"It's a poor workman who blames . . ."

[Andy Dingley]

What the hell sort of trans-atlantic abomination is a "Chippendale high boy" ? Where do you find those? Iceland?

High boys, Chippendale or no, aren't found East of Massachusets.

[Andy Dingley]

Speak for yourself, classical-ogee boy

"Gothic and Proud"

[Tom Watson]

Visi- or Ostro- ?

Regards, Tom.

"People funny. Life a funny thing." Sonny Liston

Thomas J.Watson - Cabinetmaker (ret.) tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)

[Silvan]

Oh. OK. I know bupkis about all this Green and Stickely Chippen Farming Bliffleblather Deco stuff, as I have just demonstrated rather adroitly. Furniture is for people with big shops, big wood budgets, and houses with room inside to receive the results of same. I'm in the none of the above category, so I don't do, and haven't bothered to learn anything about furniture.

The point about the icepick and hammer was pretty stupid too, now that I think back.

My ultimate point is that I have seen a lot of tools too crappy to use for anything. Perhaps a good craftman would never find himself in possession of such things in the first place, but there's always a line somewhere between what you might like, and what you can afford. A good craftsman can make a mediocre blurfl perform better than a poor craftman can do with a Super Blurfl XL Plus, but the underlying assumption that tools are no excuse, and a chisel is a chisel is a chisel just annoys the hell out of me.

[Andy Dingley]

This week it's Pugin-

Usually though it's somewhere between trad- and cyber-

[Andy Dingley]

Well mainly I use bits of old hacksaw blade. The first rule of making good stuff with nothing is to learn to make your own tools. If you can grind, heat-treat, and find a source of carbon steel, then you're sorted for making almost anything the 18th century could offer.

Making a frame saw from scratch isn't something I'd think about attempting, when I live in a world with cheap shops for bandsaw blade. But when I needed a veneer saw on a Sunday afternoon, I just sat down and filed one out of sheet. Didn't even take long to do.

[Silvan]

I'm with you up to the heat treating bit, unfortunately. One of these days...

[bridger]

do you have a gas stove in your kitchen?

[mac davis]

I think it's sort of a catch 22 kinda thing... IMHO, power tools are more effective and last longer if you know how to do it by hand... the same as the fact/opinion that you are easier on a car if you've worked on them and know what happens when you use the accelerator or brake.. (unlike my wife, who thinks that they're on & off switches *g*) I also find that the more/better power tools that I get, and the better I get with them, the more I seem to enjoy the fitting and tinkering with hand tools... full circle? I hope not!!

[mac davis]

same with the cooks on cattle drives...

I was reading about the "real" cowboys in a book (chili recipes, actually *lol*) that said that the amount of calories burnt in a day was awesome... their favorite desert was beef fat with molasses on it... because their bodies crazed the fat that they were burning up so fast.. (still better than the Eskimos, who crave fat so bad in the winter that they eat blubber) I think I'll take that trip to the frig now.. *g*

[rcook5]

Try a cheap propane torch and a couple of firebricks. Instant heat treat for < $10.

(and practice. Did I mention practice?)

--RC You can tell a really good idea by the enemies it makes

[Norman D. Crow]

Why do you think Abe Lincoln was always portrayed as such a skinny drink of water? Making split rail fences qualifies. I've described on here before about cutting firewood on the farm before my Uncle got his first chainsaw. Felling with ax and 2 man crosscut, limbing with ax, cutting to 8' length with crosscut, splitting into fence post or firewood size wedges with wedge & sledgehammer, etc. Try *part* of the day in the woods like that, you were pretty dam hungry come supper time!

Re: Lumber camp calories. If you're ever up that way, visit the "Adirondack Museum" in Blue Water Lake, NY. Plan on most of a day. They had a video theater(mostly still shots) about logging in the Adirondacks and discussed the calories. Seems they also kept their own herd(flock, gaggle, group,?) of pigs, and fresh pork was a staple part of their diet.

Museum: Many displays of Adirondack life, as well as actual artifacts and displays; old horse drawn snowplows & snow packers from sleigh days, very early snowmobiles, Cedar strip canoes, early racing boats, etc. We had driven by some yrs. before visiting, and they had a full 25-30' sailboat under a glass dome. When we visited, it was no longer there, and they explained that the dome trapped the moisture so bad that the boat was dry rotting, so they had to remove it.

[Guess who]

Perhaps better to hope so. In your dotage, it won't matter if you fall asleep while cutting a board with a handsaw. You'll have the hand-skills needed by then to use the hand tools and still build good stuff for your grandkids.

[Mike Girouard]

Show me talent - I'll respect it. Put yourself in my face and tell me you're talented - you get shown the nearest window . . . closed or not.

FoggyTown "Cut to shape . . . pound to fit."

[Mike Girouard]

Look at some of pre-17th century survivors. Crude, ham-fisted, asymmetrical, awkward, unattractive are some of the adjectives that come to mind. They look like they were crafted by people that just didn't know the meaning of "square".

Why should woodworking be any different to any other of life's endeavors? Some few people are born prodogies and can do miraculous things with seemingly little or no effort in one or several areas. A few more are born with the almost insectile patience required to concentrate with the smallest focus until that piece of the whole is perfect then go on to the next piece and do the same. Yet a few more have the innovative skills to make something so completely new that no comparison with precursors is even possible.

The huge mass of the rest of us bodge and dick our way through as best as possible and are not too distressed if we even get close to, "Hey! That's not too bad!"

FoggyTown "Cut to shape . . . pound to fit."

[Tom Watson]

Michael , I absolutely loved the description of the patience needed to create the detailed piece. The hearkening to the insectile was masterful. Yet, it requires more.

Without the sense of the whole, your take on creativity becomes the slavish devotion to minutiae.

There is both one mind and two - the overmind tempers the creation of the obsessed mind, to the degree that they act in consort.

But the overmind must rule, lest it succumb to ritual.

Innovation is the natural result of attempted replication, and that is why it is a good exercise to re-create the best of what the world has to offer, based on your take on things.

I happen to revere a particular Goddard-Townsend secretary desk.

But, as an older man, there are things that I would change.

Innovation, in the sense that you have evoked, is really a re-imagining of the genre - and I would not choose to go there.

I'll settle for dovetailed intersections of the pigeonholes, and a change of finish, to something that doesn't take so much of the caretaker's budget of time or money.

I suppose it is a paean to evolution, rather than revolution.

Just my take on things, you know - not a knock.

Regards, Tom.

"People funny. Life a funny thing." Sonny Liston

Thomas J.Watson - Cabinetmaker (ret.) tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)

[Australopithecus scobis]

And making your own tools is fun. The trick to heat treating is to use a magnet. The pros can tell by color, or they have a pyrometer, whatever that is. Don't try the propane torch alone on anything bigger than a piece of hacksaw. Oh, and practice...

[J. Clarke]

Dream on. I remember a discussion with a number of other techs one time back before there was such a thing as a microprocessor in the world, let alone Windows. Our consensus was that one of the benefits the computer has brought into the world is that it provides a clear demonstration of the perversity of inanimate objects.

Yeah, it's _supposed_ to give the same result given the same input . . .

[J. Clarke]

When you can give the machine the drawing and the lumber and it produces the finished part without further intervention then the machine has the skill. Until then the skill lies in setting the machine up to do the work. Even NC machines need tweaking to get the parts to come out right.

[rcook5]

Increasingly the skill is shifting to the machine from the human. It's not entirely there yet and it may never be for most things. However the process has been going on for more than a century.

--RC

You can tell a really good idea by the enemies it makes