After nearly two years at North Bennet, I have succumbed to the inevitable and have made a traditional piece. Leaving this place without doing so would be a waste. There's too much to learn here from the brilliant instructors and a piece like this is packed with lessons.  As it turns out, I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Over my time here I have gained a reverence for traditional forms that I didn't have when I enrolled.  By studying pieces and makers, I have developed an eye for the subtle differences in proportion, curves, and details and have fluid ideas for what I find beautiful and successful.  These ideas are malleable and in constant flux and draw from many different sources, including my architectural education on through my time in Vermont and at NBSS.  This is not to say I will from now on be making furniture that would slip seamlessly into the White House (though if you need something Obama, call me!) but instead means I am working on a basic framework for design that will help me in the future. 

This piece is based on a Seymour Corner Washstand from the federal period, like this.  I stayed fairly true to the design as you'll see but decided to do turned legs in order to learn reeding and to practice carving.  I also got plenty of stressful practice in turning pommels (the transition in a turning from square to round).  Other skills learned in this project include bricking, flush-cutting on the shaper, altering a shaper knife, cutting tenons on curved rails, making a lumber core, veneering, making a curved-front drawer, cockbeading around the drawer, and using a glaze for a mild darkening of the mahogany. Plenty of old lessons were reinforced along the way through that ubiquitous teacher, Mr. Mistakenator, who tends to show up when you think you've got something all figured out. Flaws and all, however, I feel good about this project.  I made a greater effort to document the process so there are plenty of photos to check out below.  There are some holes in my documentation though so please feel free to comment with any questions you have. 

Just a glimpse of life in and outside of school.

Here's a quick visual overview of the chair building process. The chippendale chair is a required workshop the in NBSS furniture department. It provides a good education in compound angle joinery, shaping, and design, skills that can be applied in many projects. I didn't take a whole lot of pictures along the way but here's what I have.  Enjoy.

As I sit here listening to Christmas music (what? it's after Thanksgiving), I look back on my most involved woodworking project yet.  While its modern look suggests a simpler procedure, the cabinet's details made this project one laden with many new skills and challenges.  For the woodworkers out there, these new skills included housed tapered dovetails (connecting the top to the sides), cove cuts on the table saw, moldings on the shaper, barred glass (including cutting the glass), knife hinges, and a tenoned lapped miter joint for the base as well as shaped legs.  In the end it came out surprising similar to my initial sketch and satisfyingly accurate to my full-scale draft.  The final design blends varying elements from Asian, Danish, and traditional American furniture and while that seems risky it also creates the potential for something fresh without going too far down the contemporary route.

When I designed it I felt that this project begged for nicer wood rather than that of the nearby lumber yards so I decided to order from a place in Pennsylvania called Groff & Groff Lumber. When it comes to drying lumber, air drying tends to be the best.  The wood generally has to sit for years before it is to the preferred moisture content, retaining its color and vibrancy.  Most companies, however, don't want to wait this long.  Kiln drying is much faster but can compromise the color of the wood, especially walnut which tends to end up a dull grey/brown.  Groff's process is a compromise of these techniques.  They kiln dry their wood but they don't steam the walnut, allowing the wood to retain its variation of purples, browns, deep reds, and lighter sap wood.  When I was ordering from Groff, the man helping me even sent iphone photos so I could see the boards. Pretty good service I'd say. 

If anyone has a suggestion for what to name the piece please send it my way.  I think it warrants a name (other than boring old Cabinet) but I can't put my finger on just what.  So far people have come up with Chocolate Milk, 2%, To the Moon Alice, and Out to Stud.  Apparently, it reminds people of dairy products and the Honeymooners. 

The piece is currently for sale to anyone and everyone looking to add a bright piece of flair to their home.  It measures 40" wide, 34" tall, and 14" deep. The primary wood is all walnut and the glass was hand-cut from original window panes reclaimed from a house built in the 1700s.

Have a look-see at my process to get a insider's view at what is holding the whole thing together.

Good thing I'm not.

But! Now I know someone that is.  At least in the woodworking world, but I'm pretty sure that still makes me cool.   This summer I worked for a PBS production called Rough Cut with Tommy Mac. Similar to a cooking show, each episode would walk people through a project from start to finish, and often included magically pulling out a finished project from the "oven" of the wood shop.  My job was to help build all those projects under the guidance and instruction of the talented Eli Cleveland, the designer and general figure-it-out guy.  Over two and a half short months we built 13 projects as well as many additional parts to show all their significant stages.  Often times we had just two or three days to do it and occasionally only one day.  It made for chaotic times but now I know, if things are desperate, that it is possible to begin the day with a few rough boards and end it with several finished pieces, even if daylight went home hours ago.  

While it confirmed my disinterest in TV production, it did give me an insight into how it all happens, how little tricks like cutaways, b-roll (background narration to video), and camera angles can make several takes meld seamlessly into one.  Three days a week I helped make the pieces and then sat around between takes the other two days, drawing pictures with the make-up lady and the editor in the windowless back room.  It certainly had its perks, in the form of inherited tools and frequent ice cream.

Make sure to look for the show on PBS when it starts in October.  If not to learn how we made that chair with the bendy arms, at least to see things that I made on TV. 

Here are some photos of the projects:

When faced with a design problem, I've found that my best ideas are never the ones that just worked themselves out.  Instead, they tend to pounce on me while my mind is somewhere else entirely.  In college, a design solution for a studio project came to me as I was drifting to sleep.  It was just enough to make me get out of the warmth (it was cold where I went to college) and sketch it down.

This May I was in the throes of finishing up my toolbox and thinking about my table project.  Table is a loose term. It really just needs to be something that employs table construction.  As I do on occasion, I went down one day to play one of the pianos that the Piano Technology students practice on.  Seven lines into Maple Leaf Rag, I realized that I should make a piano bench.  It makes sense with my love for piano, would satisfy a number of table requirements, and was chock full of new operations and techniques.  It took several sketches and conversations before I came up with the design of the stool in the photo to the left but that initial idea was the necessary spark of inspiration that I was craving.

Getting approval to make a piano stool became its own challenge. Apparently, putting the weight of a human on a small set of wooden threads just doesn't seem safe to some people. I fought that notion, figuring if the thing breaks, at least we'll know.  Though my most wizard-like teacher adamantly opposed the wooden screw initially, he eventually became quite involved and enthusiastic (for him at least) in the engineering and design of the project.  A great find at a New Hampshire tool sale supplied the wooden screw and nut, which were part of a large wooden clamp.  Using one gigantic board of stunning red birch and plenty of instruction from my teachers, I built the petite and elegant piano stool which is now on display at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.  Here are a few photos from the building process.

The best way to identify a North Bennet furniture grad is by the presence of a very recognizable, over-built toolbox.  Everyone in the program has to make one after they finish fundamentals and before they move on to their table and case pieces.  While no two toolboxes are the same, they are all very much alike: dovetailed case, about four or five drawers, one vertical divider, and a frame-in-panel lid with the same lock (and the same key that keeps out exactly zero NBSS furniture students).

Despite the tight restrictions on the general shape of the box, many students find a way to incorporate their personal style and, in turn, offer a physical manifestation of their personality.  Almost like how dog owners tend to resemble their pooches, a toolbox can show the personality of its maker.

Nevertheless, the project is centered around repetition.  There are usually around 30 dovetails to cut for the case, and about 8 per drawer.  Divider frames and the lid require several mortise and tenons, all drawer bottoms need bevels as do the lid panels, and of course, every surface must be handplaned.  It's no small thing.  Once the box is finished it usually weighs about as much as a Volkswagen and holds about one quarter of your tools.  It's really a box for storing other smaller pieces of wood that happen to look like drawers. Certainly a pretty one though.

Here is a picture show of the process:

You've probably seen one in your grandmother's house, perhaps in your own home.  Maybe it was produced in a factory or has the indications of being handmade.  Either way, the Windsor chair is a familiar household form that has made its way into furniture ubiquity.  For the month of January, the furniture students of North Bennet Street School halted all other projects to take on the Windsor chair and learn the techniques of "green" woodworking.  The pieces for the legs and back of the chair begin as fresh split logs of oak and maple that are worked using tools unique to most woodworking including drawknives, spokeshaves, and shaving horses. Rather than typical mortise and tenon joints, green chairs utilize the movement of wood to create secure joints that tighten as the wood swells. While glue is used in these types of joints it is the mechanics of wood movement that make this a solid construction.  Below are some photos of the process of making one of these chairs.

Not having written for over a year and a half, I'm having a hell of a time composing a worthwhile post with any sort of elegance. So, in short, I moved to Boston and am learning make furniture at North Bennet Street School in the city's old North End. One of my teachers looks like, and undoubtedly is, a wizard and the other three teachers are exceptional themselves. Alongside seven other students from a range of generations and life experiences, I started the two-year program in September and have loved every second of it. Even when the tool doesn't work, you cut the wrong thing, your joinery is wicked bad (Boston linguistic vernacular), at the end of the day you're still woodworking and how much can you really complain about that? I spend over 9 hours a day at school and often go in on Saturdays when the building is open.  While some would take that as a symptom of person-losing-mind, it actually makes me quite happy.

Here's a smattering of photos from my time here so far.