We recently finished up another great foundational course. The 12 students moved along at a nice pace, and they all had a great time. This class set a speed record thanks to Jonathan keeping the coffee pot full! Or it might be the student from Montana that has done multiple Triathlons and 4 Ironman Triathlons– our newest requirement before taking the class! (just kidding)

We had students that traveled from as far away as North Carolina, Montana, and Missouri.  They did so well that I had the opportunity to fit in other teaching, including showing how to make a tapered sliding dovetail, chip carving and foursquaring a board totally by hand!

One student even made a dovetail marker complete with a tapered sliding dovetail!

Of course all the students completed a box with great hand cut dovetails, a shelf and a lovely walnut table.

If you are new to our website and this blog, please sign up on the right to receive this blog via email, or you can just click the link right here. You can also find more information about the next Foundational course right here.

To all those that took the class, thank you again and we look forward to seeing you in a future class.

If you’re in or near the Dallas area, join us at Woodworld this Friday or Saturday for the Lie-Nielsen Handtool Event.

We will be at the event, giving ongoing demonstrations on handtool joinery, use of handplanes and even some inlay work! Joe Slack will do a mini guitar making seminar at 2:00 on both days of the event.

We will also be selling some of the tools that we make here at the school, including handforged holdfasts, handmade mallets, marking knifes and strops, just to name a few.

In addition to Lie-Nielsen products you will find Mr. Drake from Glen Drake Toolworks selling some of his tools. Lynn and Tracy Dowd from Garland Texas will also be there, selling a wide variety of vintage tools. Plus you won’t want to miss getting a slice of Tracy’s homemade pie!

The event is Friday and Saturday, April 13th and 14th, 2012, in Dallas Texas at Woodworld. Just click the link here to get directions, and we’ll see you there.

Thanks to a generous donation from Landon Marx, one of our students, we’ve recently added a high quality video camera and a High Definition L.E.D. Screen to our teaching facility!

This new setup really makes teaching the fine details a breeze. Details are very important when working with hand tools, and now everyone in the class can see a clear, close up view of all the fine points that I am trying to communicate.

The idea of having a live, bench-mounted camera came from Roy Underhill. Our setup is pretty simple – I modified a camera tripod and attached it to a piece of wood so I can move it wherever I need to on the bench. An HD video camera is mounted on the tripod, and I used an HDMI cable to connect the camera to a large screen.  The screen is positioned where everyone in the class can see it easily. (The only disadvantage to this setup is that now any mistakes I make are also magnified 100 times!)

We’re excited about this new improvement, and we look forward to you coming back and taking more classes with us.

Thank you again, Landon!

Thursday we leave to Kansas City, Kansas to demonstrate at one of the Big Ten Woodworking Shows. Many of you have seen our set up at the Texas shows but we are pleased to be able to do the same in Kansas. If you are anywhere near the area please stop in. We will be demonstrating hand tool joinery and the use of hand planes as well as inlay and even guitar making. You can check out a complete listing of what we will be demonstrating as well as the times right here. You will also be able to see many of the new class projects that we have developed in 2011.

As a bonus you will have the opportunity to buy some new tools from Lee-Valley and others. Check out the show and directions here on The Woodworking Shows website.

The show starts this Friday the 27^th and runs through Sunday the 29^th.

Hope to see you there!

Some of you may have been wondering what has happened, since I have not written in a while.  The truth be told, I tend to get so busy and wrapped up in other projects that my writing just gets pushed to the back burner. But it’s certainly not because there is nothing to write about, in fact there is a ton to write about!

We are actually right at the end of finishing up a prototype workbench class. It seems that a workbench class has been one of the most requested new classes so I finally said, “OK, let’s just do a class!”

Two great students joined me earlier this month to embark on building 3 benches in a 12 day class. Carl, Rob and I started with a huge pile of rough lumber and began milling wood and cutting mortise and tenons. We have had an absolute wonderful time working together and putting our heads together to resurrect an ancient tail vise which dates back to the 16^th century. Please stay tuned as I promise I will be writing more about this exquisite vise in the near future.

There was one clause in the workbench class contract: if my wife went into labor we would stop the class and resume at a later date. Well, our new son decided to arrive just a few days prior to the completion date of the class! Needless to say, we had to resume the class after Christmas.

Each of us constructed a bench using primarily hard maple throughout. I designed the benches with the traditional European bench in mind. We used a quick release vise on the front and our lovely wagon vise for the tail vise. The size is 31” wide and over 7 feet long. These benches, when finished, will be worthy to be used as any piece of fine furniture in the home and they are sure heavy to boot!  I will be sending some pictures of the guys with their finished benches in the near future.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas Holiday and that the New Year is filled with many blessings. I look forward to all of you joining us for another year of great classes in 2012.

Happy New Year!

Frank Strazza

This year, my son went to the sawmill with me. We picked up three red oak logs for chair making and a white oak log, which I hope to turn into some splints and handles for making baskets. I also picked up a pine log to practice some hand hewing (which I plan to write about in a future article) along with two more chunks of red oak to make some nice split boards. Borrowing from Peter Follansbee’s line, “Quartersplit oak is what quartersawn oak wishes it was, it’s the best oak money can’t buy.”

The sawmill’s tongs made it really easy to move the logs.

The puppy is enjoying the view, what a pile of logs!

This red oak log that we’re loading onto the trailer is huge!

This red oak log that my son’s measuring is the one I really wanted. It’s a good thing the sawmill owner wouldn’t let me have it. My trailer weighed in at just 200 lbs below its maximum capacity even without it. I will say that I think this log would have made Peter Follansbee jealous! It was perfectly round, almost 36″ in diameter, and straight as an arrow.

A full load and ready for the 4 hour trip home!

More About the Fair

Our Homestead Fair is an exciting time for us. We have it the week of Thanksgiving, Friday, through Sunday. Each year, many thousands of people come out to visit us for three days of fine craft-making demonstrations (woodworking, blacksmithing, pottery, weaving, spinning, candle-making, leatherworking, basketmaking, and many others) along with homesteading seminars, music, lots of food, fine crafts, and many different hands-on projects for the young and young-at-heart to enjoy. We’ll also have a hands-on timber frame barn raising.

That’s compressing it into quite a nutshell – if you’ve never come out for the fair, you really ought to consider it.

For more information about the fair, including driving directions, schedule of events, lodging, photos, and a short video, visit: the link below

2011 Homestead Fair

Many of you have asked if I was going to enter anything into the show. The answer is yes and no! I was asked to participate as a judge this year, so I will be going down this weekend, and with the help of a few others we will decide the winners. Needless to say I will not have a piece entered. On the other hand, there is a little place for the judges to show their work. I sent down my Texas Welcome Hall Table. Click the link to see a short video about the table.

The winners will be announced on Saturday evening, November 19th, at the awards ceremony. Be sure to check back to see who the winners are! The Heritage School of Woodworking is providing the apprentice award which is a wonderful package of handmade tools and a one day course at the school.

About a year and half ago I started a project to help me with my marquetry. I began building a nineteenth- century French tool called a Chevalet de Marqueterie, or chevy, for short!

The word Chevalet is French for easel; Marqueterie is French for marquetry, which means painting with wood; thus a Chevalet de Marqueterie is an “Easel for painting with wood”.

This tool was really developed for cutting packets of veneer, thus enabling the craftsman to make multiple pictures with one cutting. I got the plans from a book written by Pierre Ramond from France. Fortunately the book had been translated into English! The plans were in the back of the book, quite technical, and all in millimeters!

I also must say that I received some help from friends: here in Texas (Alton Bowman), out on the west coast (Pat Edwards), and even back east (Silas Kopf). All the above- mentioned have at least one or more of these tools; they graciously offered their suggestions, loaned me notes, and allowed me to take photos of their personal tools. So I am ever grateful to each one of them.

The tool is made out of Hard Maple. It has a foot lever that is actuated by your heels, which operates a clamp that holds the veneer while you saw it. It also has a saw frame which rides on two adjustable arms. This allows the saw frame to cut perfectly straight, so you can cut multiple pieces which all turn out the same size.

In one sense, the chevy is a hand- powered horizontal scroll saw. The main difference is that you can actually control the speed of the cut and the pressure because you don’t have any vibration, which allows you to cut very fine pieces. If you were to do this on the scroll saw, you’d risk breaking the wood because of the vibration of the saw blade. The other advantage of this tool is that you can sit with your work right at eye level, so you can see clearly what you are doing.

On my first attempt at using the saw I made some marquetry roses. Here is a picture of some small roses I have been working on for a new piece that I am making. Stay tuned, as I will be writing about the construction of this new piece. The coins in the picture will give you an idea of how small these roses are!

My 9-year-old son is also enjoying using the saw. Actually, he is really getting the hang of it; I might have to hire out my sawing to him!

We just completed another rocking chair course this past week. We had a great group of guys and everyone had a great time. We had three chairs made out of walnut, and Jerry made his out of cherry.

One of the unique points of our school is that we do our best to make sure that everyone leaves with a completed project.  There is always a little work left for the student to do at home, mainly some finish sanding and of course, applying the finish. For all of you that are ready to oil your chairs, be sure to check out my blog on Finishing with Danish oil.

If you are interested in taking the next rocking chair course, we have just put out the dates for 2012! The Foundational Course is a prerequisite, so you must have taken that first, and then you can sign up here for the next Rocking Chair Course.  Not only will you leave with a lot of new skills but you will be rocking your way home in a new chair!

A visit to Lie-Nielsen’s booth will of course yield the opportunity to try your hand at any of their tools but also the opportunity to meet Thomas Lie-Nielsen. You will also find the 5^th generation rasp maker, Michel Auriou from Auriou Rasps all the way from France, hand stitching a rasp right there in front of you! A quick walk around and you can see Rob Cosman making shavings!! One of my favorite stops in the market place was using the 2 man rip saw for cutting veneers. It is just like the one in Andre Roubo’s plate from the 18^th century, where it shows two men cutting veneer from a log, well I got to cut some 1/8” veneer, it was a real workout! Then I went and visited with Don Weber who is an old school chair bodger from Wales.  He has been working wood for 50 years and he is a wealth of knowledge. He was telling us how he makes his own charcoal for his forge so he can then make his own chair making tools, truly a craftsman.

This is all downstairs at the market place. Upstairs is where there are about 8 classes going simultaneously. The first class I attended was with Steve Hamilton and Jeff Headly. These men are amazing craftsman and Jeff is a 4^th generation furniture maker. His brother Mack works as the master cabinetmaker at Colonial Williamsburg. The class was on building a Winchester desk from the late 18^th century, complete with a whole array of small drawers and many secret compartments. It was very, very inspirational!

Then I went and watched Roy Underhill as he talked about the rising dovetail.  What a blast that was! I went back and watched him cut and carve wooden screws, complete with a full history lesson on how and where the wooden screw evolved!

A quick jaunt around the corner and I saw Peter Follansbee showing how he works wood in the 17^th century, using riven green oak to produce furniture in the same style that was made over 300 years ago and that is still around!

If you ever have a chance to attend, it truly is worth every bit. I have enclosed several pictures that I took around the show, of course I took several videos but they would be too much to post! Today will be much the same but it will be over too fast! For more information on the conference here is the link. Woodworking in America