thought this trip would be a fine time to present them with their belated (they were married in March!) wedding gift — this chest.

The chest uses four different woods: Alder for the sides, Walnut for the feet and lid frame, aromatic Cedar inside the lid, and a piece of figured Red Gum book-matched on the top.

Except for the aromatic Cedar inside the lid, the wood came from a particularly awesome Craigslist find, which also included 25 or more board feet of cherry for the amazing price of $150. It was a trick getting everything into my Jeep, but well worth it; I am still looking at half the pile, having completed this and several other projects with the treasure trove.

There are quite a few things I would do differently, were I to approach the project again. I learned a lot, though, and for me that is a large part of how I define a successful project. If I was already a master, where would the fun be?

In particular, this was the first time I attempted a box joint, using my dovetail router jig (which doubles as a box-joint jig) with pretty good success. Alder, used on the sides of the box, is a somewhat splintery wood, and next time, I think I will use a backer board to lessen the tear-out. Still, it made pretty nice joints very quickly, and I think perfection, or as near to it as I will get, is within reach.

Finally, the top represents my first attempt at veneer work. The Red Gum I used on the exterior seemed too awesome to use as solid lumber, so I took a small section, re-sawed it on the bandsaw, and planed it to 1/4 inch thickness, essentially doubling its utility. I then book-matched and glued this veneer to a plywood substrate, which received another layer of aromatic cedar as the other piece of the sandwich. Then I clamped like the dickens. I really wished I had David Marks’ vaccuum press, but I think it turned out well.

The whole thing matched my original sketch pretty well, as it turns out. Who needs plans when you have colored pencils?

Editor’s note: On my last trip of the spring (I hope), Sarah and I visited my sister and her husband in Boston, a trip we planned long before the string of weddings and work trips that have kept me away from this site and occupied for the last few months. Back (literally) to the drawing board soon, I promise.

Down the street from my sister’s North End apartment is the North Bennett Street School, a woodworking school I first became aware of in my copy of The Workshop, a book of tool porn I picked up a few years ago. Several months after I purchased the book, I visited my sister for the first time and happened to walk by. I’ve been thinking about getting inside ever since, and I finally had my chance last week. Head of Admissions Robert Delaney was kind enough to give Sarah and I a tour.

The North Bennett Street School was founded in 1885, designed to educate unskilled immigrants in trades including cabinetmaking and jewelry making. Today, it has expanded to include other disciplines, including violin/cello making, bookbinding, carpentry, and locksmithing, with a focus on real vocational training. The focus is not on presenting part-time workshops or classes for the hobbyist, but on training people to become full-time craftsmen and -women.

One thing they are known for instilling in all the furniture students is to always begin each project with a full-scale drawing, from leg length down to the last dovetail. The idea is that you work out a project’s unique challenges on paper, which is obviously a lot cheaper than Honduran Mahogany. I was pretty jealous of this student’s large drawing table.

Over the school’s 150+ year history, they’ve collected a lot of furniture, parts and pieces of which make up a large library of furniture components students can study, including Cabriole legs and even hardware like antique brass drawer pulls and hinges.

The curriculum taught is based in the techniques used by makers in 18th Century America, a time period that is viewed by the school as the pinnacle of furniture-making. Administrators are careful to emphasize that Bennett Street is not a design school, and do not choose this period for its aesthetics, but for its exemplary craft. They feel the techniques for furniture making used in that time period literally cannot get better, and facility with these techniques should allow graduates to create any style of furniture they choose, and do so with extremely high craftsmanship. As such, the aesthetics of a student’s work are not the most important aspect, but rather how well they demonstrate the skills used to build it. Hence this piece of student inlay, not pleasing to my visual tastes, but remarkably made:

While at the school, each student will build at least four pieces of furniture, beginning with a toolbox which will serve them at the school. Students design their own, within a set of guidelines, but wood and hardware selection provide a way for students to differentiate according to their own tastes. I really like the one on the left.

I doubt I will ever attend this school, although it looked incredible. Boston is a great town, but very expensive, and I’m just not sure I could give up our house, with its two-car garage shop. It did get me thinking about grad school again, though … being around a group of really passionate people working towards the same goals again sounds … well, great. We’ll see.

I’m not sure where the idea came from, but when I arrived in Des Moines last Friday, Gabe and I immediately started discussing and sketching ideas for a joint project in his newly-cleaned shop, something that would combine Gabe’s freeform and organic sculptural style with my more structured and conceptual approach. Interestingly, we both had a very similar idea, so it was easy to get going, even though I spilled some water on the sketch. Oh, and we only had one day to work.

I began Saturday morning by planing some poplar to 1/4-inch thickness so I could use it to construct the sides of the 5×5 cube that would be suspended in the tree’s branches. When that was all done, I cut the planed stock on the table saw to 5 inches with the table saw’s blade set to 45 degrees.

I took quite a few breaks to spectate as Gabe showed off his facility with the bandsaw and his sanding contraption, constructing the trunk and branches of the tree from pieces of walnut.

Did I say facility? Watching Gabe use these two tools is like watching a veteran, world-class musician play violin, so measured and intentional are his movements. I haven’t had a great deal of experience with either tool, as my work is more geometric in nature, and I was extremely impressed.

I left Gabe to his performance and made my way to the drill press, where I drilled 25 holes in each of the 6 sides I’d just cut, followed by some quick sanding.

Finally, after a quick-ish glue up (hint: use masking tape to construct a lightweight cube in this way) and some lunch, we were able to start piecing the trunk and branches together. It was a little like flower arrangement, placing the branches, and Gabe’s sophisticated spatial imagination really came into play as he sanded and molded branches to the tight geometry of the cube, weaving the branches in and out.

Too quickly, I had to leave the workshop and the nearly-complete project.

The most amazing part of the day was the speed with which the elements came together in a cohesive whole, even with a couple of setbacks and having to create a few jigs on the fly. I don’t recall ever working so collaboratively with someone else (I used to hate group projects in art school). It was the highlight of the weekend for me, and I left inspired with a lot of new ideas for my own work. Thanks, Gabe, for a great day. Now, what should we call it? And when are we doing Number 2 in Portland?