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.

Wood for Bowl Turning

Dec 212009
 

Do you think you will ever have enough wood? I intend to have way too much wood left over when I stop working. There are several sources for wood and each has its advantages and disadvantages. Right now let’s talk about wood for turning bowls.

The first place you might try is Dave and Sandy’s house and get some of what is left of that cherry tree they cut down last week. They are two of my church friends and they took down a large cherry tree next to their driveway. I went by with my chainsaw and chopped out some wet pieces of beautiful native cherry and lugged it home. I dropped it by the back door of the shop and put the bark side up so it could dry for a few weeks. It has some beautiful crotch wood but lots of soft sap wood and I can’t wait to get it turned out.
The next step up is a raw wood dealer. I have a dealer I use on a regular basis that used to be a tree surgeon and he has a warehouse full to the ceiling with wood and wood blanks. The wood spills out into the parking lot and when you go to his place, he’s got a better chain saw than you do and you better bring your pickup truck.

blanksLast week I bought several bowl blanks from the High. Highland sells woodturning blanks which are either eight inches or ten inches in diameter and three or four inches thick. They are coated in a waxy preservative to keep them from drying out and they are already made round, something which Dave and Sandy will not do for you. Blanks are cherry, pecan, walnut, sycamore and maple amongst others and range in price from about $15 upwards to $30 or so. They are round and flat and ready to turn, though they are green wood and will need to be dried after they are roughed out. Sometimes a flat round piece ready to turn is a real pleasure compared to a piece of a green stump and a chain saw. Unfortunately they don’t mail order the wood. You have to drop by the store and browse through the blanks in stock to find the ones you want to buy.
logs
burl1Now the ultimate wood for turning at Highland Woodworking is outside in the enclosed space next to their parking lot, and you have to go to the store to shop for these also. If you look to the left just before you enter the store’s side door, there is a wonderful collection of huge cherry and walnut burls and crotches back in the corner. At first glance it looks like some kind of wood graveyard, but don’t let appearances fool you — there are diamonds in the rough here. One of these days if I keep working and getting better at my craft, I will buy one of those wonderful burls. I will study it for weeks looking for that one make or break cleavage plane. I will take a thin steel wedge and place it carefully on the burl and I will probably take it away several times before very carefully and firmly whacking it with a little mallet while holding my breath. Course I may just cut it carefully with my chain saw (while holding my breath). The result will likely be wonderful.

Wood is everywhere and if you pay attention, you can have plenty of it.
crotch1

crotch2

Gingerbread House

Dec 122009
 

housemidway.jpgLet’s do something different this year. Aren’t you tired of all that sawdust and building those projects out of cheap plywood and making stuff that everybody wows over when you give it to them at Christmas and then you never see it when you go to their house? I’m like most of you – I build stuff all the time including houses with my local Habitat Chapter. But the kids and grandkids will remember this project the rest of their lives.

We’re going to build a Gingerbread House. Trust me, it’s easier then you think and I will guide you through the process complete with pictures. You will need to set aside portions of about three days because if you do it all at once, you will get tired of it and mess it up. Course if you mess it up, have it for dessert, one of the other joys of working with this stuff. OK, here we go.

Make up a cardboard pattern for all the pieces. You will need a pattern for the sides 9 ½ by 5 inches. You need a pattern for the ends, 6 inches wide and the side of the end is 5 inches to match the side. The gable goes up another 2 inches to the peak. That makes an 8 pitch if I calculate correctly on my handy construction calculator. (Pitch is 33.69 degrees – I love that calculator.). Uncomfortable to stand on an 8 pitch, but if you put the house on the kitchen table and sit in a chair, you will be fine. Also make a pattern for a chimney. Cut a notch in the bottom of the chimney ends (8 pitch, remember) and make it about 2 ½ inches tall and then make sides for the chimney tall enough to reach the roof, about 3 inches. Save the pattern for next year.
You will need a recipe for gingerbread. All the magazines at the grocery will have recipes this time of the year. Roll it out (using that rolling pin you made for your wife last year) fairly thin, just under an eighth of an inch, and then cook it pretty hard. Watch it closely in the oven and when the edges start to turn a little brown and crispy, it should be done. If it is cooked too soft the roof will sag. You will need two sides, a front and a back, and two roof panels plus four pieces for the chimney. The smell of gingerbread cooking is wonderful and will linger for days. Your grandchildren will tell their grandchildren about it and the wonderful houses you built for them.
Run down to your shop and get a piece of eighth inch plywood about 12 by 18 inches and wrap it in foil for the base to build your house.
Go to the big box store (not the grocery) and get a can of “Meringue Powder.” It is made by the Wilton Company and will be in the cake decorating section. Get a cake decorating squeeze bag and a couple of pretty wide mouth tips while you are there. You will need to make one batch of “Butter Creme Icing” and one batch of “Royal Icing” based on the recipes on the insert inside the meringue powder can.
roughhouse.jpgFirst thing is to assemble the house on your base with the royal icing as a kind of mortar mix. Give it about 20 minutes and the royal icing will get hard as a rock and hold your house together. Use the butter creme for everything else and you can ice the yard, set in a fence out of marshmallows and pretzel sticks, make a tree out of ice cream cones with jellybean lights, and then decorate the rest of the house however you like. Make a woodpile on the side, pave a driveway, make a stepping stone sidewalk, anything you want. Candy canes all over the place. I love picking out the candy and I spend a good bit of time in the candy aisle trying to picture how the various pieces will fit on the house. One of my favorite things is to chide everyone about not eating all the candy before we get it on the house, all the time stuffing handfuls in my mouth. Didn’t take long for everyone to catch on to that one. The final step is to take a sifter of powdered sugar and sift it over the whole thing. The sugar piles up like snow and the effect is wonderful.

finshed-house.jpg

Send me a picture. Merry Christmas to all!!

The Leather Shop Apron for Real Men

Dec 022009
 

 

bandsaw.jpgYou know by now that I do a lot of woodturning, and one thing I do dislike is chips falling down the front of my shirt. A few years ago I made up a turning shirt by taking two old work uniform shirts and cutting the shoulder yolk and collar off one and attaching it to the front of the other. It looked like one of those old western movie shirts with the buttons down both sides and a clerical collar at the top. Worked like a champ, too.

As I got more skilled at turning though, I felt like my attire was holding me back. Perhaps I could be a better artist if I were wearing a better turning outfit. So I bought the red turning smock from Highland and whether or not my work is better, I sure do look better when I’m working.

Now I do have one bad habit when sanding finished bowls. I tend to hold the bowl against my body while sanding with the electric drill so that the dust goes down the dust collector hose. Unfortunately, I sanded a hole in my beautiful red turning smock. You’ve heard of chiseled abs; I have sanded abs.

apronsWell the answer to that sanding problem is one of the new leather aprons as found on the front cover of the new Highland Woodworking catalog. These leather aprons are beautiful! I went by the store today to look at them and I suppose I am just partial to leather, but when you walk in the front door of the store, there are at least 40 aprons on display all over the place. (You really need to come see the store at Christmas.) They are made of four basic pieces of leather stitched together with four pockets added to the front. The two larger lower pockets have riveted flaps over them to keep chips out and the other two are made for pencils, calculators and this time of the year, candy canes. The back of the apron is the naturally rough leather and the front is smooth and finished. I looked at a bunch of them before picking the one I wanted and the naturally occurring marks on the leather really add to the appeal.

apron-on-man.jpg

Some aprons are slightly thicker than others and have more marks, and some are lighter or darker in overall color and appearance. I was also very surprised when I picked one up and found how lightweight they actually are. This thing will not weigh you down. I bet if you call the store and ask them to pick out some particular feature for you, they will do it. With the light and strong flat straps across the back, and a quick snap connection, the whole thing is supported by your shoulders and still easy to get on and off. Beautiful!

If by some very small chance you don’t want this one, you could get one of the others that Highland carries, such as the ballistic cloth turner’s apron, the leather turner’s apron, the belt apron, or a regular cloth apron. But the really good leather ones are what I think is best, and come on people, this is Christmas. Get the good one!

Just the Spax, Ma’am

Nov 022009
 

I love Spax screws. I bet I have ten different sizes and lengths of screws in my shop and I use them all the time for all sorts of things. My primary use is attaching the faceplate to a new chunk of wood to put it on my lathe. With my little impact driver I can put in six screws in about ten seconds and I am ready to turn

I went to the Spax website and checked out their history and would you believe 1823? The company started in Germany and has been in business all this time and is still very successful today. While you are there, take a look at the neat little games on their web site. There is a car racing game, a retail counter service game to see if you can sell enough screws fast enough to keep the customers happy (that’s a new one on me), and a football game that is really a soccer game — they are German, remember?

spax.jpg

The secret to the screws is in the shape of the barrel of the screw and in the shape of the threads. The bottom threads are wavy with serrations which act like a miniature drill to cut right through most materials. The net result is effortless work without having to drill pilot holes first unless you are running them into masonry. That’s right, the same screws work for mounting things to a masonry wall. And oh yes, the same screws work on sheet metal up to 24 gauge without pre-drilling. Are you getting the idea here? THESE THINGS JUST WORK.

Of course Highland has all the Spax screws you could want. Go try out an assortment to begin and then find the ones you really need on a regular basis.

A James Krenov Plane

Oct 252009
 

James Krenov has died. I don’t know how I missed the notification, but I just heard about it this week and I found it deeply saddening. James Krenov Krenov was able to write down his ideas about woodworking as evidenced in his work and his thoughts have endured for many years. So many people in the hobby have been influenced by his work and his writings. All of us aspire to his standard of excellence and wish we had his design sense.

For an idea about what this is really all about, consider this image of a lovely little 12″ x 18″ storage box that appeared in an out-of-print book. The King of Sweden collected little ceramic pieces and needed a box to store them. This one works just fine, thank you very much.
James KrenovThe scale of his pieces is what is amazing. Should you buy the books still in print, look carefully at the size of the pieces and you will realize that bigger is not necessarily better.

Last year I was surfing the net and happened on Krenov’s web site. At the time he had stopped making his iconic pieces because of failing eyesight, but continued to offer planes for sale. I bought one. I think I paid $300 for it after several e-mails back and forth with his wife. After they shipped it to me, I looked at it briefly but needed to set it aside because of some illness in my family.
After hearing of his death, I looked for and found the plane I had bought from him last year. Look at his initials on the front of it. I thought he had put the blue masking tape around the throat and blade simply to keep the pieces in place for shipping, and I debated whether to take the tape off. Finally I did take it off and lo and behold, the throat was full of the most beautifully delicate shavings. Shavings put there by the master. I left them there and I don’t know if I will ever take them out…
James Krenov

My Woodworking Book Collection

Oct 092009
 

Kari Hultman over at “The Village Carpenter“, my other favorite blogger, (besides me of course, who’d you think?) posted pictures of her woodworking library the other day. She has quite a collection of books, more than I do, I’m afraid, but with her kind permission, I stole her idea. Here are my books:

I buy books for three reasons. First is to find out how to do something, the most basic reason. When there are few people to ask about some arcane little bit of work, then books are the way to go. Sometimes I buy the book after a class because it keeps me from having to take notes in the class, and it is good for reviewing something I may have missed.

The second reason is vicarious enjoyment of the hobby. There are times when I think I want to start a new phase in my woodworking career by trying something totally new. My standard practice is to buy a book on the subject and after I read the book I can decide if I really want to go buy the tools and devote the time it takes to learn something new. Most of the time, I let the book make up my mind and decide that the vicarious lift from the book will serve my purposes. You may even be able to save a lot of money on tools that way. Best examples so far are the books on violin making and boat building, though I must say the boat dream endures.

The third reason is a peculiar one for me. I buy books, movies and videos because I want to encourage creative people to keep doing stuff I enjoy and I think they should be rewarded for what they do. I have been known to see a movie in the theatre and then buy it on video simply to encourage the creators. Maybe if we all did the same thing we could end up with better stuff all around.

My favorite book in all this: Well, how can you beat Krenov? The details in his work are amazing and then all of a sudden you grasp the scale of those beautiful pieces and it kind of makes you wonder if you should just give up the hobby because you think you will never get there.

The other best one has got to be Tage Frid’s series on woodworking. Volume one is the book lying open on my workbench whenever I am trying something new. And not to put myself in the same class as those guys, how can I pass up my own book on nail pulling?

You will enjoy all of these books. Click over to the High and look at their collection of over a thousand books for sale.

I realized after I took the pictures that I had left out one of my favorite woodworking books. I have a copy of the original non-Disney “Pinocchio” by Carlo Collodi. How can you beat that for high skill wood working?

Feel free to post a comment on this blog entry and let me know some of your favorites.

New Catalog from Highland

Sep 222009
 

cat.jpgDid you get your new catalog from Highland yet? Mine came last week and I love browsing this thing. I can spend hours and hours looking for just the right tool or thinking up a new phase for my woodworking efforts. Somebody at the store has spent years getting the descriptions written for all the tools and books and doo-dads included in this little woodworking classic. Shoot, half the time when someone asks me a question about woodworking tools or methods, I reply with answers from this book. And speaking of little, I really like the new size of the catalog reduced to 5 ½ by 10 ½ inches from the previous sizing, thereby leaving more trees for all of us to use in making new stuff.
My wife and I used to ask each other what gifts we wanted for special occasions since we finally figured out that surprise gifts more likely than not were a waste of money. For several years, my stock answer was “One of everything in the Highland Woodworking catalog.” Though I was never able to swing that deal for real, the fantasy endures.

It’s a long slow rainy afternoon in Atlanta, so I sat down and added up the price of one of everything in the catalog. I did add in a couple of hundred dollars of Spax screws because I love those things and use them all the time. I also managed to exclude duplicates of many things and if there was a boxed set, I passed on buying the individual pieces and included just the set. I also left out spare parts for repairing tools.

Before placing my order I intend to get by the store and pick one each of every woodworking book as long as we’re talking fantasy here. (They didn’t list their books in this edition of the catalog, but they list more than a thousand woodworking books on their website.)

My order came to $53,737.94, plus the books, tax and shipping. Of course, I will have to expand my shop to hold all this stuff and I estimate about forty grand would do that. Wonder if American Express means it when they say no preset credit limit? Maybe I can get a discount on the shipping.

Request a catalog online if you want a copy and they’ll add you to the mailing list.