Four days left of the nine-day course

Today was the fifth day of challenging work but progress brings new confidence, a few jokes, some kickback to absorb the changes and a sense of genuine wellbeing that’s hard to match on a computer keyboard. The days past fast now we all have the second project done we are ready to tackle the oak table. We dished out legs for surface planing and most everyone went straight to the diamond plates to sharpen up their number four Stanley planes. Some already have it. They have followed my training on the woodworkingmasterclasses.com coursework and have also followed this blog’s structured teaching that emphasis simple methods that really work. It’s really neat knowing that they understand the methods we teach and have incorporated them into their lives for better work and close-to-the-core elements of our Real Woodworking Campaign.  Accuracy has always been key to what we teach and that goes along with the techniques that simplify what’s become more complicated year by year.

Today, seeing the shelving units come together, means we have crossed one more bridge toward true simplicity in that we can cut accurate housing dadoes as quickly as most machine methods and with an accuracy that parallel some very sophisticated equipment. Throughout these US courses we use the Veritas router for jobs like this. This tool knows no equal when it comes to dialling in the exact depths we need for dead accurate housings such as the ones we use in making bookshelves. Stanley and Record once held the market but now the more refined makers have become well established in just about every continent. I get emails from mainland Europe asking me which router to buy. Veritas has become my stock answer.

We have an awareness of family here in the classes as people often talk about their families and especially their children. Snoopy came along to supervise Richard’s work here a couple of days ago. We took the picture to show how inclusive family ties need to be when someone comes away from the family to take a course like this. This blog helps keep people informed and secure at some level and so I enjoy passing on the fact that every single one of those who came is really doing exceptionally well in their achievements no matter what they may say to you. The dovetails all came out. For some it was a breeze, for others a struggle. The important thing is that a box was made and so too a shelf replete with dovetail joints, mortise and tenons and housing dadoes and all of this using no more than my Three Joints and Ten Hand Tools methodology I first taught back in the late 1980’s. Not much has changed but we have all grown into woodworkers and that’s a great move forward.

Beyond the projects, tools like scrapers are front burner issues now that we’ve progressed to using oak. Sharpness is key to good work and accuracy is impossible without surgical sharpness at the cutting edge. By the time we are done they will understand sharpening saws to task, how scrapers overcome the wildest grain and that planes cannot plane some woods no matter what they tell you at woodworking show sales areas. At the end of the day they will know exactly what they need to know to work wood. The next few days are critical in my endeavour to change their lives and deindustrialise their lives to find new balance and self worth.we shut mass-manufacture out at this point in time. We all like that. Peace partners with hand tool methods and harmony reigns.

 

 

Here are a few answers to recent questions:

Q.

Which glue do use mostly?

A.

Any PVA works well for me. I haven’t found a great deal of difference between the makers and they all certainly work fine. There are specialist glues for plastic laminate and such, but we are talking about glues for wood. No I don’t use polyurethane glues in general.

Q.

What’s the liquid in the spray bottle you use on your diamond plates?

A.

I use inexpensive glass cleaner. That’s not window cleaner by the type of glass cleaner sold as auto-glass cleaner. I buy it from the Dollar Store in the US or the Pound Shop in the UK. It’s safe, keeps the stones from clogging guaranteed and usually costs no more than a dollar or a pound.

Q.

I was wondering when and how much will cost the 1 month course you’re making in UK. From your website I saw it’ll be somewhere in 2014?

A

Our dates are not set yet because we have an extensive three month program coming later in the year. We have put everything on hold to invest our efforts in a concentrated effort to change the way we apprentice people. Our 2014 dates in the UK are undecided but we will be working on that in the near future. We do have one major month long intensive course starting in July here in the USA and that seems to be gaining much interest so we are looking forward to that.

We will be adding more questions in the general blogs in future. We are also planning to make more comments on the magazine and catalog  content by the different magazine publishers and catalog companies in the US and Europe. If you have issues you would like me to look at please feel free to send them on but make certain to give good reference details.