Woodworking School - Teaching Furniture Making Students About Innovation

!9# Woodworking School - Teaching Furniture Making Students About Innovation

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This is the first of a new series about British Furniture Design which I first had published in British Woodworking Magazine in September 2008. I'm writing this in the context of a renaissance in British furniture making and furniture design. A golden period akin to that of Thomas Chippendale, Sheraton and Hepplewhite, great names evocative of a great period in English furniture making. But hopefully here I'll do more than bang the drum of British furniture design. Hopefully I'll be able to talk with you about what good design is, what good furniture making is, what quality is, what art is. For all of these things are essential if one is to make sense of good workmanship. Nothing saddens me more than seeing hundreds even thousands of hours poured in to a piece of exquisite workmanship only to be let down by poor design. If technique and craftsmanship give us the 'how', then design gives us an explanation, at least in part, as to the 'why'. The reason, the motivation, for spending hundreds of hours making something truly extraordinary.

"There is no such thing as art..... there are only artists, who are favoured with a gift of balancing shapes and colours until they get it right. And rarer still, who posses the integrity of character which never rests content with half solutions, but is ready to forgo all easy effects, all superficial success for the toil and agony of sincere work" Ernst H Gombrich 1950. The Story of Art. This is the first paragraph of one of the earliest editions of what would describe itself as one of the most famous and popular books on art ever published. For 45 years it has remained unrivalled as an introduction to the whole subject, from the earliest cave paintings to the experimental art of today. Yet Prof. Gombrich's radical and powerful introduction to the subject has been tempered over the years to something a little more accommodating to the art market of today. To say there is no such thing as art, though true, is challenging. To focus instead upon the challenges facing the producer rather than what is produced is invigorating, for it is this process that we want to examine. How is it done, what is it done for, what is important about it, how does the creative craftsperson work, what is valuable, what is not.

More than a year ago I attended an exhibition of contemporary British furniture that had the extraordinary effect of making me feel physically sick. The work of art is meant to move you, often physically, but not in this way. This exhibition entitled 'A Celebration of Craftsmanship' surrounded me with the work of young aspiring makers producing objects in which hundreds and thousands of hours had been invested, yet the overall effect was, to me at least, dispiriting. What was missing? What was not there? It is that, the why, the soul, the heart , that I want to talk about. When taking on a large subject it is wise to attempt to digest it in small pieces and the structure and strategy of this series is to look at design in a series of discreet focused and complete chapters. Each article taking on a subject, and aspect of the conundrum that is art and design. In this case I'm going to start with the subject that foxed probably 80% of those makers exhibiting at Cheltenham last year. The subject of innovation. It's one of the features of truly creative work that it is innovative, that it is different, it is in some way challenging to us. It's one of the things we look out for. However, I do not in my heart believe that mere innovation alone is sufficient to move me. The Mark 1 eyeball is a terrifically clever animal. She will analyse a group of shapes, forms, in the twinkling. She can spot a dud line at 100 yards and is ever seeking to be visually enchanted and entertained. It is the Mark 1 eyeball that is the driver of fashion, together with a considerable industry that also benefits from it financially, but we won't go into dreary commerce. It's this requirement for innovation, for newness, for freshness. It's this craving to make something new that induces the production of such vomit making furniture. Everybody wants to do something new. So lets grab the legs off of that, and the top off of that, and the finish off of that and what we end up with is a piece of furniture with all the elegance of a camel, and frankly I'm fed up with it.

So what does the innovative attitude of the designer give us? I'd like to compare chairs made by two furniture makers. The first is John Brown and the second is John Makepeace. John Brown is not a well known figure and not even his greatest friend could describe his work as being boldly innovative. John was a chair maker within a tradition of stick back chair making. He worked to my mind with great integrity, sensitivity and true awareness of what a good piece of furniture should be. But he worked without the objective of turning the chair on it's head and starting again. John Brown was innovative but within the context of the details of the piece. He played around with proportion. He looked hard at the shapes and weights of different components, he bottomed out his seats and turned his spindles, he bowed his arms and tapered his legs, all with infinite care and sensitivity. You get the feeling that a chair made by John Brown was finished and polished with the sweat from his own brow. There is no bit of that chair that was ever given to anybody else. His work, his hands, his heart is deep within the fibres of the material. His whole personality infects the chair giving it presence, honesty, quality. Now there's a word I don't use very often. Quality. By that I don't mean 'quality assured', or 'hand made by robots', I mean genuine creative quality. But it is a piece within it own oeuvre, within it's own tradition. Most of John Brown's stick back chairs stand out from the pack as being damn well made chairs, but would not define the moment they had been made. Would not change the way we look at chairs in the way that a John Makepeace chair might do.

The first time I saw Millennium I can honestly say that it was heart stopping, and that really is the test for me of whether a piece of work is profoundly good. We often say a work of art moves us and the art critic of The Times, David Sylvester, would describe the physical effects upon his body, the trembling hand, that a great painting would have. Moving us often literally means exactly that. Do we, can we perceive within our bodies a physical effect. Another test, especially with furniture for me is 'the bastard, I wish I'd made that'. If I feel like that it's a good one. But why is Millennium so good? It was in lots of ways a development of techniques and forms that John Makepeace had been working on for two, maybe three decades. With chairs like Mitre, John Makepeace had shown the technical competence of his workshop. Laminating compound forms in ebony, a timber renowned for it's ability to not stick one piece to another, and Millennium is a step on from that. Laminating compound shapes in a white timber like holly with totally invisible glue line is still incredibly impressive but these days we see technical competence and workshop mastery almost as a given, but John Makepeace was the first to push it to extremes. The forms of Millennium are like no other chair that goes before it. It has obvious influences from other periods and critics and art historians talk about the exact stylistic links to earlier movements, but the key thing is that it marks a point in the development of the history of chair making. It puts down a landmark. Before this point chairs weren't like this, after this point they were influenced by the way that John Makepeace went about chair making, and that perhaps is something worth shouting about. If we accept that the things that we invent describe our lives, that common things from spoons and pens to chairs and bicycles are all made bearing the signature of our time and place and history will be learnt from the artifacts that we leave behind then this chair is of paramount importance. However, as a chair I cannot say I would want to be that close to it. I can feel very little of John Makepeace's warmth and personality from within it's bounds. Whereas a John Brown chair would sit in the sunshine and hum a pretty song to me, Millennium sits in an air conditioned museum, admired by many, but known by very few.

Woodworking School - Teaching Furniture Making Students About Innovation

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Choosing a Band Saw

!9# Choosing a Band Saw

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his month's "how to buy" topic is band saws. Depending on what kind of woodworking you normally do, band saws can be essential to the shop or a perfect accessory to the table saw.

There are two common styles of band saws, the three wheel and the two wheel. After this it is mainly a matter of size. Three wheel band saws give you a greater throat depth than a two wheel having the same blade length but they have other problems, which take away from any cutting advantage. Two wheels are much easier to align properly and keep aligned during use than three. The thinner blades also will break much easier with three wheels because of the extra stress created by smaller wheels. All in all, there are very few three wheel band saws, which are worth the money and hassle they create. There was a time when there were many on the market, but these days they are rare except at garage sales. If you need the extra throat depth then buy a larger two wheel machine. Just as an example, years ago I was using a three wheel band saw and it took me almost half an hour to get the blade to track properly only to find when I put it under load the tracking went off again. From here on I'm only going to talk about the two wheel band saws.

The frame construction is the first thing to look at. Smaller bench top band saws can be pressed metal, plastic resin, steel or cast iron. Larger band saws will be either cast iron or steel. The pressed metal and plastic resin are not as rigid as steel or cast and these saws are definitely meant for light duty hobby and craft work. You are much better off to get one that has a steel or cast iron frame. They will last longer, run smoother and the blades will track better. Larger band saws all come with cast iron or steel frames so you do not have to worry about the rigidity. Each type of frame has its advantages and disadvantages. Steel frames are the most rigid and therefore more stable and smoother running, but they are also more expensive. Cast iron frames are cheaper and often allow you to increase the height capacity using a riser, but having cast parts they can crack and fracture through use. In most home shop applications this is not a large issue but it depends on the amount of use.

Motor size can range from 1/6HP to 1/3HP for bench top and from 1/2HP upward to 3HP or larger on big industrial machines. The smaller the motor the harder it has to work. If you mainly work on smaller crafts or model construction, the smaller bench tops are fine, but in the long run try and go with one, which has 1/4HP or larger. If you build furniture, cabinets or larger projects go with a floor model with at least a 3/4HP motor. The 1/2HP models just don't have enough power for heavier cutting. If you want to cut metal, then make sure the machine has slower speeds, down to less than 200 rpm instead of the approximate 3000 rpm for woodcutting.

Make sure the table tilt and adjustment works smoothly and does not bind anywhere. Tilt it to the full 45 degrees and look underneath to make sure nothing is interfering with the blade. If the saw does not come with a fence, see if the table to drilled and or tapped for a fence rail. The quality of band saw fences is wide, so have a good look at it. If you really like the saw but the fence is garbage all is not lost. If nothing can be done with the existing one you can make your own which can be just as stable and accurate as anything available. The average table size is about 143 x 143. Many woodworkers find this a little small so you can buy or build a larger auxiliary table to give you a greater work surface.

There is not a great deal of difference between an open and closed stand. Open stands are just as stable and in some cases more so, but they do allow your motor to be out in the open where dust can get into it. If you have an open stand make sure you blow the dust out of the motor on a regular basis. Closed stands keep the motor cleaner, but not totally dust free, plus they offer storage space for wrenches, hex keys, manual and accessories.

The blade on a band saw is held in place by either guide blocks or bearings. Bearings run cooler, smoother and quieter than blocks. The majority of saws have guide blocks but there are conversion kits available or blocks made out of resins, which run cooler and smoother than the steel factory ones supplied. If is worth using either option since you blades will last longer and the noise level will almost be cut in half.

Most machines these days have dust ports of some sort and they are important for the same reasons; cleaner air, safer shop environment, cleaner longer lasting machine.

If you are interested in doing a lot of resawing, look into an actual resaw band saw. Most band saws will go up to ¾" or 13 wide blades and although they can resaw the odd piece, they are not designed for continuous long-term use like this. Resaw band saws have a much more powerful motor and use blades about 33 wide, some are even carbide tipped. You need the wider blades to maintain a straight even cut throughout the entire depth of material. Try and determine how much resawing you will want to do. If a standard band saw will be okay, just do not push it too hard when cutting material 33 and thicker and use as wide a blade as possible.

Make sure the blade tension; tracking, height and table adjustments are all convenient, easy to use and secure. You do not want to be constantly adjusting and tuning the machine so make sure there are no obvious problems. Any sloppy connections or adjustments could mean problems in tracking or stability.

Just a quick work about two common accessories. If your band saw does not come with a lamp, it is a good idea to buy one or set something up. Because of how you normally stand at the saw, your shadow naturally falls right across the table and blade. This can be very annoying if you are trying to make intricate and precise cuts, so a lamp is worth it. The second is a circle cutting attachment. This is a pet peeve of mine. There are some on the market, but they usually have a very small capacity. They are fine if you are making toys or smaller projects but not for even a medium sized tabletop. This is one attachment, which is easy to make yourself. Some plywood for the top, a 2×2 or 2×4 for the leg support and some clamps and you are in business. You can make it as large as you need, providing lots of work support and you can cut small circles on it as well.

Band Saw Check List

-Size. 83 to 243 throat and 33 to 133 height capacity. Make sure it will have enough depth and height capacity to do what you want it to. You need to take into account space, capacity and what you want to cut. Band saw sizes can be advertised either by the diameter of the wheels or by the cutting capacity, so be careful when you compare.

-What is the frame made of and is it solid and stable.

-Motor - Check the horsepower and amps. You'll need both when comparing. For bench top saws get at least 1/4 HP, better 1/3HP and for general shop use, a floor model with 3/4HP, or even better 1HP.

-Check that the wheels are balanced. You can tell by looking for circular drill marks where material has been removed to equal the weight around the rim.

-Table should tilt to 45 degrees right and if it tilts to the left as well it is a bonus. What size mitre slot and what kind on mitre gauge.

-Does it have guide blocks or bearings and if blocks is there bearing kits or resin blocks to replace the original steel blocks.

-What size dust port does it have and does it match your system or do you need an adapter.

-Where is the power switch and is it easy to reach? Switches in awkward places can be a safety hazard.

-Where is it made and where do you get parts & service? There are some excellent offshore machines out there but you have to be careful because there are also some bad ones. Check the brand and the company you are buying from and find out exactly where you can get servicing done.

Good luck. You are the one paying for it and using it, so find out as much as you can before you make the purchase so you wont have any regrets. And remember, no loose clothing and no jewelry, wear short sleeves, safety glasses and hearing protection.

Thomas is a writer for Western Tool - a premium online retailer of tools including saw blades, band saw blades, circular saw blades and more.

Choosing a Band Saw

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