William W. Klenke

One of my favorite woodworking authors was William W. Klenke who wrote books for the Manual Arts Press, the publishing company of Charles A. Bennett in Peoria, Illinois. I just acquired this lovely classic, signed by the author for $10.00 plus postage. Joints and How They Are Made was published in 1925. What I like best about Klenke's books are his beautiful line drawn illustrations like that shown below.

Farmer in Chief

Michael Pollan wrote an open letter published in the New York Times to then President-Elect Obama outlining a new strategy for American agriculture. Part of his proposal is that Obama begin raising some fruits and vegetables on the White House lawn. His letter can be read here!

The Bush administration sold the farm in its relentless advocacy of "free trade". But both agriculture and manufacturing are of strategic importance. The following is from Michael Pollan's letter:

Rich or poor, countries struggling with soaring food prices are being forcibly reminded that food is a national-security issue. When a nation loses the ability to substantially feed itself, it is not only at the mercy of global commodity markets but of other governments as well. At issue is not only the availability of food, which may be held hostage by a hostile state, but its safety: as recent scandals in China demonstrate, we have little control over the safety of imported foods. The deliberate contamination of our food presents another national-security threat. At his valedictory press conference in 2004, Tommy Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, offered a chilling warning, saying, "I, for the life of me, cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply, because it is so easy to do."

Those things that are taken out of our hands are no longer subject to our control. Michael Polllan's letter is a matter of common sense. But people who have not been hands-on engaged in reality don't have it. It is what we get when we forget to have schools in which children learn by doing.

In the meantime, please read Michael Pollan's letter. It is a masterpiece of forward thinking placed in historical perspective.

Eureka Springs School of the Arts blog

At the Eureka Springs School of the Arts, we have a new blog to help stay in touch with students, faculty and community. Please check it out. You will find information on our classes and instructors, and will find it to be a great way to learn interesting things about the Eureka Springs Arts community.

Boats, solar systems and what we spend our money on.

This morning the first and second grade students made boats for an imaginary journey to Australia, their next subject for study. They will plan their journeys on a map and the boats are the first part of that. More will come later. The 3rd and 4th grade students continued making their models of the solar system, and those who completed theirs began projects from Paper Sloyd.

Last night I went to a bonfire at a friend's house and a fellow guest mentioned that the eight years of Bush Presidency proved that government spending did not stimulate the economy. I chose not to argue at a social engagement, but here in the blog, I can say what I want and you are welcome to respond. While the eight years of Bush presidency I regard as a national catastrophe, the subject of government spending should include the discussion of what we are spending money on. For instance, with the money I am spending on my daughter's education I could afford to buy lots of things that would all be consumed in a set number of reckless and bizarre days of foolish glory. I could list all the possible foolish and dumb ideas, but as a practical man, my mind can hardly go there.

Starting an unnecessary war is a lot like getting drunk and spending all your money on fireworks and watching them all go up in a single whooof. Start one and your nation may end up scorched and scarred for life. So there is a clear difference between spending on blazing idiocy and investing in the lives of our children. This is not a difficult concept to get your hands on. If you disagree, please feel free to use the comments function of this post. Republicans are crying foul and are clearly more interested in the failure of the Obama stimulus plan than in its success and the success of our nation. I hope people are wise enough to see the difference between spending for dumb-assed things and spending on investments that make us better and stronger as a nation.

My barred owl was hooting outside, and sat for a time on his favorite branch, but he flew away before I could get my camera in place. But perhaps I'll get a chance later or another day.

pivot fence

Today I am making a pivot fence for the new router table, complete with dust collection connection. The advantage of a pivot fence is that it is extremely easy to make, clamps firmly in position with a single C clamp and can be micro adjusted. You only move one end and the distance moved in relation to the cutter is only a fraction. So for very precise adjustment of fit, it can't be beat.

During a President's day holiday at school we had inservice meetings as a followup to our classroom observations a couple weeks ago. The idea was that by taking time to observe in other classrooms and share commendations and recommendations, we might help each other to better conform to the school mission of providing hands-on, hearts engaged education.

bankruptcy of spirit

What do we do if it looks like the world is falling apart? We gather our resources and hold them tight or if it looks really bad, we pass them out to family and friends as life preservers. It is what the big banks did with the TARP money. Lend it out as requested? No, they would rather distribute it to friends or hold it firmly in their grubby hands.

We have real problems. The driving principles of past administrations' economic policies have been Ronald Reagan's. You put money in the hands of the wealthy, and they will know what to do with it. Trickle it down, dispensing it and investing it through their ultimate wisdom to the lower classes. The rich would create jobs, putting people to work. They would create the ideas moving our economy forward through their hunger for even more wealth. After all, in the Republican scheme of things, if you have more money and are more neatly dressed you must be more intelligent and of greater moral standing than the common man on the street!

But if you've never done anything before in your life, if you have no well developed skills, no sense of your own potential in the development of beauty, no sense of community or connection, how can you be expected to invest in the lives of real people? It's a risky business. It takes wisdom and effort. And who in their right wing mind would take such a leap of community and faith?

But what if we were to have work shops in schools to supplement classroom learning? Our children would be challenged not only with ideas but with the use of those ideas to better the lives of their families and communities. In consequence they would grow into adults with greater understanding, compassion and imagination as well as the impulse to create, not only in their own lives but to build the lives of others.

Barred owl

I thought you might like to see one more closer view of my Barred owl forest friend. He looks like a gentle forest creature, but get much closer than this and you would have a face full of feathers, talons and sharp beak.

Owl in the woods and waiting again

I stepped outside for a moment and my barred owl neighbor lifted off the ground, startled and flew up to a tree where he could watch me without feeling threatened. Later I began watching from inside the shop for him to perch on his favorite tree. Not a bad photo when you realize it was taken at a 60 degree angle through a double pane glass window in the shop which is long overdue for Windex. The photo below is taken later when I stepped outside with the camera. He flew further away, so this isn't the closeup I hoped for. Perhaps that will come another day.
Today the boxes are assembled, the hinges are glued in place, and I am applying the Danish oil finish. I wait about 30 minutes or so between the first two coats, and then will rub them out with a dry cloth in another 30-45 minutes. One more coat will be applied tomorrow.

time for a break

Glue doesn't like to be hurried, so I will give the boxes some time to themselves as I wait for the now glued dovetails to set. This is the last you will see of these boxes unless you subscribe to American Woodworker or pick it up at the newsstand and want to see the complete step-by-step. I reserve the right to post a beauty shot of the finished boxes, perhaps tomorrow or Monday. When you make something that is beautiful, or useful, or illustrates some new skill, whether it is in the workshop, kitchen or garden, there is the desire that arises within oneself to share it with others, and even though I've made thousands of boxes, I still feel that need to share.

The most amazing thing is that our educational system has been created by those who have little sense of this. How do I know? It is obvious, for if they knew the potential power of their students' creative spirits, the design of our institutions would not be what it is. Schools would be workshops with tools through which concepts would be explored in the making of things that gave greater meaning to the children and their lives within family and community. And that being so, we would live in a culture richer than what we have today.

fixing a ding

This month's Fine Woodworking is exceptional, with articles about thin kerf blades, lots about hand planes, and an article about fixing minor defects in wood. It is a technique I've used many times in the past, and since I had a small and distracting defect in the lid of one of the boxes, I decided to use it again. You make a small diamond shaped piece of wood in a matching color, then place it over the defect, trace around it and chisel out the space for it to fit. I used a 1/4 inch Forstner bit in the drill press to remove most of the waste before chiseling. This provided a target depth and made it much easier. Then I glued the diamond of matching wood in place. Use a pencil to sketch in some of the grain to complete the effect. While attempting this technique on multicolored spalted maple is not as effective as when used on more uniform colored stock, you can see that it works! The photo at the top shows the ding. Photos below show the fix and the result. If I weren't pointing at it, you wouldn't see it.

Saturday and finishing boxes

Today I am finishing the small boxes made with the Gifkins jig, and as you can see in the photo, the shaping of the hinges is almost complete. I will have these ready for final beauty shots on Monday and the article ready for American Woodworker later in the week.

We have a lot to learn from comparisons. American politicians and economists in embracing the global economy have advocated a division of labor based on the same division of labor that takes place in modern corporations. You have the brains at the top, and the mindless, out of the know, labor at the bottom. In this scenario, the corporations would be the smart ones, and those in the third world, the labor, and the rest of us mindless consumers. We have had this idea that it is OK to have other nations providing the labor for our products, while completely ignoring the values inherent in making things for ourselves. As Otto Salomon said, the value of the child's work is not in the object made, but in the child. Can it not also be said with the same level of truth, that the real value of a nation's work is not in the products made but in the nation itself? Its character, will and resiliency?

When people are put to work in mindful labor, the real creation is in the hearts and minds of those people. A young woman at a lathe, shaping wood... is it only the wood that takes new shape?

We have been on a national head trip, and can so clearly see the results. But our economy can be restored when some people are put back to real work.

wooden hinges and trial fit

I made the wooden hinges this morning. The Gifkins jig worked great for cutting the matching parts and I used a new technique, drilling both halves of the hinge at the same time for the hinge pins to fit. This was an idea suggested by one of my students and it worked.


The photo above shows the hinges fit to the natural edged maple lids and placed on top of the boxes to get a glimpse of how the finished boxes will look. I will gently shape the ends of the lids. I shaped the hinges as shown below, but they still need more work, making them taper towards the ends for a more delicate look. The bases are glued up and ready for final shaping and fitting tomorrow.

What it means to be out of touch

While Americans are losing jobs and homes, the CEOs of the nations largest banks met with members of the house of representatives yesterday and were subjected to a token of the outrage most Americans are feeling. Our hands are our most fundamental means of engaging in reality. We touch, we feel, we sense and create. But these are head honchos, out of touch with their own hands-on exploration and creativity, Idiot banking CEOs and the peanut head who took the 5th Amendment rather than explain to congress how his company's contamination of peanut paste led to the most massive recall of consumer products in American history.

We have only ourselves to blame. We have allowed social stratification to exist based on levels of educational attainment, when we know that education often isolates children and adults from physical realities. Put people in situations in which they no longer have any sense but their own inflated sense of self and the current crisis is what we get.

test hinge on Gifkins jig

Now I'm beginning the process of making wooden hinges using the Gifkins jig. It is a bit more complicated to make a common box joint with the jig, than it is to cut dovetails. My wooden hinges are usually cut in the same manner box joints are formed. You have to use the red spacer shown in the photo above to provide for two different placements of the workpiece on the jig, and clamp the workpiece in two different positions to cut each side of the joint. Nevertheless, it does a great job as you can see in my test pieces. The purple spacer mounted on the router bearing is used to loosen the fit slightly to allow for the hinge to bend with less resistance. The jig comes with a variety of color coded bearings which allow you to fine tune the fit.

Today in the woodshop at Clear Spring School, the students begin making a table of periodic elements, part of their study of chemistry.

Is it good for things to be so easy?

These are the first dovetails cut with my Gifkin jig. I wonder, is it good for things to be so easy? Where is the suffering we think of as being the sad and sorry lot of artists and craftsmen? I will add a natural edged spalted maple lid with hand crafted wooden hinges. These boxes and the article for American Woodworker should be complete by the beginning of next week. The wood is Arkansas black walnut and the lighter wood in the box below is also walnut that has suffered from decay before the log was cut into lumber.

If this is suffering, I can hardly wait to do more of it.

gifkins jig

Today I am doing my first test cuts using the Gifkins jig to cut dovetails. I am starting on an article for American Woodworker magazine demonstrating the use of the jig to both join the corners of the box and make the wooden hinges to attach the lid. So far so good. The Gifkins jig is a reversal of sorts from other dovetail jigs. Instead of holding the router and guiding it to the jig and workpiece, with the Gifkins jig, you mount the workpiece in the jig and guide it into the table mounted router. This seems to be much easier than holding a router, and you can see very clearly what you are doing as you work.

Inventiveness and tradition are equal parts in the wisdom of the hands.

In the meantime, I'll have the 5th and 6th grade students in the wood shop this morning to work on their puppets, and the students from 7th through 10th to begin making book holders.

making a foot bridge

Nicola Wood in the UK is making youtube videos showing craftsmen at work, and this one features her husband Robin Wood making a footbridge.

Impractical labor

A friend, reader and fellow blogger, Dana Jones sent the following link to a favorite blog telling of the Impractical Labor movement. Their motto is "as many hours as it takes." But is there anything really impractical about quality work? I am reminded of a friend whose teacher in India had informed her that "while people think that the spiritual path is impractical, it is actually the most practical." This could be seen when one takes a long term view, fully aware of the ramifications of each action. When you do shoddy, inattentive and careless work, you often have to do over, and it wasn't fulfilling in the first place, so you suffer twice. If we find joy in our work, is it impractical or more practical? It depends on your view.

Toshio Odate in this month's Woodwork tells about the carpenters who laid down the new floor in his studio. They missed the joists with most of the nails. Odate was so distressed that he removed the poorly placed nails and did the job over. When asked why he didn't ask the carpenters back to do the job right, he told that he couldn't. He was ashamed for them. It is something, a heavy weight, that they carry in their hearts from job to job and home each night to infect the lives of their children.

totem poles and solar system

The Clear Spring School first and 2nd grade students finished their totem pole sections today, and the 3rd and 4th grade students worked on their models of the solar system. Both of these projects will be painted in their classrooms when complete.

USS Vandalia

I may have shared some of this with my readers before, but model ship building is both a preservation of history and of technology. For those who practice the art, it can also be fulfillment arising through the hands. The model above is made by a friend, Gene Andes in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and you can see more of his wonderful models on his website. the cannon are turned from ebony and all the sheets and lines in the rigging are hand made to exact scale from linen thread.