What I Did on Summer Vacation 2020

On Friday I got home from my place near Rib Lake, Wisconsin. Since the autumnal equinox happened during the last few days of the trip, technically we can call it a late-summer visit to the woods. Temperatures were warm for September. A few nights were cool enough that I was comfortable inside my shack with a fire in the stove, but most nights were fine to sleep outside in the hammock.

Despite the warm temperatures, the sun was no longer high in the sky, as in July. Daylight hours are shorter, and the leaves turned color while I was there. Early on there were patchy bits of color here and there:

. . . but by the time I left we had sights like

Splitting Wood into Thirds

Oh, yes you can!

There are three points to this post:

More Adventures in Workholding

I've been working on a change to my spoon-carving process, scooping out the bowl earlier in the process with the blank held by a clamp rather than in my hand. 

I tried it out with this tiny salt spoon, made from

Spoon Blanks by Hammer and Chisel (Without a Hatchet!)

Unrefined spoons, just captured in the wilds of northern Wisconsin!

Let's say you have

Video Worth Watching: Wille Sundqvist on YouTube

My teacher Drew Langsner has posted a video I love on YouTube. On several of my visits to Country Workshops, I have watched this on a VHS copy Drew has in the shop's video library. 

This is basically raw, unedited footage made in 1982 by Rick Mastelli for a projected video by Taunton Press. For reasons I don't know, the project wasn't completed. I believe several black and white stills from these sessions were used in a Fine Woodworking article on the basic knife grasps.

I assume this was Wille's second trip to the U.S., when he taught the first spoon and bowl course at Country Workshops. Here you see a craftsman at the height of his powers, working in a new environment and explaining what he's doing and why in his second (third?) language. Clearly he's a master of both the work and teaching it.

Along with Wille's book, Swedish Carving Techniques, and the later Taunton video by his son Jögge, this video will give anyone interested in carving with hand tools, beginner or more advanced, plenty of food for thought. I still have new "aha" moments every time I look these over. Wonderful "ahas" I feel not just in the brain, but in the hands: one of life's great pleasures!

More Spoon Carving: Red Maple Serving Spoons

Here are photos of two spoons I made at my

If You Can't Start at the Ending, Repeat: One Lesson from Drew Langsner

Several years into my professional woodworking life, I read an older man's account of being hired on at

Pruning Works!

These photos were taken yesterday as I split potential chair parts from the butt log of a northern red oak. The tree had just been felled, and had grown up in somebody's yard. It was almost exactly the same age as I (slightly north of 50), and in one of the short pieces I split, I found a branch that had been pruned off when the tree was about 25 years old. These pictures tell a story (I hope)!

The photo above shows

Trees With Personality

I love trees. It doesn't strike me as incongruous that a woodworker would love trees, although some of my non-woodworking, tree-loving friends have commented on it, and some of my woodworking associates are at times taken aback by my enthusiasm. You see, I don't just love trees in the abstract, as most woodworkers do. Who wouldn't love the very idea of huge plants that make a material like wood to hold their leaves up in the sunlight so they can photosynthesize: a material that we can use to make furniture, utensils, tools, paper, houses? Yes, that's wonderful.

But when I say “I love trees” I also mean individual trees, as individuals. Walking in the woods of northern Wisconsin yesterday I ran into a bunch of trees with great . . . personality is really all I can say. Some of these trees I have known and loved for years; others I encountered for the first time on yesterday's walk. So I tried making a few portraits. Click through to see some of yesterday's images.

Octopus?

November 10th, 2016: Kiln Visit

Today I left work early to beat the traffic, and did a bit of work on our solar kiln. It has been neglected for several years, and Reed and I both want to get back into the habit of always having something drying in the kiln, either for our own use, for sale as lumber, or as custom drying for paying guests. I put some blocking over the biggest air gaps I could find . . .

. . . and started adding some rolled/pregummed adhesive flashing to the seam where the glass box rests on top of the roof:

More of both remains to be done, then some exterior stain, then some venting so we can control the entry (or exclusion) of fresh air, then mounting the fans, and we'll be ready for the first load in version 4 (or is it 5?) of the old kiln. Maybe I can spend a day out there this weekend and get all the way through that list!

It was a beautiful fall day, and as the sun got low I was joined by an unexpected assistant. Usually these hard-working immigrants are too busy getting run over by motor vehicles to be much help, so I felt lucky to be spared a moment.

Then it hopped off into the underbrush and left me alone with the sunset. When you see the way the tall grass lights up in the raking low-angle sunlight, you see why they call it the golden hour. 

It was pleasant to finish my work and sit on the tailgate of the Nissan, munching a pb&j, drinking some ice water, and watching the November light fade.

Here's to more pleasant, peaceful afternoons like today.

Kiln Rebuild in the Works?

This weekend I had a chance to visit my friend Reed on his farm about an hour's drive from here. Reed has been everything from an advertising art director to a publisher to a woodworker. Before I started my present job at Fernbank Science Center, Reed and I built some cabinetry and furniture projects together, and we also built and operated a solar lumber