The coffee table I’m making took a new turn the other week. Instead of the long curved bend, I decided to make a different bent piece instead. This was more because of skill level rather than any aesthetic reason (although the new bend looks much nicer I think!). The simple curve was meant to meet the legs at a number of odd angles. There was a vertical angle on the leg taper to deal with, then the angle at which the stretcher met the leg. Only two angles but they were not calculable so I found it very difficult to make work when practicing.

So … here is the new bend …

New bent stretcher

Two stretchers overlapping

Here is the table as it currently stands (without the top in place).

Base in place

I am finding it interesting to experience how this table has changed already from my initial designs and thoughts. Already we have four separate legs instead of the two wider coopered panels and the curve designed for the stretchers has changed significantly.

The wedding coffee table I am building is coming along nicely so far. I’ve almost finished the top and have build the main frame which includes the legs and aprons. So far, this has all gone quite smoothly.

Tapered leg

Table frame

This weekend however I had to venture into unknown territory – bending. Having not done this before I was faced with quite a nervous and stressful weekend ahead. The first order of business was getting together as many clamps as I could. I bought out an entire box of 15 clamps from the local Bunnings and a few large boards of cheap chipboard.

Once I was back home, I started to build the “form.” A form is simply a piece of wood which is cut to the shape you need the final bend to match. Kind of like a mould, but for wood instead of chocolate! This took the better part of a day to complete.

Creating the curve

With the form done, I moved to cutting up a heap of strips of Silky Oak. I made these around 3mm each. Still solid enough but thin enough to bend without cracking. With the most stressful part coming up next, I took a little break before diving into it. Because I only had a few minutes to work before the glue dried, I had to have anything at the ready.

Everything ready at arms length

15 clamps to hold it into place

After 24 hours in the mould, I hesitantly took off all the clamps. The result? Perfect! It still needs some cleaning up and sanding, but the curve holds really well and it surprisingly quite solid.

Bending results

I’ve just gotten my first official woodworking commission! Alright, it’s through a friend of mine but the eventual owner of the piece is someone I have never met so I guess that counts! The commission is for a coffee table to be given as a wedding gift. A reasonably safe/traditional design but with some elements of difference to make it stand out. I started sketching out some designs last night so here is where things are at so far …

The top will be made using some of the MCG English Elm I acquired. When finished, it displays quite a nice rich brown/gold colour. Inlaid into the top will be a strip of Silky Oak. This should pick up on the lighter golden colours in the Elm and add an interesting feature to draw your attention to.

Table top

Looking on from the side … I’m thinking of beveling the ends of the top to lighten the feel of the piece. The top will be supported by two solid blocks of English Elm similar to what I’ve done with another table. I will taper the legs down to the bottom again to lighten them and will also cooper them (curve) towards the centre. Two stretchers of Silky Oak will sit near the bottom along the longer sides of the table.

Side view

The two stretchers will be held “in tension” in the middle giving the whole piece some nice curves. I’m already wondering how many pieces of timber I will snap getting this right! Not sure what timber I’ll use to hold these stretchers together yet or the join that I will use to attach them to the legs. Those details will eventually show themselves once I start.

Stretchers in tension

It looks like a Valentine’s weekend full of milling wood for me!

I’m not one for a big upfront design. Spending time getting every detail documented in a Gantt chart and associated MS Word documents doesn’t sound like a good use of scarce resources. In my woodworking ventures I find that I am also averse to detailed designs of what I will build. Having recently finished Krenov’s The Impractical Cabinetmaker it seems that it isn’t just me who prefers to work like this. I clearly prefer to “compose” rather than “design.”

What is the difference between designing and composing?

Purchase it from Amazon

When designing, you spend your time documenting a faux version of what you are going to build (software or woodwork). You then take these specifications to your workstation or workbench and begin following the plan step by step. When something comes to you out of left field, you go back to your designs and re-design the changes in. Then get back to your station and keep on working until the piece is finished.

When composing, the work feels much more organic. You document/design an idea of what you want to build. In Scrum (an agile software development process) you write up a series of very brief stories which point to the functionality people want the piece to have. When woodworking, you do your best to draw a rough idea of what you want to build on a piece of paper. You take this to your workstation or workbench and begin typing or chiseling away. As your product comes to life, it changes depending on what you see and the challenges you face. You take these in your stride allowing both the output of your work and your idea of what you want to build coalesce until the piece is finished.

But software isn’t like woodworking

Some might say that software and woodworking are completely different endeavours. One is structured and planned, the other is creative and artistic. Over the last couple months I have started realising that they are both very much alike.

Software is more akin to photography & painting than to engineering & building bridges. Making software is creative. You start with an idea of what the product needs to do. You move quickly onto starting to build it. Then by getting feedback about what you are doing from your customer (and yourself) you make small course corrections and continue until the piece is complete.

This is very similar to working on a piece of furniture. You start with a basic design and then allow the pieces of wood guide you the rest of the way. The various grain patterns you see, the “weight” of the piece as you put it together and even your mistakes are elements which you use to course correct as you build.

Even taking a good photograph is like this. You might have an idea of what you want to capture but it isn’t until the scene comes through your lens and then hits your computer where you finesse it that the eventual result reveals itself.

Professional software developers need to start helping people understand this. You don’t need a detailed gantt chart and spec to deliver a premium piece of software. What you do need is a solid idea of the function it must deliver and lots and lots of reviews, communication and creative energy.

So as I begin my many and various projects this year, I hope to focus more on composing rather than design and allow the results to guide me.

Meditation Stool #1

The other evening at my meditation class, one person asked me how long it took me to make my small meditation stool. I made it over a weekend and it only took me 3 or 4 hours to pull together and apply the finish (not including waiting/drying time).

On my way home I found myself thinking about this a little more. It didn’t take 3 or 4 hours at all. It took more like 155 years + 4 hours and is still taking time as long as it continues to exist.

Perhaps it was the after-effects of meditation, but I began to realise quite acutely how long a piece of wooden furniture really does take to make. The tree has to be planted, grown, harvested, milled & dried. Then the furniture has to be fashioned. Finally, the timber continues to change over the remaining years of its existence.

Nothing more to say about this yet, except that this brief conversation has changed the way I view my working with wood.

Finished Hall Table

Last Saturday was our last day on the course and we spent it giving out tables the final touches. It was most fun, especially getting to run a sander over oil and have it splash all over my t-shirt.

All in all, I’m very happy with the way it turned out. I’ve still got some finishing and waxing to do and need to actually make the inside of the draw and attach the top to the base, but aside from all those bits and pieces, it’s done!

Want some more information on this?

• Woodworking Courses at Ideal Tools
• Work in progress photos on my Flickr stream
• Work in progress discussion on the Woodworking Forums

Lots of progress in the last few weeks. The main one was a significant design change. Instead of the “fans” on the side, I decided to add a curved stretcher at the bottom. This compliments the slender lines of the legs better than a “fan” type thing on the side would.

Here’s Anthony helping to route a curve on a piece of ply for me. This will become the template I use to cut the Jarrah. By doing it this way, I can recreate the exact same piece multiple times (I need 2 for this hall table).

Routing the curve

In between the two curved pieces, I made a number of “tenons” to fit between them. All in all I made at least 18, 9 of which were too narrow, the other 9 of which I only used 5! It took me a few hours to get the size right and chamfer the ends to they’re fit into the rounded holes. It’s not a job I want to do again soon.

I then laid out all the pieces in an organised manner, placed my clamps nearby ready to slot into place and yelled out for some help. The glue up is stressful. So many pieces needed to come together perfectly all at the same time and it wasn’t something I could do with only two hands.

Finally it came together, and here’s the current result.

Glue up

Next on the list:

• Making the draw and draw handle
• Making the top and attaching it
• Finishing the piece with oil

I’m a few weeks into my first woorkworking course at Ideal Tools and thoroughly enjoing the experience. Most of my updates on this are on the wood working forum and on my Flickr account, but I thought I’d post a summary of my work here.

I started with rough lumber and dressed it to size with the jointer and thicknesser. This was good learning for me as I have read about this many many times, but haven’t done much of it myself. I ended up with four nicely square legs and the rails for the front, back and sides.

Dressed legs

Making the draw front was interesting. The piece has a rectangular hole cut out of the front rail. I was wondering how we would do this so perfectly, but learnt I learnt the trick. I ripped the front rail into three pieces with the centre one the height of the draw front. I then cut out the draw piece and glued it all back together. The end result … it looks like I’ve cut out a perfectly rectangular slot for the draw.

Draw cutout

Moving ahead a few steps … after putting an inside taper on the legs, finessing all the pieces, and making the mortises with the Festool Domino (I want one!), I was ready for my first dry fit. The result? Pretty impressive if I say so myself. I was very very happy to see it come together so nicely.

Dry fit #1

Still lots more to do:

• Bottom rail
• “Fans” for the side
• Bottom shelf
• Top
• Draw & draw handle
• Finishing

Shokunin -noun Craftsman, artisan.

I’ve been reading Japanese Woodworking Tools: Their Tradition, Spirit, and Use and this has caused me to start thinking about the connection we have to the tools we use to live out lives. This post is a little jotting down of my current thoughts on the topic.

The author, Toshio Odate explains that a simple definition of the shokunin cannot express the deeper meaning of the word. The shokunin is much more than a exemplary artisan. Odate describes it as follows:

The Japanese apprentice is taught that shokunin means not only having technical skill, but also implies an attitude and social consciousness. [...] The shokunin demonstrates knowledge of tools and skill with them, the ability to create beauty and the capacity to work with incredible speed. The value of an object is dependent on a subtle combination of skill and speed [...] In short, the pride of the shokunin is the simultaneous achievement of skill and speed. One without the other is not shokunin.

Reading this book, I am slowly learning about the shokunin and the way they conduct themselves and their work. In light of this, as I reflect on my own work, I find it quite lacking in many areas. One of these is the connection we have with our tools.

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A few weeks ago I wrote about the auction where I purchased some old English Elm. I’ve now had a chance to work with some of it and I can happily say that it’s really nice wood to work with.

Many of the slabs unfortunately weren’t dried properly so they have some splits and checking on the surface. This means that it’s difficult to find wide pieces to work with or pieces for finer wood working. For the stuff that I intend to make however, it’s still damned fine enough!

Long English Elm Bench

Over the last month I’ve been busy putting together my first piece from this stack. A long bench. It was also my first commission (unpaid, requested by my wife, but I think it still counts!) You can see my progress here on Flickr. I apologise for the poor picture quality. I should have my real camera back in a week so should be able to take some better quality pictures from here on.

It was also a new experience in finishing. I’ve been using Shellac mostly but this time I went with polyurethane instead. The final concoction was:

1. Sanding sealer (1 part dewaxed white shellac : 5 parts methylated spirits)
2. 4 coats of Minwax wipe-on Polyurethane
3. 1 coat of Ubeaut EEE (a kind of cut & polish)
4. 1 coat of Wax

I absolutely love the end result. It’s durable and shows off a lot of the grain features in the piece. Definitely a process I will use again.

Next on my list is (in no particular order):

• A few smaller benches from the English Elm
• Coffee table from the English Elm
• Coffee table (Huon Pine & Blackbutt)
• Coffee table (Sassafras)
• And I’ll try my hand at a few small boxes