This week I am in the “Land of Tolpin” – Port Townsend, Wash., which is where Jim Tolpin lives and works as a woodworker, instructor and writer.
Port Townsend is an odd little corner of the world in many ways, and it is unusual in that many of the woodworkers here are familiar with the concepts that Tolpin and George Walker introduce in “By Hand & Eye.”
The students here are adept with dividers and really do talk in terms of ratios instead of measurements. Yesterday when I was laying out the slope of a bevel on a tool chest, I was asked: what ratio is that? Not: What angle is that?
Interesting.
Now other woodworkers are discovering the ideas in the book and are starting to write about them on the Internet.
Blogger Bob Jones of The Christian Tool Cabinet blog called “By Hand & Eye” “The most original woodworking book in the last decade.” Read the full review here.
J. Norman Reid of Wood News Online says the book is a “unique combination of theory and practice that is destined to become a classic reference for woodworking design.”
Read his full review here.
“By Hand & Eye” is available in our store and our select retailers.
— Christopher Schwarz
Chris – you should be very proud of what you are doing. Just like the furniture you strive to make, the books you’re producing are of lasting quality. Please, continue on.
I’ll fess up to it … I’m a hybrid woodworker, comfortable with power and hand tools (except I don’t own a table saw and my electric sanders collect dust and take up valuable shelf space in favor of my card and cabinet scrapers). I do find Walker and Tolpin valuable and am working through some exercises and a project or two on my way to a review from a different “blended” angle.
Layout tools are becoming exceptionally useful, no matter what approach you take with your woodworking. Hope you don’t mind that angle …
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I think most woodworkers use both kinds of tools — so don’t feel alone!
Your friend Adam Cherubini said it best: “Measurement is the enemy of precision.” When things are constructed according to ratios and principles of geometry dating to Euclid, the craftsman has knowledge of every aspect of a figure. Therefore, he has no questions and is in full control.
I learned a long time ago to align objects lush as fence post by eye. It faster and more direct way to “measuring” to create what you want to the tolerance your eye accepts. I have used all sort of measure tapes from wooden to laser levels to topographic survey equipment. Sometimes we fool ourselves by measure the wrong point, especially when choosing survey points for topographic surveys. Maybe that concept can apply to woodworking as well, I haven’t figured that one out yet.
“The most valuable part of this section comes next—an extended review of using geometry to create a wide variety of designs. The exercises range from dividing a line into equal segments or ratios, drawing angles, generating squares, rectangles, triangles and polygons to drawing curves, tapers, arches and ellipses, among others. This section makes up a practical reference to techniques that designers will refer to again and again…” — from the Reid review
I have to disagree with the reviewer here. I find this section to be extremely frustrating. I have downloaded the digital animations of the constructions, and find them useful — however I feel pretty strongly that that information should have been in the book proper. The book, at least the compass constructions portion, is not a valuable or practical reference for lack of complete information. I would have happily paid a higher cover price to have it included. Maybe a separate workbook?
Please, no more “digital only” content. Your books are terrific because of their bookness.
Thanks.