![]() I thought about photographing the bull, sending it to Chris, and letting him tell me what was wrong but being in the Xmas rush I procrastinated on that. I didn't want to repeat the same errors but I could not make the stabbing cuts with any confidence and I did not understand how you keep the line quality of a small 1/16" x 11 gouge which was used to carve the rest of the body, consistent when you change to a stabbing cut. Otherwise, the low angle cuts which I had practiced extensively were fine.Īccording to the instruction I need to carve another bull and do some different effects. The tight curves are muddy and uneven, and the eye is a disaster area. After finishing the bull I knew I had screwed it up. In practice I could not make the stabbing cut work so I used a low angle cut. According to the lesson I was supposed to use a stabbing cut when the arc of the curve got tight but I didn't. It came out okay (see picture) but I did have issues around tight curves and around the eye. because I didn't have a good way of enlarging the plan in the book I did it about 3/4 size. In the last lesson I finished the basic exercises of a flower, reported to Chris Pye and started the next project which was a bull from the Woodcarving Course book. I forget what I was making, but it was oak for sure – and a woman watched me for quite a while, we chatted some, and in the end, she turned to her partner and said, “It makes me want to go home and make something!” I hope my new book, “ Joiner’s Work,” gets the same reaction.Carving With Chris Pye - Next Lessons and a Step Backwards He was on my mind as I was working that busy November day. One of the members of what I call my “craft genealogy,” Bill Coperthwaite, had just died. One standout visitor comment at my old job I remember clearly. A cupboard is not much different than a chest the chair and table are like overgrown joint stools, Thus the focus of the new book is boxes and chests and carving. We ditched some of the repetition, but I think when you learn the mortise-and-tenon and frame-and-panel, then composing the piece of furniture is not all that complicated. Like the joined stool book, this one got interrupted a few times, but I halved the time it took and then some. So I wrote and wrote, took pictures and filed things where, in theory, I could find them. That book percolated for 20 years until it became “ Make a Joint Stool from a Tree.”Ī couple years before that book was done, I had the idea for “my” book – much of the iconic joined and carved furniture of the 17th century: chests and boxes, cupboards, chairs, tables and more. Starting about 1992, JA and I would often talk about “the book,” as in, “we’ll have to put that in the book…” about joinery. Mostly, then, it was before or after hours during the season, but in the off-season/winter, I just left it in place. It was the audience – no one wanted to see all that gear set up in my shop, so I was limited in how often I could set up my camera stuff. Interestingly, when I started museum work in 1994, that made my documentation more difficult. The good ones we kept, and used in slide lectures to woodworking groups, museum audiences and whoever would sit still for our dog and pony shows. back in those days to shoot slides showing JA what I was doing – while s/he’d do the same down in Baltimore. I learned how to use a camera, tripod, cable release/self-timers etc. What this means is I have been documenting my woodworking habits, ideas, foibles since about 1989, in words and pictures. (I lost all the email copies of our collaboration in a hard-drive crash. This went on for quite a while, until email came along and changed how we worked. Maybe three or four times a year we’d physically work together. ![]() Back and forth these things sailed between Hingham, Mass., and Baltimore, Md. This correspondence consisted of letters, 35mm slides, notes and photocopies of research/books/museum work. Some years later, Alexander and I started a correspondence in which we collaborated while 500 miles apart. Ultimately that led me to taking a workshop/class with John (Jennie) Alexander and Drew Langsner. When I first learned woodworking, it was from books. If you order a pre-publication copy from our store you will receive a free pdf of the book at checkout. Editor’s note: We’ve just sent Peter Follansbee’s book, “ Joiner’s Work,” to the printer.
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