A Evening with Frank Klausz

[A Lurker]

My woodturning club (NJ Woodturners) had the May meeting in the shop of Frank Klausz in Pluckemin, NJ.

details his bio and accomplishments. I took some photos at the events which are in a slide show at: It may be a little slow on dial-up, but opens well on broadband.

Most notable from the meeting is how intense and passionate Frank Klausz is about woodworking. Also the shop is just wonderful, but not for exotic equipment, but rather for light and space. His seven employees have traditional benches in well lighted areas with skylights. Good old iron machines, but nothing real exotic, are grouped in the center of the shop near the dust collection or in a side auxillary room. There is a separate spray both and finishing room, along with an office and exhibit/sample room for clients. Outside was the spring planting in a nice garden. A bright pleasant place with Frank's tool collection stashed high on the walls.

The presentation included his limited turning experiences (after all it was for a woodturning club) and his tradtional presentation on wood technology, world's fastest dovetail, sharpening, and planing. I was most impressed that although he has some expensive exotics, many of the bread and buttter tools are those that were passed to me by my father - Stanley/Bailey planes etc. Most impressive was all of the book matched wood stashed around the shop.

It was a very pleasant evening that went for more than 3 hours. Hope you enjoy the photos.

Jerry

[Olebiker]

Bless me, Father, for I am guilty of the sin of envy.

Dick Durbin Tallahassee

[RayV]

[charlieb]

THANK YOU!

Frank Klausz is at the other end of the spectrum from James Krenov.

Mr. Klausz was TRAINED, from a very young age, to be a furniture maker and learned the trade through apprenticeship - to his father.

Mr. Krenov CHOSE to be a furniture maker and sought out teachers, both in design, as well as execution.

Mr. Klausz earns a good living making furniture FOR people.

Mr. Krenov makes furniture HE wants to make and people buy the things he makes (or are given the piece).

Mr. Klausz's work focuses on the function,form and fit of a piece, the wood, for the most part, being merely a material to work in order to make the piece. Which is not to saw that he ignores the wood - but rather than he selects it based on how well (quickly and easily) it can be worked in order to make it into a part for a piece. That is not to say that he doesn't have carefully selected and very nice stock. But the best stuff is for the occassional really nice piece. I suspect that he buys stock based on project needs and doesn't search or seek out the unusual or rare wood and keep it for some future unknown piece.

Mr. Krenov, on the other hand, began looking for unusual wood and acquiring what he could afford - and had space for - with no particular piece in mind. Mr. Krenov starts with the wood and either develops a design that will best utilize it - or - starts with an idea and then finds the wood best suited to his idea.

Mr. Klausz is a very practical furniture maker.

Mr. Krenov, by his own admission, is an imparctical "cabinet maker" - the title of his first book as I recall.

Mr. Klausz was trained to be fast and efficient. If you watch him work (see Frank Klausz - Making A Dovetailed Drawer) you will see just how fast and efficient he is.

Mr. Krenov comes at furniture making from a completely different perspective. He spends a lot of time pondering and just as much time on what might appear to be very simple, little, insignificant details - chamfer and edge or merely ease it, perhaps with just a little sanding.

Mr. Klausz is a great teacher - of efficient technique and discipline (and I don't mean "discipline" in a Catholic School/ nuns way).

Mr. Krenov is more of guide or guru - to a philosphical APPROACH to furniture making - more geared towards insights than technique(s) - which is not to say he doesn't have excellent technique for the few types of joinery he uses.

If I wanted to make a living doing woodworking I'd look for a quy like Mr. Klausz. If I wanted to learn to make the types of furniture I would want to live with - year in and year out - Mr. Krenov.

Both are exceptional woodworkers. Why are they both european? Of course, there's Ian Kirby.

charlie b

ps - I got a grin out of the log "beam" supporting the "shelf" over the doorway. Mr. Klausz is very pragmatic.

[GROVER]

there was no empty space. It seems the accumulated tools, supplies and projects fill all the available room. The lesson here is WW's need a shop the size of a hanger for Boeing 747. Joe G

[Swingman]

Perhaps one of the greatest compliments one can give is to say that you said exactly what I was thinking. :)

Well put, as usual!

[LRod]

Okay, but now what am I going to do with a Boeing 747?

[Scott Lurndal]

I suppose you could use _it_ as your shop. M&T Joinery at 35,000 ft.

In the 80's the company I worked for sold a mainframe to a client, along with a 18 pocket document (e.g. check) sorter to install on a DC-10 so they could sort checks as they flew them overnight from the west coast to the east coast.

scott

[LRod]

Interesting. Two of the biggest users of the National Airspace System in Chicago on the midnight shift when I was working were the check couriers (lots of Cessna Caravans) and the Wall Street Journal couriers.

[Larry Blanchard]

For some reason, that reminded me of the biggest Rube Goldberg device I ever saw - a Phillipsburg Inserter. Had about 12 "stations" for stuffing envelopes. Never ran over 10 minutes without jamming :-).

OTOH, my father was a Linotype operator. I understand the inventor, Mergenthaler, had a nervous breakdown after designing the thing :-).

[Scott Lurndal]

Those document (check) sorters were pretty amazing. 2500 Documents Per Minute sort rate with very very few jams. Considering that the documents quite often had been folded in a wallet, torn, differently sized, stapled or or wrinkled, the sorter document path was amazingly robust.

As the document left the input feeder, it would transit the read-head where the magnetic ink on the bottom of the document would be read and transmitted to the mainframe. While the document passed the next

8 inches of the document path (at 2500dpm), the host would need to select which pocket to stash the document it, if the host was too slow, the document would hit the reject pocket and need to be resorted (something the customers did _not_ want to do, when missing your sort window could cost 7 digits in float).

The Fed in MSP had a sorter with so many pockets the operators wore roller skates to get from the infeed hopper to the last pocket in time to empty/fill them.

scott