zen and the art of furniture making

Re: zen and the art of furniture making

Mike Real from Pittsburgh

>I know what you mean Pard. There are moments when you make that perfect cut and know it before looking. When I shot on a rifle team we referred to it as "calling the shot" knowing where you hit before looking through the scope. When you hit the bulls eye you knew before looking....a zen moment of oneness...it was just right

Re: zen and the art of furniture making

George Makowski

>David, Thank you for putting this up front in our discussion group. For me, that is one of the biggest reasons for using hand tools. It places me in an interaction with mind, material, tool, present, and past that extends my self beyond the daily expereience of things.

Ora et labora,

George in AL

Re: zen and the art of furniture making

Frank D. in Montreal

>Right on David!

I get my zen experience from shaping curves. I always trace a line to guide me but I let my eye and mostly, my hands, decide when and where I should stop (or keep shaping). I know for sure I could never do that with a power tool (it would just be boring template work).

Re: zen and the art of furniture making

Mark Kuzee

>Be the saw Danny!nanananana!

Seriously,

I have sharpened a few hundred of those hand saws you are using and I love using them myself. It is a discipline to sharpen them and use them properly. I recently created a chest with around 6 feet of hand dovetails. I was sawing pins and was called away by a wifely voice and when I got back I went back to sawing....on the wrong side of the line. I do tails first so I had to live with some bad pins on that project. Focus and discpline are life lessons that are good to learn by whatever source they come from.

Once a learned that when sharpening a saw I was actually creating gullets and not making teeth my sharpening became better and easier.

I concentrated on making the same size and shape gullet over and over. The teeth just fell in to place after that.

Keep and open mind and things will fall into it.

Mark

Re: zen and the art of furniture making

Stephen Kirk in Quakertown, PA

>I really like the contact you have with the wood using hand tools. You can finish a cut with a hand saw and run your hand right along to cut to see if it's smooth without having to worry about board support and a dangerously spinning blade. Sure, it takes longer, but everything in life moves so fast it is very nice to slow down and really concentrate on the work. I've really learned to like cleaning up my power tool cuts with hand planes, and next I'll build a shooting board, so I may do more crosscuts with a hand saw, then clean and square them with the planes. I've even learned to start liking sharpening my plane irons - once your practiced a bunch, it's pretty easy and gives you a chance to relax your mind from the demands of the project. Since I spend all day in a cubicle with a computer, and I have no real attachment to my work, it is very nice to come home and really get my hands on a project, smell the wood, feel the grain (dig out the splinters!), and see things come together, with nothing other than my hands and the tools.

Zen and the art of not thinking...

Scott Burr in rainy Ben Lomond,CA

>I find it best to not think about it too much. It seems to tense me up and that's when I make mistakes. Take a breath relax and let the saw do the work or the plane or whatever.

Re: zen and the art of furniture making

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>I'm not debating the satisfaction, or whatever you might call it, one gets from a hand tool, being one with the tool or more importantly, being one with the wood. However, I do question that it is never obtainable when using a power tool. The two most obvious exceptions are the bandsaw and the lathe. I think what happens on the lathe should be obvious, since there is another, unpowered cutting tool involved. The oneness with the Neanderbuddy may be less obvious. It only occurs when cutting curves freehand (and maybe to a lesser extent when resawing against a single point fence). If you try to force the cut, the back of the blade is forced against the side of the kerf, and it just won't cut where you want it to. If you try to turn the stock without simulaneously pushing it through the wood, it also fights against your designs and against the wood. In spite of the non-muscle power involved, both of these are done with a lot more feeling and satisfaction than crosscutting a board with a radial arm saw or cutting a molding with a routah.

Re: Zen and the art of not thinking...

ThomD

>"When I use a hand saw, or follow a curve with a coping saw (or band saw/scroll saw) it is more like clay in the hands of a potter."

Same thing with power tools. They may well be noisy and dusty, but they provide a lot of opportunity for creative expression. While I don't chainsaw carve, most people have probably seen in done, and can identify with the fact that the guy with the saw can almost think out loud (very loud) onto the wood. There are times when hand tools are almost more disruptive because it takes so many of them to get anything done, and there is so much down time for maintenance. Also most hand tools are have limiting geometry. They are pretty heavily jigged. With a ball grinder you can strike off in any direction.

"I think there is something to be said for zen sort of ideas like focusing, seriousness, and being right here, right now, with everything you have striving for perfection even if the cut is not critical."

Arguably there are no Zen ideas. Focusing which is projecting onto something outside... not sure. Perfection isn't a very zen thing, nor seriousness. You might be overthinking this thing.

Re: zen and the art of furniture making

ThomD

>I cut most of the compound curves on my trimaran's deck with a disc grinder. You guys need to get out more. :0)

Re: zen and the art of furniture making

Frank D. in Montreal

>Gee Thom,

I do have a disc grinder, maybe I'll give it a try next time I work on a jewelry box :^P.

I'm just kidding ya though. Maybe I should get out more. If you need a hand working on your boat(s) this summer, just drop me a line, seriously, I'm only an hour or two away so I can make a day trip.

"You might be overthinking this thing"...

Scott Burr in rainy Ben Lomond,CA

>Exactly my point.

typical Montreal driver!

Steve Kubien

>Frank said, "I'm only an hour or two away". From Pickering? Will you be driving the Ferrari or the MacLaren? You drivers from Quebec...Honestly!

(Just yankin' your chain Frank. For us in Ontario, it's easy to poke fun at drivers from Quebec, and specifically, Montreal.)

Runnin and duckin'

Steve Kubien

Ajax, Ontario

Maybe zen is the wrong word

David Charters (Durham, NC)

>I'm no buddhist (I'm not even sure how to spell it!). It's just a feeling and an approach for me really. I'm not sure what to call it, but it helps me to cut right and takes my work to another level. It also gives me great satisfaction.

Safety first!

Frank D. in Montreal

>My rule of thumb is: never drive faster than 160 km/hour (especially if it's snowing). Love to see the look on those Ontarians' faces as I fly by them. ;^)

:)

Steve Kubien

>

Re: typical Montreal driver!

Clay C in Miami

>Funny -

For us here in South Florida, Quebec plates generally mean an octa/nonagenarian peering through the wheel of their early-90's Caddy, driving 40mph, in the left lane, with the right turn signal blinking, for miles and miles and ... The idea of a Quebecois as a leadfoot just does not compute.

"Je me reviens" indeed!

Clay

Re: typical Montreal driver!

Paul Kierstead

>Ya gotta visit Montreal some time. Crazy drivers, have to be some of the worse in N.A. (though nothing on Romanian drivers). Great city, too.

Rural Quebec, though, has lots of guys comfortably cruising in their pick-ups.

Re: Maybe zen is the wrong word

ThomD

>Been there felt that. I'm 1% buddhist but can't spell that, or much else, either.

Re: zen and the art of furniture making

ThomD

>Taking about power tools! I push biked from TO to Freddy this year, took me five days to get to Montreal, and about five days to forget the trauma of crossing that $%#@ bridge from Kanasatake!

Re: typical Montreal driver!

ThomD

>They are pretty good really. There are just local rules like making left hand turns from the right lane, but it isn't a surprise to the locals.