Moments from the workshop
January 25, 2012
A bewildered man…
January 23, 2012
Hello David,
I’m bewillderd by this part of today’s world, how can some one who’s never designed be a writer on design ? At least Lakshmi had the courage to do something about it and choose to learn properly. One wonders whether Armanda Levete earned more for the talk than the mason did for the job,(being an old cynic) Nice chairs, no doubt Lakshmi will have a far greater understanding of the practicals of design when she leaves you.
Regards Johnnie
Hi Johnnie
You are bewildered!? Me too!! I picked up on Levete as she is a particularly high profile and ambitious example of a trend in design practice. We are the “Design Professional” and everyone else that realizes the image are of lesser consequence. Makes me mad, especially when she is so poor at what she does. CAD is a designer’s tool that encourages easy, slick, and superficial expression and she is right there.
Lakshmi is a part of BARK furniture a brilliant young company that are building a reputation and a nice body of work.
Thanks for the comment always welcome.
David
Chair making by David Crosbie
January 20, 2012
David,
I just wanted to say thank-you for all the information you send me. I enjoy opening up all of your emails, and look forward to the next one.
Also here is a picture of a Sam Maloof rocker I built for my Wife and my first Son. It’s made from walnut and cherry.
All the structure pieces, such as the legs and rockers, were made of from cherry. All the functional pieces, such as seat and arms, are made from walnut; softer to the touch. I love the the one tone effect with natural woods.
Again thank you,
David Crosbie
cape cod MA
I love getting these emails because they affirm my efforts and drive me to continue; knowing that people really are getting something valuable from them.
This is the series of articles that Dave Crosby is referring to, do sign up.
Comments (0)The new sound in woodworking…
January 19, 2012
I’ve been in contact with a good friend and fellow woodworker Steve Walsh (see his website here) regarding a very particular idea I’ve had for a box…
Hi matey
nice to see you at the Lomas bash before Xmas.
Need your help. I have an idea for a box, it is white svcamore with a pair of juicy lips that part as the lid is opened and a tongue sticking out to form a handle. Its called “The Raspberry Box” I want it to blow a raspberry when the lid is opened. Remembering your famous Blue Danube Bench Vice do you have any ideas how I could do it??
best
david
And Steve’s Response:
Hi David,
If you want to go digital, you might look for a greeting card with a sound which plays when opened. You might find one with a rasberry sound. I have taken one of these apart before and the active ingredient is small and flat…like the disc shaped battery which powers it. Or, you can get digital versions of whoopee cushions in a small plastic capsule which is mechanically triggered when sat upon. Other than that it’s going to be a complicated clockwork thing along the lines of the noise made by bicycles with playing cards inserted into the spokes by schoolboys.
Let me know what you do!
Here are a few boxes with various fish skins attached, most of which I cured myself.
Steve.
So, those are Steve’s ideas, does anyone else out there have any ideas for this?
Comments (0)In response to “Class War and Furniture Making”
January 16, 2012
I received this email yesterday and wanted to share it with you:
David,
I received your e- mail a couple of days ago but had to mull on it a while as it struck a nerve with me,grrrrr it seems to me the pompous sender of your e- mail needs to get his head out of his backside and take a look at the real world,I am a WOODY and proud of it,I make whatever people ask of me and do my utmost to understand what they want,sure I have to guide them sometimes as what they want defies the laws of what is possible for how much they want to pay,I will design what they want and collaborate with them until they are happy,this said I do not consider myself a designer,to me design is just a means to an end ,the finished piece,I know the two are inextricably linked and there you have it, if you cant make,how can you design? at least without someone ironing out all the bugs for you,dont get me wrong designers have their place I am all in favour of new ideas and innovation but they should also learn what is possible in a practical sense,If they dont make it how can they claim the credit for it? beats me ,I applaud your views on this subject and sincerely hope more “designers” take note of them
cheers Peter
…and my response…
Hi Peter
That bastard struck a nerve with me too, Thank you for your support.
David
Tested To Destruction.
January 5, 2012
Tested to destruction
When I was learning chair making the boss of the workshop a guy called Hymie would kneel on the newly completed chair and with his strong powerful arms pull and shove the chair back legs in opposing directions. He said that he was attempting to replicate the damage and uncaring user would do to the newly finished chair, I think he just liked breaking my chairs. His argument was that it was better that the chair was broken here in the workshop than in the client’s house.
We have a new version of the now, I take my chair’s home and give them to my teenage son Alex he sits on the chair over dinner and if he can’t break it a goes straight off to the client. Over Christmas he had one brand-new chair to work on. I thought it was going to get past him but last night came a noise like a pistol shot, bang!! This guy is probably the most dangerous creature that any furniture maker could let their near his his work, but I love him.
Comments (0)Hand tools and Power Tools….
December 20, 2011
I got this e-mail this morning……
Hello David,
I am interested in your comments about tool manufacturers and, since I am thinking about getting another plane your info on Clifton is appreciated. However, I do use power tools because they get the job done faster. I use a “Work Sharp 3000 for chisels and gouges. It is much faster than using water stones and a grinder. I use a long bed 8” jointer and a planer to square up timber before a project. There is enough hand work in making Chippendale style chairs and other 18th century style furniture without having to slow down the process by adding more hand work than is necessary.
Best regard,
John Jory
Hi John
Thank you for your response, I agree, there is no point in unnecessary work. The point of what we do is to add quality where we can. Hand tools can achieve that over machines, we can butt joint long surfaces straight off the machine but its better to do that THEN hollow with just two strokes of the bench plane. That takes skill and knowledge. The objective, the definition for me of skill is speed with accuracy.
My beef is not with you but those guys who seek to eliminate the handwork saying it is no longer needed. We can do it all with CAD, sanders and curtain coaters . We can do a lot for sure, and no harm that, if it saves time and energy, but its not a place to start from .
Since makers have made anything we have argued about the best way to make and I love that.
All the best
david
Help For Heros
November 25, 2011
As from today all of you that book and pay for short courses will support Help for Heroes. We have chosen to give ten percent of all the short course fees to this wonderful charity, so please when you want a weeks holiday in lovely Devon come and see us, have a great week, learn loads, and know that you have given generously to support those wonderful men and women that have become injured or damaged serving their country.
Comments (0)The Brown Coated Assassin
November 1, 2011
I cannot say that my woodwork master at school left a great impression on me, except perhaps that of a dusty board rubber. He was a tall impressive man whose name, unforgivably, I cannot remember. He had been, in his day, a good cricketer, a specialist fielder at cover point capable of hitting the stumps from twenty feet more often than not. This prowess, more than anything, gave him the reputation of being able to leave the dusty mark of a board rubber between the shoulder blades of any boy thrown from anywhere in the depths of the woodwork shop. He was the brown coated assassin. More than any of my teachers he changed my life.
I went to Bridlington Grammar School and found the going hard, the only subjects in which I really shone were Art and Woodwork. This was the time before making, doing stuff with your hands, had been systematically removed from the curriculum, so I still stood a chance. I was a shy stuttering youth that desperately wanted to be “the best” at something and my brown coated assassin, I believe, knew this, and thankfully took the trouble to help me get it right.
We were all making a useful wooden garden tool, a dibber I think. I had made my through wedged mortice and tenon joint and wanted to clean it up. We had wooden planes in the school workshop all of them sharpened to perfection. Usually they worked straight away without adjustment but my plane seemed to dig in and grab the top of my dibber.
“Adjust it lad, dont mess about.” he boomed. The plane didnt have a screw adjustment like so many modern metal planes, these were old style “tap and try” This was a simple clever system, the blade was wedged into the body of the plane. If you wanted to take a heavier shaving you tapped the end of the blade then try it out on the job. Too heavy a cut and you tapped the body of the plane at the back and again gave it a try. Hence the name “tap and try.” It was quick and idiot proof. It was not twelve year old schoolboy proof. I was only slightly familiar with tap and try. I had seen it being done but had never had to adjust a plane, they just worked when I picked them up. I rummaged about to find a hammer grabbing a medium weight Warrington and sighted to give it a whack. “Not with that lad, Tap it, not Clout it!” By now the attention of the whole class had been gathered up. Still using the wrong hammer I attempted to gently… “Nay Lad, use this”, he said handing me a light pin hammer “If tha doesn’t listen I shall be puttin thee on the end of my board rubber”. This was the signal. “ Oh Sir, can we chuck board rubbers at him Sir? Please Sir!”
Thankfully school masters had complete control of classes in those days and I came away relatively unscathed. But Tap and Try are still with us and recent contact brought this back to mind out of fifty years of dark forgetfulness.
Veritas are makers of complex technically refined tools. More than other modern woodworking tool manufacturers they attempt to do something new with tool design, even at the risk of coming up with the answer to a question nobody was really asking. I like this, if we just copied old stuff we would still all be driving Morris Travellers.
Veritas came across me at an exhibition and have kindly been sending me “toy boxes” every now and again. The first one had low angle planes, three of them, it was just like Christmas, also tucked into the box were two small shoulder planes.
Shoulder planes are amongst those hand tools that you can manage without. But if you are getting serious about this you will not do so for very long. They are wonderful for making small corrections to meeting surfaces. The blade goes full width across the sole so you can trim into any corner. A small shoulder plane will be most used but a big un is almost the only tool that can true up the inside of a solid wood carcase when fitting drawers.
I love Veritas shoulder planes. I have always wanted a really good shoulder plane, a Norris shoulder with the screw adjustment was my dream but I could never afford to buy one. Now I have my Veritases. They are better than the shoulder planes I have struggled with for years. These are old style Tap and Try.
I don’t worry about the tapping about to adjust, I got the hang of that at school, but my old planes are hand made. That should mean “really good” but it can also mean all the problems of inaccuracy that goes with hand made. My Slater one inch shoulder plane is an example of this, hand made in a small shop in about 1905 it has always been “not quite square”, the blade sitting in the body slightly out of whack. You get around it, the blade is hard as best cast steel can be, and it is a lovely tool to hold and use, but….
Yet these lovely little Veritas shoulder planes still are not without issues. The casting and manufacture is peerless. I love the engineering precision with which they are fashioned. However it seems that the sole of the plane is sometimes flat sometimes not flat. HUH??
Steve Perry checked this out for me, when he puts his inspection glasses on student makers tremble. It seems that the sole of the planes (this was a problem with both small and medium sized plane) were flat when the blade was not under tension but bowed out at the slender area just behind the iron as clamping pressure was applied to tension the iron. We solved this by flattening the soles of both planes with the blades backed off, but tensioned and in place. In manufacture this could be done in the same way taking a final flattening pass of the sole with the iron in place.
A second Christmas box of toys arrived not long ago. Thank you Robin. In it was three tiny violin makers planes. These were just exquisite, They are used, I believe, for shaping and hollowing the curved back of a violin. We could just as easily use then for shaping out tricky curved forms. They are tiny one handed tools fitting in the palm of the hand so only remove a small shave at a time. They are “Tap and Try” I quote from the instruction manual “Then advance the blade , hold the plane firmly in one hand and tap the end of the blade with a small mallet or a plane hammer. To adjust the blade for even shaving thickness, tap either side until the edge is parallel to the sole. Memories of Bridlington School Woodwork shop are still with me.
This is the medium sized Veritas Shoulder Plane 200mm long with a width of 18mm See how the iron is adjusted by a screw thread with a knurled brass knob at the rear, nice simple adjustment. The blade is held in place with a cast wedge pivoting in the centre of the body and applying pressure right behind the cutting edge and also further back near the handle. The front of the plane slides in and out to adjust the size of the mouth. Note also the small grub screws that maintain the critical lateral adjustment. Just about as good as it gets for shoulder planes.
This is the small Veritas Shoulder Plane at 190mm with a width of 12mm Adjustable mouth and side locating grub screws. This is a tool that will get a lot of work trimming joints. This has a smallness and balance that will get it picked up maybe more frequently than its bigger brother. 
These tiny planes are available with a small flat sole, a sole hollowed across its width or most usefully, domed both down and across its width.This last little beauty can hollow out all sorts of things. The blades are A2 steel 0.060 thick so keep the honing angle as near 30 degrees as you can. A2 does not seem to like going below 30 degrees. 
“Miss Steps and Magnificence:”
October 11, 2011
American Craft Magazine review!
Ever wonder what it would be like to tour a furniture-making studio, asking every question that came to your mind? David Savage visits 20 of the most talented furniture makers alive and does exactly that. Reflecting on his own experiences as a furniture maker, Savage imbues the narrative with a thoughtful sensitivity.
While Savage highlights extraordinary accomplishments and techniques, he also details flaws, missteps, and mistakes, creating a well-rounded portrait of personality, inspiration, and studio culture. It’s an enlightening perspective, with glimpses of the personal and public challenges even the most celebrated artists must overcome.
Savage illustrates the very important role of patronage and cultivated trust between client and artist, and he articulates the complex and interdependent relationship between these artists and their apprentices. John Makepeace’s students at the Parnham Trust helped fabricate more furniture than he could have ever made on his own; by seeing through students’ eyes, Makepeace retained a critical perspective on his own designs. Savage asks probing questions about method, motivation, and concept as well as technique and material significance. We learn not only the how, but also the why of each artist’s process.
Click here to read the full review of Furniture with Soul
You can buy Furniture with Soul from Amazon by clicking this link
