I went to Iowa and all I got was this Incredible Community

Or: The Handworks 2017 round-up

And just like that, Handworks 2017 is over, and I’m back in the UK feeling quite jetlagged. After nearly 12 months of build up, the event itself flew by at breakneck speed. Given that the show covered five separate buildings and featured over 50 demonstrators, it would be nigh on impossible to give an exhaustive account of the show (not to mention that I covered the event for Furniture & Cabinet Making so need to attempt that herculean task for the magazine). Needless to say, the tools were shiny, especially Konrad’s planes, which I finally got to try for the first time, and the Studley reproduction was eye-wateringly beautiful. Seeing new tools unveiled by Veritas, Blue Soruce Tool Works, and Texas Heritage, and a sneak preview at something else which has not yet been publically announced, was very cool. But what really struck me throughout the two days, and what I had flown out for, was the sense of community.

I’ve known Chris (of Sterling Tool Works) for 3 years, but Handworks was the very first time we met in person. Many thanks to Chris for letting me hang out on his stall and sell OtW tees.

I’m only one participant, and I am looking forward to reading other accounts of the event over the coming days to see how others experienced the event. But for me the real highlight was the warmth, friendship, cameraderie, and inspiration demonstrated by everyone I spoke to. I’ve written a lot about community in the past two years, but nothing had prepared me for the experience of meeting so many good friends in person for the first time, for seeing plenty of old friends again, or for the generosity of spirit in action. Thank you to everyone who stopped by to say hello and introduce themselves.

Jason Thigpen (of Texas Heritage) is another longstanding friend I’ve been waiting years to finally meet. He has a strong line in headgear.

Events like these always result in opportunities that wouldn’t otherwise present themselves. On Friday I gave an impromptu talk on selecting backsaws at the Bad Axe Tool Works stand thanks to a very kind invitation from Mark, and that night got to play an incredible resonator guitar by Mule Resonators over beer (one of Matt’s guitars needs to become a permanent fixture in my life). Chatting to Megan resulted in a possible article for Popular Woodworking next year, and I have also started to knit together the strands of an ambitious article which I hope will consolidate and expand upon some of the themes I’ve been writing about for the past four years, and which is set to feature contributions from some significant craftspeople – more on this as it starts to come together. A personal highlight was Jameel Abraham of Benchcrafted (who by the way is the nicest guy imagineable) asking me to put some OtW decals on the sublime tool chest he built with Chris for PopWood last year. And where else but Handworks can you turn around at breakfast to find Jim Tolpin and George Walker standing behind you in the coffee queue?

Jim McConnell is my favourite woodwork blogger, and a good friend to boot. Beer was quaffed, yarns were spun, memories were made.

Although it is bittersweet to leave Amana (for me at least – the Apprentice still has a beard phobia which meant that Handworks wasn’t the most comfortable time for her), the good memories and strength of community, will continue to inspire me in my ‘shop for months to come. Some of the same faces will be at the European Woodwork Show in September, and while another Handworks is never guaranteed, I am sure that future events will continue to bring us together.

I can’t possibly hope to mention everyone in this blog post that I spoke to over the course of the two days, but here are a small selection of the hundreds of photos I took,

With Megan Fitpatrick, who is just as entertaining and erudite in person as in print.

It was great to finally meet Nancy Hiller after months of chatting on Instagram.

Mark Harrell is a dangerous man – everytime he makes a new product money disappears from my bank account. Top chap.

I’ve known Anne (of All Trades) for years, but this was the first opportunity we’ve had to catch up in person. Great times.

Does the Kilted Woodworker need any introductions? Ethan is one of the most generous and community minded people I know.

This guy definitely doesn’t need any introduction. But he’s been a damn fine friend and mentor over the past 3 years.

With Vic Tesolin. There’s a 98% chance that Vic cracked an offensive joke immediately before this photo was taken, during it, or straight after. I wouldn’t change that for the world.

Jameel Abraham of Benchcrafted – the nicest guy. Thanks to him Handworks happens.

Konrad Sauer and I first spoke when I was researching the Karl Holtey article for PopWood. His planes are sublime.

Saint Roy!

 

John and Janet Switzerland – the loveliest people you could hope to meet, and great craftspeople to boot.

With Jenny Bower (who I interviewed for Furniture & Cabinet Making a couple of months ago) and husband Nathan.

The Baby Anarchist’s Tool Chest built by Chris and Jameel, now sporting OtW decals.

 

The Policeman’s Boot Bench… part 9

The Policeman’s Boot Bench is now glued up, which seems like a fitting point at which to put it to one side for a couple of weeks while I fly out to Chicago for a family break followed by Handworks in Iowa. I’ve never had a glue-up that I’ve enjoyed – as soon as the glue bottle comes out I always feel the pressure ratchet upwards. But that aside, assembling the Boot Bench went smoothly and without any real incident. The key I think for any smooth assembly is to have a clear plan of attack, to have all the clamps opened to the right capacity before you reach for the glue, and where possible to break large scale assemblies into more manageable stages.

Gluing the dovetails, with the bottom shelf fitted to keep the casework square.

Hide glue flows better when it is warm, so I always stand my glue bottle in a mug of hot water for 30-40 minutes before I start applying glue. I keep meaning to invest in a heated glue pot and start mixing up my own hide glue from granules, but until then I’ve found that Titebond liquid hide glue is an effective (and cost efficient) way of using cows as an adhesive. While the glue was warming up I did a final test fit of each of the shelves in their respective dados to make sure that they still fitted and there had been no further wood movement – the middle of a sticky and stressful assembly is definitely not the moment to discover that you need to make adjustments to a component! As the shelves had been well seasoned and then lying in stick, they were all very stable, and 7 of the 8 ends fitted perfectly. The eighth was a little tight in the dado, but a couple of localised passes with a small shoulder plane removed the few shavings necessary for a good fit once again.

As there were a significant number of components to be fitted, and I have only a modest selection of large clamps, I decided to approach this assembly in two stages. The first stage was to glue the dovetails fitting the sides and top to each other. To ensure that the sides were fixed square to the top, I slid the bottom-most shelf in place (without any glue) – this effectively gave me a four-sided carcase to clamp up, and to check for square. The dovetails were hammered home using my 24oz joiner’s mallet by Blue Spruce Toolworks, and then left in the clamps for two hours for the glue to cure.

Sealing the end grain of the shelves with a thin coat of hide glue

The second stage of assembly was to fit the shelves. The dado joint involves a lot of end grain in the gluing surface, and end grain can have a tendency to wick glue away resulting in a dry joint. To avoid this, I sealed the end grain of the shelves, and the dados, but giving them a thin coat of hide glue five minutes before I started to glue and fit the shelves. This glue was absorbed into the end grain, which prevented the second application of glue (when fitting the shelves) from being absorbed. Hide glue also acts as a lubricant, which meant that the shelves slid most of the way home under finger pressure, and required only a couple of gentle taps from the mallet to get them in the right position. I then clamped up the edges of the sides to establish good even pressure across the dados while the glue cured.

Cleaning squeeze out from each of the shelves would have been a race against the clock, but pre-finishing the interior of the casework gave me plenty of time to wipe up the excess glue

Pre-finishing the interior of the Boot Bench definitely paid off when assembling the casework, especially as the four shelves resulted in a significant amount of squeeze-out. My usual method for removing squeeze-out during glue-up is a toothbrush dipped in hot water, as well as judicious use of damp paper towels. The hide glue wiped easily off the shellac and wax finish, which meant that I could take my time in cleaning up all of the internal surfaces.

Once the glue had cured for the second stage of the assembly I removed the clamps. There is still plenty to do on this project – the shelves need to be planed flush to the front of the casework, the backboards need to be processed and fitted, and the external surfaces need to be cleaned up. But the end is now in sight, and it feels good to have the main elements assembled before travel takes me out of the workshop for a couple of weeks. I’ll pick this project up again at the end of May, when I will start work on the backboards.

Joining the sticker swap revolution

Handworks 2017 promises to be a really special couple of days, not least because it is just about the only time you can expect to find a significant proportion of our community all together in the same barn. And so I thought it would be fun to have some new OtW merchandise for the event.

These OtW decals have now arrived from the printer, and Tom’s design work is looking as crisp as ever. But how do you get your hands on these stickers? Easy. Come and find me at Handworks – I’ll be helping out on the Sterling Tool Works stand, and also dashing about covering the event for Furniture & Cabinetmaking. The stickers are $2 each or $3 for the pair. BUT if you wear an OtW tee to Handworks then you can claim both decals free of charge. I will also have a couple of OtW tees for sale (priced at $25 each).

If you’re not going to Handworks, but will be at the European Woodwork Show in September, do not despair – I’ll have a fresh print run of the decals with me at EWS.

If you’re going to Handworks let me know by leaving a comment below. Looking forward to steering everyone in Iowa next week!

Ten Years on the Path

 

Five years after my course in Totnes, I went back to visit the workshop and took the guitar I’d built on the course for a reunion with Phil – my tutor.

Exactly 10 years ago today I started woodwork for the very first time. I remember it clearly, because it was the first day of term at the Totnes School of Guitarmaking. As a former historian, I like dates, and I like origin stories. The tenth anniversary of my time in Totnes seems like a good opportunity to revisit my own.

I had finished law school, and decided to take a year out before starting work at the Leeds office of an international law firm. Totnes was the ultimate destination for that gap year, although first I worked in the construction industry for seven months to save for the lutherie tuition fees. In hindsight, a guitar building course was probably an unusual destination for me – although I’d grown up watching my maternal grandfather building all manner of things in his shed, I’d never had much inclination towards woodwork myself at that point. And although the secondary school I attended had a brand new craft, design and technology block including several well appointed workshops, there wasn’t actually any shop class being taught when I was there. I imagine that is the same for schools across the country. So I didn’t have anything in the way of experience, or even a long standing interest, in woodwork prior to starting at Totnes. What I did have though was a deep fascination in the mechanics of how stringed musical instruments worked, partly from having played violin for many years. Also, the husband of my music theory teacher was a violin and viola maker, and every Wednesday evening when I would go round for music theory lessons I would see rows of violins and violas in various states of completion hanging in the front upstairs window. So building musical instruments was something I knew people actually did.

Laurie – my ’59 Blackguard type build

The experience of seeing those partially built instruments came back to me years later, as I finished law school and tried to decide how I would spend the next twelve months. Totnes is renowned as being one of the best places in the UK to study lutherie, and I very happily signed up to the 2007 summer class. I knew the course would be rewarding and challening in equal measure. What I did not anticipate when I took my first steps onto this path, where it would lead. That twelve week class was an incredible immersion in handtool work (and you can see the course photos here), and a mindblowing introduction to lutherie. Designing your own instrument, starting with only a pencil and paper, then building it by hand, is almost indescribable. But more than that, it sparked a passion for making things with my hands that if anything, is even stronger ten years on.

When I look back at past ten years, what really surprises me is the breadth of my woodwork experience. If I’m being brutally honest, I always thought I’d have built a lot more guitars by now. But that is more than offset by the other experiences I’ve been lucky to have. Embarking on the class at Totnes, my focus was purely on the guitar before me rather than any wider view of woodwork. But in the years that followed, furniture projects started to catch my eye, and then I stumbled upon the wealth of historic information published by Lost Art Press. I’m still at heart a historian, and furniture building offers a synthesis of history and craft which satisfies both the hands and the mind. Although far from my mind when I first went to Totnes, woodwork has since become the main outlet for my interests as a historian. Nor did I expect woodwork to result in a writing career, either with Furniture & Cabinet Making, or the John Brown book with Lost Art Press. I suppose that what I’ve learned is to be alive to opportunities and to know when to say yes.

Roy and Esmerelda become acquainted.

But when I think about what I’ve gained most from these ten years on the path, it would be the ideas of self sufficiency, and community that have been most important. Being able to (slowly) furnish my home with long -lasting pieces I’ve made myself, and also the strength of community I have enjoyed. The woodwork community has been a great source of friendship, encouragement, and inspiration. And so it feels very apt that only a week after my tenth anniversary of starting woodwork I’ll be flying out to Iowa for Handworks 2017.

James McConnell, writer and curator of the Daily Skep.

Looking back, I’m very glad that a nearly-25 year old me took that leap in the dark down in south Devon. Because that first step has enriched the past ten years, introduced me to many wonderful people, and to ideas which continue to shape the way I try to live on a daily basis.