Dovetail socket testing

Re: Dovetail socket testing

Wiley Horne

That’s a good idea, Bill. Scraping the socket with a square. Will remember!

Wiley

Re: Very Artsy, and here is why...

TomD

You make beautifully executed furniture, it seems as though inefficiency annoys you, which is cool. So you obviously could come up with a way of doing the joint efficiently and without showing any marks on end grain, as per the well trodden path of Tage Frid, who had to make his living from his work, one way or another. And you could also make the overcuts random in their length somewhat careless. Looking at the work it looks intentional, and you explain it on supposed pragmatic lines. So it is didactic art.

While it is true that people did not waste time in the past, it is also true that there were many grades of furniture. Some of this stuff may not have had a market in the US, I don't recall seeing a lot of gold encrusted stuff in catalogs I have perused, but they may have been common. The one thing one might avoid or embrace depending on whether the effect one is after is comic or accurate is whether one is faking the funk across the board. Is one employing historically accurate cheap shots across the board, or is the furniture rondomly one thing or another according to one's education and personal preferences. If the later is the case, then it can produce folk art, like Peggy Hill's sculptures welded out of propane tanks.

Your work is wonderful regardless of how it is viewed. Not very many people get the home woodworker thing anyway. So intentions are unlikely to be evident. But given that we do discuss how many faeries can balance on a Shapton sharpened edge, it does not seem too obscure to talk about it from time to time.

taig frid...before my time..

David Weaver

..I see that he was an editor for FWW for years, and started teaching in woodworking schools at age 35 (scratch that, I see a second reference of coming to the US to teach when he would've been 33 or so).

When someone says that person A, B or C had to make a living woodworking, it makes it sound like they came of age, started woodworking, earned a living making things, and then retired.

It seems like all of the people we know who made a living woodworking made more of their living teaching, or did it for longer. Why are frid's methods often considered more professional or legitimate than methods that were used when people made a living woodworking?

Re: taig frid...before my time..

Wiley Horne

“ Why are frid's methods often considered more professional or legitimate than methods that were used when people made a living woodworking?”

Good question. Just a guess, but would a person doing heads-down work in a shop all their life be motivated to publish their methods? Or capable? Even the master of the shop, with journeymen and apprentices doing the up and down lifting, would have no motivation to tell the world how he does it—and he might protect his arts and mysteries. We can only know of these people through others—that is why Roubo’s writings are a treasure.

But an instructor at RISD or wherever would have all the motivation in the world to publish and establish a brand.

Not Frid’s agent, but the method of knifing vertically down through the half-blind sawcut (that Derek has demonstrated) seemed like a no-brainer to me once I actually tried it.

Wiley

Re:Dovetails and making a living.

Bruce McCrory

I found a comment by Jonathan Binzen (FWW) interesting. He said very few of the woodworkers he interviewed actually made a living "making" in their chosen specialty. They had to supplement their income with secondary work. Teaching was a predominant method. The successful makers had to be good ,efficient, in repetitive assembly line work.

I don't think the majority on this forum would subscribe to that kind of labor for success.

I can sympathise. Last summer I rebuilt my cedar deck using diagonal layout decking. The professional deck builders who do the same layout practically create a solid surface on which to attach the decking. I would never accept that, since wood-on-wood is the first location for rot and deterioration. None of my professional designs reflected multiple complicated connections. The fact I did my deck with diagonal layout reflects DIY at slave wages, i.e., none.

Re: taig frid...before my time..

David Weaver

I think the teachers often have a lot more learning in their wake than the prodigious makers.

I'm just wondering how many people we regard as having made things for a living as their primary career made things and then taught as their primary career (with the latter being more).

Not sure your point

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

Why are Frid's methods often considered more professional or legitimate than methods that were used when people made a living woodworking? I don't agree with this premise. Who is making this claim?

And why would Frid not be considered making a living woodworking? How about Jeff Headley and Steve Hamilton?

Many, maybe most, famous musicians perform and teach. The fact that they teach somehow lessens their credibility as performers and makes then not musicians? Frid has a large body of work. Like Krenov he taught and produced. Most, if not all, the current Period Furniture makers teach part time.

Lets take Steve Latta. The fact he teaches at a community college makes his methods for Line and Berry in modern times any more or less professional than the people doing this decoration in 1780?

From all I have read Frid taught students how to make a living woodworking in his time, not 1758. And he taught at the best schools in the US. Reasonable to presume he was damn good to get and keep the job. In 1758 woodworkers taught too. The students were called apprentices. The syllabus was different.

Early in my woodworking career I bought and studied Frid, "Joinery". It taught quick reliable means of making the kind of furniture I made at that time. Frid's "get the product out the door" woodworking philosophy had a lasting influence that persisted as I read about woodworking as a lifestyle from Krenov.

Re: taig frid...before my time..

Eric Rathhaus

I believe he trained and worked in Denmark as a cabinet maker before he came to the US so that he had experience in both an academic and commercial settings. In one of his books he also describes using a buffer to sharpen his tools: first grind on a belt sander to remove nicks and uneven areas and then move directly to buffer with polishing compound. He also noted that if he's going to use a stone instead of the buffer, he likes thee Belgian clay stone with water.

Re: taig frid...before my time..

David Weaver

If he's danish, I wonder if that's a variant of the coticule (like the blue side, or belgian blue).

The man did a whole lot of woodworking, and well. I have only done a little, and mediocre, so I certainly can't criticize. I don't think I could keep interest long enough to be as prolific nor would have the talent or the patience to teach.

Re: Not sure your point

David Weaver

i'm starting to wonder what my point was, too. As far as the implication that "tage did it better", based on things like this:

>>so you obviously could come up with a way of doing the joint efficiently and without showing any marks on end grain, as per the well trodden path of Tage Frid, who had to make his living from his work, one way or another.<<

Most of the good teachers are also good makers.

But somewhere there must be a few intense individuals who do nothing like make. I think George Wilson probably could have (he could get as much side work as he could handle at a pretty solid shop rate - but his variety of skills, and as finely as he does each is really unusual). But even George spent almost 40 years at a museum - it'd be senseless not to. He got to make at the museum, get the benefits of being an employee (as in getting employee benefits and pay) and still do as much work as he wished on the side.

We live in a weird world on the internet. When someone starts a youtube channel and it's really well done and they have tons of charisma, it's not long before you find out what their aim was (in the form of amazon links and paid promotions). There was a good solid young maker here locally a few years ago - Wyatt something or other. He had wonderfully made furniture at one of the local craft fairs (by that, I mean 18th century stuff, carvings and all). I don't know if he'd be a good teacher, but he seems to have disappeared from that craft place. It's a shame. Given that I like to observe patterns, it strikes me as likely that someone who ends up teaching often started not intending to, but it just makes sense. If one isn't wired to be a teacher day in and day out (which is most people), then it's on to something a little bit more pedestrian that maybe doesn't involve woodworking.

Now more sure your point

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

I have no idea what Tom D was saying. I think he missed the point that I don't care what my dovetails look like so long as they hold the drawer together. Only other woodworkers give a flip what dovetails look like. I find it especially true that the beginners open a drawer and scrutinized the dovetails first thing. I'm more concerned with whether the drawer works smoothly. That feature my "customers" notice.

There is a world of difference between someone professionally teaching and a professional that teaches. As I thought about professionals I found many if not most classes of them teach as a part of their being professional. My artist friend certainly earned her living artisting but she had students, for example.

I understand your point. There are some teaching woodworking that have not earned a reputation (and gained valuable experience) doing. Having been there and done that, classes with the doers that also teach are most effective for me (think Headley shop).

Belgian water stones

Warren in Lancaster, PA

In the 1970s we called coticules "Belgian water stones". They were the yellow variety. Barbers called them this, Frid used this term, and Woodcraft sold them as Belgian water stones.

Re: Belgian water stones

David Weaver

Every older shave item that I've seen (not going back to look to confirm) didn't use the term coticule, either. They used "belgian hone" or "belgium hone".

I'm not sure where the term coticule came from.

Some of the old texts are a little weird decribing thuringian and belgian stones, and I think Holtzappfel's text makes it sound like the belgian stones are the german stones, and the thuringian stones lose out (those are only of interest for shaving, anyway).

Re: Now more sure your point

David Weaver

I'm sure Frid earned his - youtube, etc, (and retailing through woodworking suppliers) has made it now so that people can start as a business teaching and then learn as they go.

Not specific to woodworking, either. There's a guy on youtube who was a kind of local guitar player who made a lot of outrageous videos with strong opinions drawing in beginners to his lessons. I remember him saying at one point that he was making more than a million a year off of his website, and he may still be. He hit the jackpot.

I suppose there is some parallel there - he did a lot of simplified stuff in lessons and there were plenty of folks who just wanted something simplified to start with so that they could get up and running right away.

problem with this YouTube learning

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

As I became more experienced and more discriminating in what I was being "taught" I began to see a difference in learning from someone that was also putting product out the door vs someone teaching the "same" subject that wasn't. One could rely on the producers to teach what was reliable and quick, but maybe not easiest to learn. The YouTube type were more inclined to be teaching something that was different/novel and selling novel as better.

Re: taig frid...before my time..

Eric Rathhaus

David, I'm surprised his method of belt sander to buffer didn't pique your interest.

Re: taig frid...before my time..

AlanWS

Tage Frid was more than an editor of Fine Woodworking, he was one of the main reasons it came into being. He had gone through an apprenticeship in Denmark, and worked as a cabinetmaker for decades before coming to the USA. He was shocked that schools here had lost most of the accumulated techniques of the craft, and strove to reintroduce them. Of course there were idiosyncratic aspects to his teachings, but his methods work well and are efficient. Many of his students went on to make substantial names for themselves.

Re: taig frid...before my time..

David Weaver

Like I said, before my time. I'm not trying to slight the guy, it's just an observation that there's a whole generation now that sees kirby and frid as more legit perhaps than anything else.

Having know my grandparents, I'm not surprised that kind of craft was gone as industry. It wasn't economically viable and we didn't have that much old money in the us like Europe did. My grandparents started farming cultivating 110 acres with miles. They had a tractor for plowing and grabbed every affordable modern advancement that they could.

Since I don't have the context of what frids real aim was, I think it was less professional production and more preservation (that has turned into hobby).

Re: taig frid...before my time..

Bruce Mack

I have his books. I remember (? misremember) an anecdote about Frid. He was the antidote to the druidic soul-of-a-tree teachers, always leaving his shop same time in the mid-afternoon and going home, leaving whatever until the next day.

Re: taig frid...before my time..

David Weaver

I hadn't heard it put in that context before, but that makes me like him a little bit more.

Re: taig frid...before my time.. *LINK*

Bruce Mack

This may have been my source. It comes from Hank Gilpin's recollections published in "Fine Woodworking". I haven't the complete article. He had more personality than a pile of academics.


Hank Gilpin on Professor Frid

thanks....fun read