"I can buy furniture" or can't

Interesting and

Kokomo Ron

>Far too provocative for a Friday.

There are so many reasons why people are on this forum on a regular basis. Certainly all of the reasons are legitimate... though some of them may be completely outside the realm of understanding for other habitues. There are people who collect tools and don't use them very much , if at all. There are those who use their tools and want to learn more about that. There are those who'd like to do one or both of the two choices above, but for various reasons are doing neither right now.. but want to hang with us. and as hinted at abobe ( maybe with tongue in cheek) there are several guys here fo who the shop is indeed the project and very little will ever be produced in it.

There are very very gifted craftsman/artists on this site. and there are those who could could not get a 8 inch by 2 ft board planed and square. So we get all kinds of dialogue here. Much of it has to be taken with the understanding that the person making the statement may be a very experienced and talented craftsperson, or not. That is why I love the postings of work completed. I mean when you saw something that Bill Duffield posted ( I miss him) you knew what kind of craftsman was speaking. If this sounds a little elitist..... yeah it probaby is... but don't we all learn most from people who are better that we are??

I share Mr. Tindal's implied frustration from those that would say a piece is better because it was done with hand tools. A piece may indeed be more enjoyable to the craftsman because is was produced by hand tools. But, that does not equal quality of product. I know that I cannot rip a board with a handsaw like I can with my well tuned table saw. You can't either.. no disrespect intended. A true product focused craftsman uses the best tool for the job based on what he or she has in the shop, and what their skill level will allow.

A piece is what it is and in the end it is the quality of the piece that matters and not whether it was done using technique a or technique b.

There are some hand tool "purists" on the web who will occasionally go off on some rant that damns the rest of us for going over to the dark side.... they need to get a grip and look at the true titans of the craft and who they work wood.

Or, I can't find the furniture that I want...

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA

>So I guess I'll have to make it. That would be my responce. I make a bit of Greene and Greene styled items. Even if I had the cash to buy them, it would be almost impossible to find what I'm looking for and in the approprate size.

Re: "I can buy furniture" or can't

Angus Barclay, in New Zealand

>I started into woodworking because I couldn't afford to buy quality furniture but could afford to build mediocre furniture using a very basic set of tools, working in a semi-enclosed porch and using recycled (i.e. free) wood. I was product focussed out of necessity.

Nowadays I earn enough to feed the family and have a bit left over but still build furniture simply because I enjoy doing so. I've also discovered that now I really can't build ordinary furniture cheaper than I can buy it, which I use as motivation to design and build furniture and other items that go beyond the ordinary.

And now that I do woodwork for enjoyment rather than necessity, I'm not as product focussed any more and find myself sometimes interested in the more arcane stuff that gets discussed here on Woodcentral.

At the moment I'm guilty of making my workshop the current project. I decided to build a new tool cabinet and that progressed through to a complete re-think and re-organisation of workflow, storage, benches and workstations.

cheers

Angus Barclay

Re: "I can buy furniture" or can't

Dave Anderson NH

>My wife and I are into 18th century furniture, primarily Queen Anne. I build furniture because there is little available on the market that has decent quality though there are a few makers like Harden and Eldred Wheeler, but thier stuff is far more than I want to spend. For the one time cost of each tool and the cost of the lumber and finishing supplies we get what we want and I get to have a fun time as a bonus. Most of what I've built is not available in from even the best reproduction makers and building it myself is the only way of getting it.

By the way Bill, Fred Stanley does some awesome work. I got to see the slide show of his work at Williamsburg during the awards dinner when he received the Cartouche.

Re: "I can buy furniture" or can't

Warren in Lancaster, PA

>In reading about people who can't afford to buy fine furniture, I am reminded of something that happened in 1990. The day my son was born a preacher came to my shop and asked about having a slantlid desk made. He liked the pictures of another desk that I had made. When I quoted a price it was a little more than he expected and he said that it was probably worth it but he had to be concerned about stewardship {wise use of money}. As he drove away in a fancy van, I thought "That van cost 15 or 20 times what the desk would have. The van will be junk in 12 years, but his grandson would not wear out the desk I could have made."

Yesterday I was wondering about how his van was doing after 17 years, so I called the preacher up. He remembered me and he remembered the van, but he couldn't remember how he disposed of the van. He even asked his wife if she knew. The desk would have been looking pretty mellow by now. So much for stewardship.

you got that right

Bill Tindal, E.TN

>His secretary is the most beautiful piece of furniture I have ever seen. And the color and finish on the knee hole desk-oh my. Its picture in the journal does not begin to capture its true color and depth. It is not at all the purple color in the picture. If you ever come down I-81 stop for a visit. He is only a few hundred feet from the exit at Abingdon and his wife is as good a cook as he is a woodworker.

It is interesting how people ....

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

>... order their priorities, isn't it?

Regards from Perth

Derek

Re: It is interesting how people ....

Glenn Madsen near San Francisco

>When the boys were little, we bought a $50 school teacher's desk out of the classified advertising of the newspaper.

Our grandchildren come to the house regularly now, and that's probably the only piece of furniture we have from those days 30 years or more ago. That, and the dining room pieces my parents passed on to us, after they had used them for close to thirty years.

Some things are made to last. It sometimes takes us a while to figure out what those things are, and which of them are of value.

We wore out several vans, too. And a couple of pickup trucks.

Re: "I can buy furniture" or can't

Stephen Kirk in Quakertown, PA

>Personally, I do very little practice that doesn't turn into some piece of furniture, shop helper or other useful item. If I'm doing a new joint I may cut a practice piece or two simply so I don't screw up the actual piece (too badly).

I tried the idea of doing a dovetail a day, using some scraps. I think I lasted one day. If I'm not actually making something, I wonder what I'm spending my time doing. I practice by actually making stuff, not just making firewood. This is just the way I work, and I'm not criticizing those who do a lot of practice, or just like to see how good certain tools can work. As long as we enjoy what we do, I think it's all good.

got you beat

Bill Tindal, E.TN

>I lasted 3 days and said to hell with this and started on the drawers. Who is ever going to see the dove tails in drawers anyway?

The worse person of all ...

Paul Kierstead

>You will see them of course. There isn't anyone worse.

I figure if I am going to practice, then at least make something for the shop.

Interesting post, Bill.

Re: "I can buy furniture" or can't

Michael Recchione

>I think I was the poster you're referring to, where I said "I have no deadlines, and while the end-product is somewhat important, the process is infinitely more important for me. I can buy furniture."

Just to clarify, I DON'T mean that I'm happy to turn out junk as long as I can bang around in my shop while I'm doing it. I'm pretty demanding in terms of the quality that's allowed to leave the shop other than as firewood. It's quantity of product I don't insist on.

What I meant is that I'm not under pressure to finish a lot of stuff in a short time (although my wife is getting a little impatient for a couple of things that I promised her a while ago). I usually try to focus on building things that are "extras", just so that I can take my time and really enjoy the scenery.

I don't know if I'm reading this into your post incorrectly or not, so I'll just ask if this is what you meant: did you mean to imply that the quality target that we hand-tool folk work towards is lower than the one the power tool people work towards, because we're so focused on the process that we don't care how the piece comes out? If so, I don't believe that's generally the case. At least it's not for me, anyway.

no, thats not what I was thinking

Bill Tindal, E.TN

>More likely the other way around. The first stuff I built I now regard as "junk" because we needed a couch to sit on and a table to put stuff on and I built what I could with the skills I had (few). As time went on these things got put to other uses and the quality of the home's furniture has improved with their replacements. But overall, building has been driven by need and desire. The only pieces of furniture we have ever bought are a couch and some chairs (I decided I didn't want to make the investment to learn to make chairs).