George T. (Terry) Chapman

Terry Chapman is a Professional Engineer (Civil) and Land Surveyor who lives south of Atlanta. He has done woodworking for many years and particularly enjoys bowl turning and making Windsor Chairs. He currently works as Site Development Manager for a local affiliate of Habitat for Humanity and has one son who pastors a Church in Connecticut. You can email him at cdeinc@mindspring.com.

Building my own Windsor Chair

Aug 102010
 

Call me Ishmael! Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; then I account it high time to take a class. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly sign up for schooling. (Sorry ‘bout that, Mr. Melville.)

A few weeks ago in order to clear the skies of my soul a little, I decided to get out of town for a short trip. I signed up for a class in Windsor chair making with Michael Dunbar up in New Hampshire (they actually had a sign on the freeway leaving the airport “Caution – Moose Crossing”) at the Windsor Institute. Let me tell you how much fun I had and then you need to look seriously at taking the chair making class being offered in October at Highland.

Mike offers a five day “sack-back” class where students end up with a completed chair pretty much made by hand. Working out of a lovely barn purpose built for chair building, Mike offers a wonderful class. We started with split pieces of green red oak for the arm rest, bow back and the spindles, and a slab of dry white pine for the seat. We spent the first day getting those pieces ready with hand tools. I was surprised at how physical the whole thing was and found muscles I had not used in a long time. We worked from 8:30 to 5:30 every day with a twenty minute lunch. The instructors would demonstrate the next thing we were to do and then we would take twice as long to try to do it ourselves.

It was so funny. Somewhere along the way I missed one of the main points of this class. I had shipped a bag full of tools north the week before and had some new tools I purchased shipped directly to the school. Being the twenty first century woodworker that I am, I had sent my dust mask, my face shield, and my hearing protection.

Spoke shave, Dust mask, Face Shield, Ear Muffs

I was about two centuries out of phase. We spent the whole week using spoke shaves, draw knives, travishers, compass planes and chisels and we bent wood from the steam box. Shavings and chips from green red oak and dried white pine floated gently to the floor. There was no dust; there was no noise, no whirling whining blades searching for digits to devour. There was only a huge amount of chips and long narrow shavings, and we usually swept the floor more than once each day. We used methods from two hundred years ago and it was a great joy and revelation to me and all my classmates.

Here’s what I learned: a tapered peg in a tapered hole will hold ten times what I thought it would hold; the proper hand tool, properly sharpened, and applied to the proper task will do a beautiful job, even in my partially skilled hands; minimal glue will hold a chair together for many, many years; and I can build a chair.

My Windsor Chair

Now in October this year, Highland is offering a class on Windsor Chair building taught by chair maker Peter Galbert. There will be two seminar days on Saturday and Sunday and then five days to make the chair. You will go home with a lovely child’s Windsor chair. Be sure and sign and date it, because your great grandchildren will turn it over to show it to people who come to visit and brag about great grandpa (or ma) building this chair by hand. They will not likely remember much else about you, so here is a chance for a bit of immortality in wood.

By the way, I stopped by Mystic Seaport, Connecticut, for a little side trip on the way home. If you have been looking for Noah’s Ark, I think they have it there under repair.

And just in case you missed it earlier, here’s the link to Highland’s chairbuilding class with Peter Galbert this October. Should be a fantastic class.

Recommendation Engine

Jul 212010
 

Time Magazine a few weeks ago had a very good article on “recommendation engines”. In case you are not familiar with them, it is the bit of software which tracks what you look at on a Web site, and then recommends other things you might like based on what you look at. It is that little paragraph down at the bottom of your Amazon page which says people who looked at the things you looked at, also bought these things.

I tried Netflix a few months ago, and they drive their engine by asking you to rank your interest in about a hundred movies. Based on your answers they start sending you a list of movies they think you might like. It worked some, about a five out of ten in my humble opinion. In fact, the Time Magazine article said that Netflix offered a prize of a million dollars cash to anybody who could improve efficiency of their engine by I believe ten per cent. That is a pretty good indication of how important that kind of thing is to internet sales. Somebody won the prize by the way.

Before I bought my Triton Router at the High, I checked reviews on Amazon to see if anybody had a bad thing to say about it. People get pretty frank in the reviews so if there is something that doesn’t work, you will find out about it. I suppose I looked at two or three alternatives while I was there and the recommendation engine caught on and now about twice a week I get an email from them giving me a list of the best routers available on Amazon. That confirms Time’s conclusion that once you look at something you tend to get categorized and you never get other good recommendations. Too bad they don’t have a way for me to tell them I already bought one. The engines are not very good at extrapolating outside the interest you actually demonstrate. That is why Netflix was so anxious to improve theirs and exactly the same reason your Mama didn’t want you going steady too early in high school. And if you think about it, when is the last time you tried something different in your woodworking skills? We all get in a rut and recommendation engines do not help us.

All but one, of course. Highland has a recommendation engine which is better than any I have run into. The name of it is:

www.MeandChrisandBlairandBenandTerryandSidneyandPhilandMikeand SharonandBillandSabihaandSamandGeorgeandEd.com.

(Bet nobody has used that site name before.)

Call the store and ask somebody on the staff – there are years of woodworking experience and background easily available to you. And if you like our recommendation engine, send a note to the Boss – we’re going for the improvement bonus.

Woodworking Crossword

Jul 202010
 

Ok people, this is a woodworking crossword puzzle. Personally I do not like crosswords, but I know some people just eat them up. Here are some hints because I think you may need them. Heck, I made it up a couple of months ago and when it got cold, I couldn’t get them all. Get the Highland catalog, the Highland web site, and some of the better blogs on woodworking and all those will help. It’s kinda fun and there are prizes available. Second prize is (with a tip of the hat to NPR and “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me”) my voice on your home answering machine. First prize is me not doing that. Send your solutions to the store or put it in the comments section.

One other hint, when you click the check puzzle solution button, it will check your answers so far, but it will also throw you out of the puzzle. You can’t solve it with that button. Good luck, send in your answers to win the wonderful prizes!!

**UPDATE** For those of you who like to skip to the last page of the book before you finish reading it (or if you just want to check your work), here is a link to the answers!

Man With a Plan – Spoken Wood Podcast

Jun 222010
 

Check out this old episode of the Spoken Wood Podcast from Matt’s Basement Workshop. Our own George T. (Terry) Chapman read one of his pieces about the trials of combining his engineering background with his hobby of woodworking. Take a look back through our archives to see more of Terry’s entertaining blog entries, and stay tuned for more!

A few potent reasons you should always wear a face shield when turning

Jun 032010
 

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When stuff flies off my lathe, I hang it on the wall to remind me.

If you don’t already have one, it’s time to get a face shield!

Face Shield.jpg

The Earlex 2900 HVLP Sprayer is Really User Friendly

May 262010
 

What the heck is HVLP anyway? Before now I never really knew but I suspected it was some sort of social disease, or maybe some new computer software site that I was missing. Turns out it stands for High Volume, Low Pressure, as in a paint sprayer. Well, so what? Let me explain.

Awhile back I bought a name-brand high pressure airless sprayer and it works well, but I am about half scared of it. When I opened the box, it had more warnings than you have ever seen about the pressures involved. This thing operates at something around 2000 psi. There is actually a little plastic card to take with you to the emergency room if you happen to stick this thing in the palm of your hand and pull the trigger. The little card instructs the surgeon who to call and warns that paint injected into your body with this thing can only be removed by amputating the affected part. What if you shoot yourself in the head with it? Are you kidding me?

Enter the Earlex 2900 HVLP paint sprayer currently available only at Highland Woodworking. They loaned me one to try out for a few weeks and I like it. I felt great relief and relaxation when I was using this thing. When I first turned it on and it was blowing this gentle breeze from the nozzle, in spite of all my negative instincts, I very gingerly stuck my hand in the air stream. Nothing!! When I first filled it, I used a bottle of water because I didn’t want to clean it. In the past I have spent upwards of two hours cleaning my high pressure system and if this sprayer was going to take that long to clean, I wasn’t interested.
Earlex 2900 HVLP sprayer

When I sprayed it, the water went out about two feet in a nicely formed spray. No trauma, no high pressure, no fear, no amputations. I played with it enough to use up the bottle of water and then I figured I would try some real paint. I had a new quart of interior white latex and thought that might be a good test. Without any fine furniture underway that I wanted to paint white, I had two metal sawhorses that I very much dislike at the shop, so painting them white seemed to be ample revenge for all those pinched fingers while setting them up. After using the viscosity cup as directed in the instructions, I wasn’t satisfied with the results, so I thinned it down a little more and tried again. Now those nasty metal sawhorses have never looked so good. I put two thin coats on, had most of the paint left in the cup and was ready to paint anything else I could find.

I got done painting, all the while dreading the cleanup. I took the cup to the kitchen and rinsed it out in about two minutes. After that I filled the cup with clean water and sprayed that through the system and it was done. I kept looking for something else to clean, but I couldn’t find it. I was going to take the gun apart and clean it, but it didn’t need it. I was going to take the hose off and clean that, but no paint goes there. I was going to take the needle out and clean that, but it was already clean. No more than ten minutes max and it was done.

This really fine Earlex sprayer is available from Highland for $149.99 including a book on spraying and a demo DVD. Get your wife one of these for her birthday and she can stain the deck next time it needs it. Shouldn’t take her more than ten minutes to clean the sprayer after she finishes.

CLICK HERE for more info plus a short video

Shopping for a Router and Router Table

May 162010
 

Do you remember a few weeks ago when I talked about buying a new router with the profits from my furniture making exploits? Well, I decided to go for it, and when I went to Highland, I was really impressed with the Triton 2-1/4 HP plunge router.

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The thing I like best about this router is that you can crank the bit all the way up or down using the router handle. There is a ring inside the handle which, when depressed, allows you to move the bit up and down. You can move it a fraction of an inch, or you can move it the full range of motion in either direction. There is also a fine motion screw on top of the motor which operates for the full range of motion of the bit. When you crank the bit all the way down, a lock engages the collet and you can then use the wrench to remove or install the bit with one hand. It’s a beautiful thing.

In addition, when you mount the router upside down in a table, there is a crank handle which fits through the top of the table and attaches to the crank mechanism on the router, which you can use to adjust the bit very precisely from above the table. When you need to change the bit, simply crank the bit all the way up (or would that be down?), it locks in place and you can change the bit with one hand from above the table. And with 2-1/4 HP, this thing will do pretty much everything you want to do in the average woodworking shop. (For heavy production work, there is also a 3-1/4 HP model.)
Kreg table.jpg

About 15 years ago I made myself a wooden router table that was just awful. It is still sitting in the shop and almost never used because it was not well made and the router is very difficult to adjust from under the table. I’m going to throw it away this week. So while I was at the store looking at the routers, they also showed me their Kreg router tables. Kreg’s basic model is a benchtop style which works very well with the Triton router.

Kreg router tableI ended up buying Kreg’s deluxe precision floor mounted model. It comes with a set of very sturdy legs, which you can purchase wheels for if you like. The top is extremely stable, plenty big, and has a pattern of bumps on top of it that makes wood slide easily. It comes with a sophisticated precision fence, and has universal mounting hardware to fit most popular routers. When you drill a single hole in the right place in the top, then the crank handle that comes with the router will operate the height adjustment flawlessly. It effectively eliminates any need to buy one of those expensive third-party router lifts.

When you compare this total outfit price wise to one of those router lift mechanisms you see elsewhere, pricewise it comes out looking very good indeed. I really like this package, and am excited to have one in my workshop.

CLICK HERE to check out this router and the router tables