Biggest influence

Wow, Peter, you've gone above and beyond as usual. I contributed a total of 134 of those columns -- every two months for over 22 years. I'll check with Ron and Pam Goldman, the publishers of Woodworker West, to see if they can send us digital copies of any or all of them. I'll let you know what I find out.

Thanks,
Ellis

Norm Abram.

Norm Abram for me too.

Peter I have a lot of influential woodworkers in my past, not least of whom was Frank Klausz. We formed a guild of ten guys (Guild X, we called ourselves) back in 1978 and visited and presented in each others' shops every month for several years. Frank was a third generation Hungarian craftsman who came to the US in the early 70s and started his cabinet shop near Bedminster NJ. His plumb bob collection was beyond compare. Every year he hosted an elegant Christmas party at his shop. Here's us at his 2001 event. There wasn't a speck of sawdust to be found anywhere. I'll never forget the little poster he had displayed in his upper tool cabinet: "I once thought I was wrong,...but I was mistaken." Frank was always right.

Ellis

One of the other influential woodworkers I've known is Ian Kirby, who just celebrated his 91st birthday this past June. I usually visit with him every year or so, and we're in constant touch about something or the other. Ian is quite a scholar, actually, as well as a master craftsman. He has several degrees and certificates from schools and programs in his native England, and ran a studio in Bennington VT after immigrating to the US way back when (1972?). I first ran into him at the big woodworking show in Madison Square Garden back in 1981, and after I joined the staff at American Woodworker, I flew to southern California to persuade him to do some writing for the magazine, which later turned into a string of influential articles over the next several years. He used to drive out from Connecticut, where he lives to this day, to our farm in eastern PA, to hang out and collaborate on magazine articles and project ideas, and we shot a magazine cover in my old shop (before the catastrophic fire of 1999).

Here's a rather unflattering shot of me and Asa Christiana (Fine Woodworking) with Ian back in 2010.

And here's us in his basement studio back in 2016 where he's still crafting incredible furniture...

I could fill volumes with shots like this, but I'll see if I can find some more influencers in my archives. You may enjoy browsing his website. There's some excellent reading in there. The awesome coffee table was from an pretty spectacular slab of rosewood he bought from me about seven years ago.

Ellis

Norm

@Ellis Walentine,

https://www.woodcentral.com/chats/chat_klausz40223.php

Krenov when I was starting out decades ago. Un-named and unknown Shaker craftsmen. Since about 5 years ago, Chris Hall. He completely changed my woodworking life by his blogs and essays and monographs that introduced me to Japanese woodworking. Also William Thomas, an incredibly talented cabinetmaker in New Hampshire. Not much of an internet presence unless you know where to look. He was a student of Phil Lowe and the classic New England, North Bennet St School tradition.

I was also influenced by James Krenov and spent some quality time with him at Fort Bragg back in the 90s. On one visit, I set my ancient little monochrome laptop up in his corner of the College Of the Redwoods workshop and we chatted with the world in American Woodworker's AOL chat room, which mystified and delighted him. I wish I still had the transcript of that one.

JK, as they called him, was known for his pedagogical style, which was more like a Zen master than a lecturer. Rather than overtly inflict his opinions, he preferred to draw the desired learning responses out of his students via little questions that made them look for the answers within themselves. Even so, everyone who was enrolled in the program was there to learn not only JK's woodworking chops but also a lot of his underlying aesthetic sensibilities, which they would then apply to their own creative impulses. Many have gone on to notable woodworking and teaching careers.

Here's a link to "The Personal Touch", an article we ran in 1995. It wasn't an easy project, distilling six pages from several days of taped interviews, but I think it offers some insights into his approach. I also have a videotape that I took of one of his student project critiques that fairly illustrates this aspect of his teaching style. I'll see if I can figure out a way of uploading it here, but don't hold your breath.

@Alan Young,

Wow Alan, talk about multiple blasts from the past. Thank you, my friend, for the superlatives. Lee and I still stay in touch, and Candy and I stop by their place just north of Yellowstone whenever we're heading north to BC. Someday I would like to have another get-together for old times' sake, but that's getting farther away the older I/we all get. In the interim we can make the best of virtual friendships.

It is a privilege to know that WoodCentral has made a difference. You've certainly distinguished yourself, and I often marvel at your designs and motifs, and the fact that you have schooled yourself in the metalworking crafts that so ably combine with your woodworking skills and intrepid nature. You have come a long way in the past two decades. Keep up the inspired work.

Happy Christmas to you and yours,

Ellis

Wow!  Alan, thank you!  That is quite amazing to read and I'm delighted to know I had such an impact.  I'm dabbling still but nothing like the work I used to do when I was much more active.  Thank to Ellis for the heads up.
Cheers to all, enjoy your holidays!
Lee

Had to pluralize my name, some other clown has my real name.

Lee, that was a wonderful post.

When asked about influencers, it is really a sign of the times when our generation draws on writers such as Krenov, while the new generation appear to be following the exploits of popular YouTubers. We had our own video masters in the form or Norm, but when I compare the experiences of past and present, I am left with Norm showing you method and conveying an unflappable manner, while YouTubers just want to show you how good they are. Krenov (and Nakashima, although I have never been interested in his slab designs), cultivated a passion for both the medium and the art. I know that not everyone can afford to build in solid wood or have the interest for traditional (non-mechanical) joinery, but when the reading also includes immersing oneself in the designs and methods of the past, building contemporary designs (as I do) does not feel right if done in any other way. 

For amateurs such as myself, without access to teachers, discussion on forums has been a significant support and training ground. Again, perhaps it is the training and mindset of a generation of olde versus today, but the time taken to talk through and critique design and method had been so instrumental in influencing who I am as a woodworker. There is no single individual here, but the input of many. So many ideas offered. Ellis, you need to know how instrumental you have been in making this happen. You have been the perfect host and encouraged a forum for exchange and debate. I visit a few forums, and none have been a home like WC. I fear forums are dying, at least the way discussion and experience are combined to offer real mental growth. I do not think that one needs to be a psychologist to recognise that - literally - times have changed. That is, how we view time in the past versus how time is experienced today. Everything has become so instant, and with this we are losing the willingness and the patience for the demands of fine woodworking. It is not just past designs and technique that influenced us along our path, but also the understanding and acceptance that work takes time. May WC continue to send this message.

My very best wishes to all for the festive season. 

Regards from Perth

Derek

Lee Grindinger wrote:

Had to pluralize my name, some other clown has my real name.

Hi Lee,

You posted on the old forums using what it called a profile, and those profiles were transferred here as user accounts.

https://www.woodcentral.com/forkbb/user/2056/Lee%20Grindinger

To post using that name, you need to be logged in. To log in, you first need to create a passphrase for the account (passwords were not transferred from the old forums). And to do that, just select Login, then select the "Forgotten" link that will ask you for your email address. If your email address matches the one associated with the user account, it will send you an email with a link to reset/create the passphrase.

It works like almost all other sites to change a password if one has forgotten it.

If you do this and do not receive an email, use the Contact Us link. The system will not send an email unless it matches a user account, the the old forum often had very old email address associated with the user profiles to which members no longer had access. There is no automated way to fix this for security reasons, but it can easily be done by contacting us with your current email address.

Welcome back!

While I quickly acknowledge all the great named experts, I want to say that Myron Curtis,(RIP) was the most influential person in my turning life.  He inspired lots of guys and gals to do simple and elegant turnings with basic tools.  He will be remembered by many of us who attended 
Arrowmount  School to which he gave of his knowledge and his money.

There is a split in the thread between people who had influencers with whom they worked, and ones they got from media.  

My direct Influence was my dad whose dad was a joiner, and spec house builder in Belfast, NI.  And my great Uncle, who was extremely handy, grew up on a desolate farm in the near arctic of NB. There was a story of him and his friend both deciding to make these very complex sailing models about 3 feet long, with self steering, from some magazine.  One started out shaping with an axe, while the other did so with calipers, etc...  The story claims that the boats turned out to be indistinguishable.  We still have one of them, and I don't know which of the two it is.

I was building a self designed strip canoe, my second project, and running up against a lot of frustrating barriers.  I went to a local bookstore for some retail therapy.  I found one of the first two Krenov books.  I guess in retrospect that was life changing.  After that I read everything else I could find.  But probably the next big influence was the first run of videos that FWW put out, with the Dovetail one, that still resonates to this day.  There were some other really good videos in that batch.

Japanese woodwork was a big influence.  I was solidly in that camp, without illusions, partly because of Krenov, and also because most of the tools at that time were crap.  We went 20 years without being able to get a pro grade chisel, plane, or handsaw from the major catalogs, unless they were Japanese.  Handsaws took for ever to sort out.  One guy published a respected book on cutting dovetails with hack saw, which actually works pretty well.  It wasn't completely as dire in the US, but still was pretty close.  FWW carried an article basically describing how to convert a cheap backsaw into a dovetail say, from scratch, as late as 1996.  So there were many voices who played a part in just getting a set of tools together.

https://www.woodcentral.com/piwigo/picture.php?/1888/category/340

After growing up in a minimalist decor environment and a degree in Art History, my design vocabulary was always tilted to the Bauhaus movement.  Asian design concepts (China & Japan) have been a favored style even when imported into the West as did the Arts & Crafts makers.  George Nakashima has been a major influence for me in his reverence for what he found in any given piece of wood.    This same approach made me a member of the Round-and-Brown school of woodturning exemplified by David Ellsworth.

Frid, bar none.  He could do it all, power or hand, whatever worked best for the task in front of him.