Sommaire pour November - December 2023 de Quercus

During my years of continuous learning and of teaching others, I have made observations and have identifying traits that can hold back progress. I am not bad at this job, and I always aim to get better, but more importantly I want to enjoy what I do. The key point is you must first learn how to learn. As I am a guitar player of sorts, many of my teaching analogies relate to learning a musical instrument. When teaching at my workshops I have tried to find ways to convey certain aspects of our craft, and mostly focus on the head rather than the hands. I work hard to be a better teacher; to find new ways to explain approaches with nuance to students, to help them improve. That is…

Like most people when they first hear the term cricket table, I assumed it was linked to the game of cricket. It didn’t seem out of the ordinary considering some of the other names that have slipped into popular use to identify different kinds of table; demilune, kidney, birdcage and trefoil to name a few. Like the aforementioned, it’s a riddle that relies on visual cues to make a connection. The references are all quite literal, demi-lune – half moon, kidney – shaped like the organ, birdcage – features an open sided four pillar construction and trefoil – three leaves. The term is almost exclusively applied to tables with round tops and three legs, so the signposting is quite clear; three stumps and a ball but that wasn’t always the…

The idea of Pathcarvers came about when Sean Zarak and JoJo Wood met in Morocco in 2016, realising they’d both be at the GreenWood Fest outside Boston the following year. “We decided to meet up again,” JoJo says. Sean had no idea what to expect. “I started carving spoons over a decade ago, coming to this from an outdoor/bushcraft background, spending years carving around a camp fire. I started bringing the woods home when life stopped me being able to get out there. I have also worked for a decade in a therapeutic care home, and before that as a community support worker helping build sustainable local community groups.” When he arrived at the festival, Sean was immediately taken aback by the vibrant community of woodworkers. He was interested by…

For years this 5ft (150 cm) two-person crosscut saw languished unused, unloved. Stored out of the way, in first this corner of one barn, then another. It was really neglected and rusty. But when I picked it up, and it accidently knocked against something hard, it responded with a sharp twang. Behind that rust hid a serious bit of steel. With a bit of a gap between projects, and an appetite for a diversion, this was a good moment to see if this piece of old junk could be woken up and let it bare its teeth in earnest. With the patient on the examination table, we notice dust, spiderwebs, and dried-on gunge. The gunge most likely consists of linseed oil, which had plenty of time to oxidize into a…

Joshua Klein is the editor-in-chief of Mortise & Tenon magazine and the author of the book Joined: A Bench Guide to Furniture Joinery. Klein’s previous book is a brisk and no-nonsense approach to cutting joints in period furniture. His most recent book makes a fine companion to Joined, but where that book was all about details and specifics, Worked zooms out and takes a broad view of the hand-tool workshop. This book is about getting the wood ready for joinery and assembly. Klein tackles work-holding, stock preparation and making components; everything that happens after you buy the wood but before you cut the dovetails. And Worked fills in gaps left by other books. Many authors skip breezily past stock preparation, assuming you know how to do it or that you’ll…

The knife grip for cutting patterns, that is, the way you hold the handle, has its origins in the way the traditional Morakniv is held when using its ground-down blade for pattern-cutting. The knife was a constant companion, and when the blade was ground down and shortened, it became the right length for carving patterns. With a short and narrow blade, it was no longer necessary to grip the handle with only your ring and little fingers as with a longer blade. Instead, it allowed you to control the cut by clasping all your fingers around the handle and resting your thumb against the wood. When the Nordic Museum in Stockholm sent out a questionnaire to people in rural parts of Sweden in the 1930s, one of the questions was…

My workshop is in the basement of my house, 30 minutes outside Zurich. It measures a cosy 10x10ft. While my main job is in corporate communications, woodworking is my true joy in my spare time. I’ve always been passionate about working with wood. Growing up in the mountains of central Switzerland, my Dad also had a shop in the basement; that’s where my love for the material was born. I enjoy everything about wood: the versatility, the smell of freshly cut shavings, and the tactile experience of working with it. As a boy, I always had access to the material, but not to good tools. And the workbench was wobbly too. The local school had taken it out of service and my dad saved it from being discarded. Actually, it’s…

I think it was Paul [Hayden of Westonbirt Woodworks] who had the idea that a Faithfull convex spokeshave could be converted into a small travisher, though I’m not sure if he ever did one himself and don’t remember using one when I made my first chair with him and Peter Murray back in August 2011. In those days I was working as a freelance double bass player, which was sometimes precarious, and we had two children so money for my chairmaking ‘hobby’ was limited. Although I managed to build a pole lathe from recycled wood and a steam box powered by the wallpaper stripper I already had, some of the specialised chairmaking tools were out of my reach so converting a cheap and readily-available mass-produced tool, including the modification of…

Having worked as a traditional joiner for the last 40 odd years, I sometimes despair at the sorry state of my chosen craft. All is not lost so to speak, as in this modern-day of technology the Internet, I have been given a window into what is happening around the globe in the joinery trade and I now live in hope that not all is lost. Over the last hundred odd years the joinery trade has changed out of all recognition. This is not just because of the onset of the use of machinery as opposed to handwork, but also the actual design of our joinery and buildings, and the materials we use. Taking all this into account, along with the capitalistic modern consumerist environment we all inhabit these days,…

In addition to my role as The Armchair Woodie I have another important role as Father to a folk musician. Many years of transport to music lessons, orchestra practice, folk sessions and purchase of instruments is periodically rewarded by receiving complimentary tickets to Folk Festivals. This summer the Warwick Folk Festival stood out for a number of reasons, firstly my son’s latest creation Filkins Ensemble received a standing ovation, but there was also a craft stands run by Phil Howard of NW Clogs. His main product on offer was wonderful wooden clogs for folk dancing but what drew my attention were some superb leather aprons. My initial reaction was an instant desire to own one for my woodworking travails. They were beautifully made and comfortable to wear although the ones…

Providing opportunities for the next generation to interact and learn about wood and its culture is an important initiative. I was able to help out at an event where little carpenters assemble wood to build a wooden jungle gym. This event was held as part of the ‘National Kumunda® Wooden Jungle Gym Association’. The objective of ‘Kumunda®’ is to allow children (and their parents watching over) to experience the essence of traditional Japanese wooden construction techniques through fun, hands-on workshops. By realising its value, it will encourage children to build traditional construction architecture for their own homes in the future and have them take pride and loveof Japanese architectural culture. It is also an important tool to learn more about trees and wood. The jungle gym structure consists of three…

Find lost arts, rare trades and heritage crafts at the annual Lost Trades Fair in Australia, at Bendigo, Victoria. On 9-10th March 2024 Bendigo Racecourse will be hosting two days of a celebration of tradition, craftsmanship and skill. Visitors will meet blacksmiths, toolmakers, clockmakers, instrument makers, and watch many more at work. You can also try your hand at forgotten crafts, and buy goods made by the people behind the stalls. “Enjoy fabulous food,” say the organisers, “and a weekend of the largest celebration of traditional crafts in Australia. Discover skills and craftsmanship being shown at work, and have a go yourself at the Lost Trades Fair from 9th-10 March. Details at losttradesfair. com or by following @losttrades.…

JOINTS Whilst there are a great many uncertainties in life, one thing that is for sure is that if you want to become skilful at something, no matter what it is, if you practise that skill regularly and with purpose, you will become more proficient. No if’s, no but’s, this is a certainty. The problem is that practising generally means repeating over and again, which might seem ‘boring’, even if you’re not a teenager. So what we need is practice that is ‘fun’, and that is what drew me to this exercise. It’s not something I came up with myself, in fact I found it in a book by an American woodworker called Gary Rogowski and it’s an exercise called ‘The five-minute dovetail’. Practice exercises need to be measurable to…

One might fairly expect to find the Village Woodwright on the edge of a small conurbation, perhaps even in a woodland camp. There he (or she) would have a workshop and some barns for timber and for assembling large gates or double doors. Like Walter Rose’s Village Carpenter he’d be a joiner and cabinetmaker on-site chippy and maker of anything local residents might need or desire. Not at all. Edward Bouvier lives in the “Chicago burbs,” as he confesses in his @villagewoodwright Instagram profile, which also paints him as a “woodworking artisan and teacher,” making “quality products for daily life.” One can’t help but want to know more. QM How did you come to be called The Village Woodwright? EB A transition point in my life was 20 years ago.…

The type of script used in the earliest known written languages, cuneiform, appeared around 5,000BC in the Babylonian region around the rivers Euphrates and Tigris in Mesopotamia. Cuneiform script had 600 characters, each representing a word. Writing became easier once the first alphabetic writing system appeared in Palestine around 1,600BC. This made it possible to use each letter to represent a sound, rather than one character for each word. Today, we have started using characters in our written language again as emojis. The art of designing letters, known as typography, has changed over time. The classical approach to carving letters was based on a memorial plaque from 113 A.D. found inside Trajan’s Column in Rome. Today, you can search for fonts online, print them out and transform them into a…

Roland Eugster joined a short course at Rowden Atelier, the long-standing and world-renowned fine woodworking school David Savage ran in North Devon. “Rowden has had a lasting and highly transformative impact on my woodworking even though I was only there for a one-week course. I met many inspiring people and am still in touch with some of them. Sadly, I never got the chance to speak to David Savage,” Roland tells us. The book was published in 2018 by Lost Art Press, shortly after David’s death from cancer the next year. The 290-page hardback follows, largely, the design and making of a pear desk and chair for his widow, Carol. I was particularly drawn because I knew the highly-respected maker, tutor and writer fairly well having worked with him as…

Back in 2022 Quercus was passing through Bath, and chose to collect an entry for our Young Woodworker of the Year competition, made by A Level student, Toby Watson who ended up winning the award. He won £500 and a Lie-Nielsen LN102 Low Angle Block Plane, personally engraved by Jenny Bower (@jbowerengraving). Amidst the clutter of his workshop, aka the kitchen table, was the model of a folding chair he’d made as an exercise as part of his Design & Technology: Product Design course. So good was his project that he has recently begun a Degree in Furniture Design & Make at Rycotewood Furniture Centre in Oxford. It was there that we met him next, to present his trophy and to ask him about the chair design, which had so…

Patrick Grant, who founded Communinty Clothing recently declared Mike Abbott’s Green Woodwork (a copy of which costs about £210 on Abebooks) to be his book of choice, alongside the Bible and The Complete Works of Shakespeare on Desert Island Discs on 27th October. Community Clothing specialises in sourcing its fabric and garments from factories in deprived areas of Britain, particularly areas like Pennine Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Wales and more. “They are regions that have really suffered from the economic effects of 50 years of inadequate industrial policy,” says Patrick Grant. “We are about creating opportunities for young people in these regions to build long-term, rewarding and fulfilling careers, not just in manufacturing but in all the other areas connected with our business. Britain has become an unequal society. We are…

I truly appreciate trees. While people in our neighbourhood are busy chopping down trees (to prevent acorns from falling on the artificial turf, seriously), I’m doing my best to preserve every possible tree in my yard. It always saddens me to witness the felling of old trees, but that cloud has a silver lining. Last Spring, a majestic oak tree was felled to make way for a new house on the neighbouring plot. Initially, I assumed such a magnificent tree would surely be cut into usable lumber. However, there it lay on the ground, untouched. I approached the excavator operator and asked where the oak trunk was headed. He replied that he didn’t know what to do with it because it was too large for firewood. After recovering from my…

A particular delight of working wood with hand-tools is that there is always more than one way of doing a thing. Nowhere does this ring more true than when we are faced with the need to cut a rabbet (or rebate), a simple step with floor and shoulder at right angles worked along an edge. Usually the rabbet’s role is to accommodate another component of a structure, perhaps a door, the back panel of a cupboard, the bottom of a box or even a window pane, but it doesn’t have to be functional. We might cut a rabbet for the look of it, a clean and simple design feature creating more interesting shadow play than something routinely square or rounded. The timber framer or shipwright working with large load-bearing timbers…

In August 2023 a rather special course was run by Jarrod Dahl and his wife Jasmin Hicks at the Woodspirit School of Craft in Wisconsin. Perhaps for the first time a high quality nankin kanna workshop was held outside Japan. The instructor was Kotaro Okubo, one of Japan’s finest woodcarvers, with 10 students from the US and Canada carving spatulas and spoons for three days with nankin kanna, a unique Japanese-style spokeshave. I am a co-ordinator/organiser of the Japanese woodworking culture. I teach at Gifu Academy of Forest Science and Culture, while writing books about Van Gogh’s Chair and Green Woodwork. Jarrod and I met at a green woodworking event in Sweden in 2016, and have been working on many projects together. He taught a five-day course twice in Japan…

Pear is one of the most sensual and satisfying of hardwoods that a furniture-maker can encounter. The structure of the wood is hard, so hard that the sharpest of tools are required to work it. So you can cut the finest of details and form the most delicate of shapes. It is also, unlike almost any other hardwood, without figure. I say without figure meaning without the usual graphics of timber. Pear hasn’t lines running through it, but instead has a colour shift. Mostly it is a dark fleshy colour, pinky brown perhaps, shifting to orangey or purpley brown on either side. On rare occasions you can get dark purple heartwood but that is rare. Generally the colour of pear is the colour of flesh. Unlike our other exotic species,…

Odie’s Oils are labelled as Mr. Odysseus Cornwall’s, and there is also a Wood Butter Wax. Both give a fabulous finish we recommend, to a soft lustre which seems protect as well have a lovely aroma. They are available in UK at odiesoil.co.uk or you can follow them@odiesoil. We will certainly be using them in the future Handworks has rather taken space we’d like to have given to a pair of finishes, both with Cornwall on the label. Both are really easy to apply in their different ways, and produce a flat, smooth finish that’s ideal for wood. The Cornish Milk Mineral Paints, which we’ve used on drawer fronts in a new kitchen, give a lovely chalky effect, and the company is based near Truro. A 250ml tin will go…

The Hillview Wood and Metal 4in bevel gauge is the hero we needed. And it’s the hero we got. Thanks to Tony Rouleau, owner of this fantastic toolmaking company, and some persistence by yours truly (my superpower is persuasive writing), there are now multiple options for the 4in bevel gauge. I can finally end my search for a small bevel gauge for making stick chairs. The bevel gauge is also referred to as a sliding bevel, a T-bevel, a sliding square, and occasionally a ‘bevel guage’ (I’ve spent a LOT of time looking for 4in bevel gauges on eBay). Bevel gauges are regularly found in the antique tool market (in the US, anyway) and come in a variety of sizes. Sliding bevels with blades from 6in to 10in blades are…

Twenty-one is a coming of age, a special moment in time for parents and children alike. So it is that this issue, QM21, is set to be our last together. Being invited to Handworks, the most reputed show for working wood by hand and based in the USA, symbolised the respect we had been granted, and confirmed the dream John Brown and I had to produce a magazine for chairmakers and hand-tool enthusiasts had been met. Yet what began as a plaything is now invading my life. John and I knew our proposal was ambitious, and while I did other things, he drove the idea onwards, getting Fine Woodworking to subscribe up front. That Drew Langsner was ready to pay, confirms the value of the concept. The green-eyed monster in…