Woodworking Destiny…
So I haven’t been around the blog much lately other than my weekly podcast posts. I admit the day job has been keeping me very busy. Did someone say something about a down economy? Haven’t seen it yet because I keep getting busier. I guess I should be really thankful for that. Regardless, I needed a break last night from a proposal I am writing and saw that Marc Spagnuolo had just tweeted that his final Gadget Station post was up.
“I have earned a break” I said to myself and headed over to The Wood Whisperer for my gadget station fix. Now if you haven’t been following this build you have been missing out so get your butt over there and get watching. This is one of Marc’s most beautiful (and functional) creations. How’s that for form following function Neil?
Anyway all this name dropping and HTML linking is all really just back story to say that this woodworking Interent community of ours is pretty incredible and very distracting! I really needed to get back to work on this proposal but watching Marc’s project made me think about Neil Lamens’ and Rick Waters’ recent discussion on the Splintered Board podcast about artistic license and the fact that there is no American style. In fact Al Navas and Neil started a similar discussion to act as a precursor on The Sandal Woods Podcast that initiated an idea that there haven’t been any new forms or distinctive furniture styles in some time. Now I pointed this out in Rick’s comments, but I think that the Federal Style is a unique American style of furniture. Our founding father’s wanted more than just a big pond of water and some funny accent differences to separate them from the world so they built this new style of furniture and starting making these weird things called sideboards with all this decorative inlay of eagles and stuff. That sounds American to me. Heck the diminished 5th interval or the “devil’s triad” as so named by the pope during Medieval times was banned from all music until some crazy American decided to base the entire musical theme of West Side Story on that same interval. In fact isn’t thumbing our noses at tradition and convention what started this country in the first place?
So that got me thinking about fusion of styles and my own work. I really like Arts & Crafts, but I also love the lines and floating minimalistic style of Japanese furniture. I like to fuse those two together and often times it comes out looking a lot like Greene & Greene so I try to go for a more severe look and throw in some Shaker. I think that is the furniture movement of today. Rediscovery and exploration. We may not be able to discover any more continents in our time’s Age of Exploration but maybe we can learn from our past and build something even better. Just look at the renaissance of hand tool work today. How many woodworkers out there are just buying their first hand planes and starting to rough out joinery with a chisel. In two weeks I will be heading out to what I believe is the first dedicated hand tool conference in Berea, KY.
So this line of thought led me to something I have been thinking about since I saw a recent episode of The Woodwright Shop. Ever notice how St. Roy is always roughing out joinery with those big old firmer chisels that could be mistaken for a slick? I always thought that looked like fun so since I was trying to avoid getting back to my proposal, I decided to follow the rabbit further down the hole and hit ebay. Here is what I found, and won!
I am excited to receive this beauty and put it to work. Yes I know it may seem frivolous, but wait til you hear the part that inspired the title to this post. Today I get an email from the Woodworking In America conference people with a tool list telling me what to bring for the hands on clinics. What do you think is listed in the Old School Chisel Use clinic taught by none other than St Roy himself??? It looks like I may have a use for this 2″ firmer chisel after all.
Now, Morpheus, which pill do I take to get back out of this rabbit hole? I am not as thin as I used to be. Besides I still have work to do. Can I order one 80s style musical montage to get all this paperwork done????
