Great Class... it went too fast.

Virtuosity
January 7, 2009

What’s the worry? We go out to learn something new and it’s so frustrating for us because we don’t get it right off. As if everything we take on should come easy. It’s easier to forget just how long it took to master our own special skills. We get so caught up in being so good at something that sometimes we just forget to enjoy ourselves. I speak for myself alone of course.

I took a class once from Curtis Buchanan. You know those “working” vacations where you’re out there herding sheep or branding cattle or some such thing. Well they got nothing on butt kicking when it comes to a working vacation building a Windsor chair at Curtis’. I worked hard for five and a half days to make my chair with him. I had to get up at 5AM that last morning so I could finish on time. Well during the week sometime, I was forlorn. I must have been out searching for sympathy because his wife said to me that evening, “You know, when Curtis started, he really wasn’t that very good on the lathe.” What joy radiated from heaven! Light streamed down, trumpets played. Yes! I am just being slow, I am not stupid!

And that’s the key of course. To allow ourselves the time it takes to learn. Learning comes slowly. Why not? Anything good takes effort. Anything worth having shouldn’t come easy to us. I met this woman once who proclaimed to me that she was a Reike Master. I was impressed. “How long did it take you to become a Master?” I asked. “Two years,” she said. I stopped being impressed. Two years is about long enough to learn that you really don’t know that much and maybe it’s time to buckle down and actually start learning.

But can we learn at this advanced age? Can we teach old dogs new tricks? And is it worth the effort? The answer can only be yes and yes again, to paraphrase Molly Bloom, yes again.

But what needs remembering is that along the painful way, that way filled with mistake after mistake, one fabulous screw-up after another, along this way, you have to remember to enjoy yourself. Back off on the learning throttle just ever so little. You are not going to be great in one week or ten or even a year. Virtuosity is its own reward but it comes slow like aging. You don’t really notice it happening. Then one day when you look back, you can say, hmm, it was like no time had passed at all.

Gary Rogowski is the Director of The Northwest Woodworking Studio. Visit us at www.northwestwoodworking.com.

If you thought this couldn't be done, check out this link

Poplar Bark Home siding

Ever since seeing this Poplar bark home siding for the first time a few weeks ago, I've been totally into the idea of re-siding my house with it. It is harvested "greenly" and is rumored to last from 50-75 years!

This is the link to one of the companies that produces and sell it... in case you are interested. I've also got small sample of it that I'll bring to class for show and tell.

Flattening a Wide Board

Check out this video of Peter Galbert flattening a wide board. We do have the luxury of a jointer and a surface planer in our shop, but anything wider than 8" is too much for our jointer... and 13" is the max. capacity for our planer, sometimes flattening by hand is the only way to go.

Hand Planes

there are 2 videos that Ron Hock has made that may be interesting to you; the first talks about steel blades for hand planes and how to sharpen them, the second illustrates how to construct a wooden hand plane from one of the kits that he sells. Check them out of you have time. I'll be showing you the planes that we have in our shop, as well as some wooden planes that I have made.

Seat Carving

This is a video in which Peter Galbert is shaping a sculpted seat for a short stool... I think that it clearly illustrates some of the ways that you can work with the inshave, drawknife, the travisher (a tool which we don't have at the shop), and the spokeshave. All of these tools have their specific strengths, and often they are used together.

Food-safe(?) finishes

this article speaks a bit about the facts (and the potentially misleading speculation) regarding food safe/child safe finishes. We'll talk about this more in class, but it might be helpful for you to read. In addition to the cured state of the finishes, I am also concerned with the relative safety of the finish in its uncured state, as that is when the woodworker has the most contact with it.