Mike “The Naked Woodworker” Siemsen made mallets for 18 students in my upcoming “Hand Tool Immersion” class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. This low-cost class is aimed at beginning woodworkers with young families who have few tools, money for classes or free time to teach themselves the craft through trial-and-error.
The one-week class will be a deep dive into handwork for the students, who will go home with a tool chest, sharp tools, a bunch of new skills and probably some B.O. (we’re camping to save money).
Mike, who runs the Mike Siemsen School of Woodworking outside of Minneapolis, Minn., volunteered to make mallets for all the students. He did, and they are great.
I’m going to teach this class again in June 2016 – at Mike’s place. We plan to camp and cook on his land. I’ll post details about the class, the minimal costs and registration when they become available. Mike and I still have lots of little details to work out.
Some day I will count up all the tool chests that I have built and those that have been built during classes I’ve taught.
In the meantime, here’s an important thing I’ve observed when building tool chests. I can build a complete tool chest in a white pine (Eastern white or sugar pine, for example) in about 40 hours. If I make one out of poplar, a yellow pine or worse, that adds at least eight hours to the process.
Harder woods make for harder work.
This week we’re building tool chests from perfectly clear Eastern white pine at the Furniture Institute of Massachusetts. The pine (and the two dozen doughnuts) are keeping us on schedule. Never underestimate how a mild species can make your work easier.
Some of you have noted that I am canceling classes this year. The reason is that I need to stay home to help take care of some important family members, and this trend could continue for a few years.
I have tried to hold on to a few classes this year, which has required some extraordinary measures and help from friends. One of the classes I am happy to report I can teach is a special Anarchist’s Tool Chest class at The Furniture Institute of Massachusetts June 22-28, 2015.
This tool chest class is particularly special for two reasons: It will be at Phil Lowe’s school. Phil is one of the people I admire most in the craft for his skills, teaching ability and wonderful demeanor. I have always wanted the opportunity to work with Phil.
The second reason the class is special is it will run for seven days instead of five. These extra days will allow us to get a crack at working on the inside bits of the chest.
So if you want to build the best tool-storage system I’ve encountered, this class is ideal. And I don’t have any more floor chest classes on my schedule.
You can read more about the school here. The class will be small – nine students max. And Phil said yesterday there are still three spots left.
In the coming weeks I’ll announce the few other classes I’ll be able to teach this year. So stay tuned. For those students who enrolled in classes I had to cancel, I apologize and look forward to resuming a regular teaching schedule in the years ahead.
Lost Art Press will be at the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event at Popular Woodworking Magazine this weekend (April 17-18), with books, T-shirts and even some furniture to show.
We’ll be bringing the just-released “Chairmaker’s Notebook,” plus all the other titles in our catalog.
In addition, I’m bringing a finished three-legged backstool and trestle table from my forthcoming book “Furniture of Necessity.” So come take a look at these designs and sit in the chair to see if it’s stable or not (drunkards welcome). We’re also happy to sign any books while we’re there – even if we didn’t write them.
This year, we’re planning a meet-up for Friday night at one of the local breweries. We’ll have details at the show on Friday (we haven’t finalized them, yet, or I’d post them here).
As always, the Lie-Nielsen show at Popular Woodworking has a good stable of exhibitors:
And, of course, the staff of the magazine. They usually sell a whole bunch of books and DVDs at great prices at this show, so be sure to check that out.
Making polissoirs (a wood polishing tool) from local materials during a woodworking class is always fun, though it isn’t always easy. Getting the broom corn for the core of the tool is usually a snap. Hose clamps we can usually scare up. But then we need wax and something to wrap everything up tightly.
This week at the Guild of Oregon Woodworkers we made Roubo-style try squares and then made a couple polissoirs to finish them.
I conned a student to drive me to a local grocery store where we found a whisk broom and an assortment of hose clamps. The store didn’t have beeswax, however, so we had to buy paraffin. And to wrap it all up I grabbed some black 3M duct tape.
After cinching the broom corn tight with the hose clamps I mummified the thing with the duct tape, which was shockingly shiny. And when paired with the silvery metallic hose clamps, it had sort of dominatrix look (not that I know what that really looks like, Lucy).
Then we had to melt the wax to charge the polissoir. But there wasn’t a working microwave (or so we thought). So we did what any self-respecting group of nutjobs would do. We tried to melt the wax in a Coke can we perched on a Subaru’s engine block.
The Subi’s engine was surprisingly efficient, however, and the wax remained solid after 20 minutes. Another student found a sort-of-working microwave, and so he started nuking the paraffin. In the meantime, a third student remembered he had a gas camping stove in his car and brought it into the shop.
We fired it up and within two minutes we had all the hot liquid wax we could desire.
Melted paraffin migrates readily into the broom corn of a polissoir, but it doesn’t create the same sort of tool as when you use beeswax. I need to do some more experiments and reading to explain myself. But the bottom line is that it worked fine. It was just a different experience.
As always, we gave away the polissoirs to the students after everyone polished up their squares. By the way, Oregon oak (Quercus garryana) takes very well to the burnishing from a polissoir.
