Woodworking 2.0

Two years ago D and I took an all-day woodworking course at Hardwood Artisans’ production shop near Culpeper Virginia. Culpeper is about an hour southwest of us where you can still find beautiful countryside not yet runover by the ever-expanding Washington metropolis. D was the one to suggest we do it: a team building project, an adventure if you will. Surprised the hell out of me–seeing as she’d never touched a handsaw – though we both love wood craftsmanship.

Hardwood Artisans is to other furniture companies in the same way Peter Paul Rubens was a house painters. Handcrafted furniture made in Virginia since 1976. Their first showroom was a storefront in a 50s vintage shopping center, but they’re still local, still willing to take on custom projects. I’d put their work up against Thos. Moser for quality.

Mechanical joints beautifully expressed is what Hardwood Artisans is known for.

Mortise and tenon joinery is standard assembly in traditional woodworking.

Illustration by Arend041, 2010.

Nothing fancy, nothing new, the cavernous shop space was all about the work. I soon found the small kitchen with the coffee urn. Bunch of good ole boys with baseball caps on most—and D.

OK, one other couple was there on a Saturday.

Big place — cast iron behemoths with unpronounceable German and Scandinavian names built in the 50s. Table saws with wicked dado blades, planers and sanders that like to eat five foot wide planks of wood, and a variety of routers that can be set to shape anything.

An industrial sawdust collection system capable of sucking the innards from a body.

In one corner stood several CNC machines–the newest equipment on the floor.

They run their finishing room not on electricity but pneumatics, air lines hung from overhead so there’s nothing to trip over while running palm-size hand sanders for the finishing work.

Butterfly dovetail joint - from Hardwood Artisans’ website

The wood is precious. Oak, walnut, cherry, bird’s eye maple, burled hickory–solid and veneer–American wood from certified forests–so wasting it’s a sin. Woodworking is more a meditation, not to be rushed and requiring the right tools.

Clemson introduced me to rudimentary shop equipment, table saw, planer, drill press, sander–the things you need to build beautiful architectural models–which I learned well enough to get a summer job building models demonstrating planning principals for the Clemson Extension Services . Nowadays 3D printers are the rage in the architectural profession for models, though x-acto blades cutting basswood still makes me smile.

I’ve been an admirer of well-crafted woodworking since when. And wish to hell I’d saved my father’s cast iron hand drill turned one easy crank at a time.

The course started at a godawful early hour on a Saturday, which are sacred days involving morning rituals of coffee beans and a full search for meaning through the Washington Post and the New York Times.

We were teamed with Zack, the son of an owner of the place— following his father’s profession—an outgoing guy not long out of high school who already was creating custom cabinetry.

Our goal that fine fall Saturday was the production of a small cherry side table along the lines of an Arts & Craft piece.

Cherry is a smooth grained hardwood which color deepens over time. Unlike, say oak’s plain-cut variations in grain, cherry is closer to mahogany or teak with tight grain. I like the red hues cherry develops over time.

We started with the rough-sawn pieces and took them through final assembly, measuring twice and cutting once as the carpenter’s adage goes. Those ancient machines cut, routed and planed within micro fractions of an inch.

One router was for cutting tenons, and another was to rout out the mortises, both of which Zack demonstrated how to measure and test so each piece matched its brothers, and “fits like good sex” as Charlie, the protagonist in Kill Devil liked to say. Charlie is an enthusiastic craftsman in his spare time—go figure.

After measuring, planing and machine sanding, D and I spent hours hand sanding the individual pieces, including the ‘roll over’ edges with small palm sanders using graduated sanding papers until the wood was smooth as glass.

Side table close up

Digression #1:

An architect in the Harry Weese office in Miami built a gorgeous basswood model of the first transit station to display to the public back in the 70s. We were designing the first leg of the Miami-Dade transit system.

Ed Wright was a taciturn man.

Why he got assigned the model, he never said, but he went about it methodically for months. On weekends he liked to take his cigarette-style power boat out and drive like Don Johnson wished he could.

Carlyn and I (and 12 month son) accompanied Ed, his wife and child of the same age on a tour of the Intercoastal through Fort Lauderdale where the yachts were as long as the properties fronting the canal.

Ed was African-American and his cheerful wife Patsy was pale-face English. Their daughter was this willowy mocha-skinned child who’d wave her limbs like she was a ballerina. I heard she’s become a model.

Digression #2:

When I finished at Clemson, I was still hanging around so Lewis could show me new songs to play. Needing a job to cover the rent and the beer, I hooked up with another classmate. Jim was a friend of Lewis and had been hired by an English professor building his own house out in the country.

“The Prof’s got the framing and wall sheathing done, but not much more.”

First day on the job, Jim showed me where the prof and his family were living–the not-yet finished garage still with bare studs which they had equipped with small oven, griddle and toaster plugged in by extension cords… and WINTER WAS COMING!

My bet is that said English prof and wife did that divorce ritual sometime after. Hell of a way to raise two boys, teach and keep a marriage together is all I’m saying. He’d been better to have made at sure the heating system was working first. Women like those details.

I read his short story, the English Prof’s and was put off by his characters—young southern boy trying to find out if Asian women were built differently down there… ah, not going into the non-G rated stuff. Read the book if you can find it.

Back to woodworking.

On arrival at the job site, I was dubbed a finish carpenter by my New Jersey classmate. Et voila! So I needed to learn, first of all, about a radial arm saw, a way cool instrument of destruction for finished wood. Dado? What the hell is a dado?

Dada I knew–even if Salvadore was on the twisted mustache, Simon Legree side of the track.

But sonofagun, standing in the unfinished dining room—look at that there planer!

Some learn the hard way about running small pieces of wood across a planer. Hurts like hell when it slams the wood back at you. Do I got fingers left? I didn’t want to look.

My high school physics teacher (also the shop teacher) was missing several fingers past the first joint. Reason I know is I delivered his afternoon newspapers Monday through Friday without fail. Rain or shine and all of that.

Delivering paper, I relieved boredom by sailing the papers from the street to the porches. Never busted a window, though sometimes I’d need to dig a paper out of the bushes.

Building a Natural-Finished Door Frame:

Take a select one-by-five with the least number of knots, rough cut the jamb and lintel lengths on the table saw, then sand the exposed faces. Do the same for the trim pieces you’ll be later mitering. Lots of sanding. If you do the sanding on the bench, it saves on knees and spinal cord adjustments–learnt the hard way.

Having prepared these gorgeous wood items, dado-cut the long boards (called jambs) on the radial arm saw to receive the lintel boards (known as lintels). Since the joints will be exposed, there’s no slop space; the lintel has to fit tight and snug like–never mind–oh and make sure they’re the correct width for the door. And three-quarters of an inch longer to account for the wood flooring yet to come.

Hint: Dry fit the mess before putting finishing nail to wood.

Then consider the rough opening. Where’s the door (not the dada, nor dado) gonna go? English Prof forgot the essential ‘hire an architect’ step, so we were winging it as to exact locations.

Since the English Prof wasn’t too clear about placement, I shimmed the first jamb up straight using a four foot level. Then shimmed the second side, checking to maintain a constant clear width. If the frame’s not vertical, the door will swing on its own one way or t’other, which even I knew was a no-no.

And no dimpling the wood driving finish nails, or you start all over again, having now wasted one or more pieces of good wood.

Rout the three spaces for the hinges. For doors, drill out the inch and half diameter for the door mortise, and then the smaller hole cut into the butt end for the tongue, hopefully following a template, then mount the door.

Nice feeling with it fits, and not so nice when it doesn’t. A junior carpenter becomes a finish carpenter with patience and a few mistakes.

So it went. So it goes.

I don’t think I spoke to the English Prof more than a handful of times. Spoke to his wife, spoke to the kids, but the English Prof was mostly absent like he was a writer or something.

While I was banging about with door frames and base moldings, Jim built a fine staircase railing. I remember at one point our English Prof hired a professional carpenter to catch up ‘cause I was moving too slow, then fired him for using joint filler to make up for poorly fitting miter cuts.

Ahem: the trick to a good miter is patience—and cutting each piece at a slight angle to the plane of the miter, so when you fit up the two pieces, the facing edge fits tightest–like good you know what.

Though I will tell you, nailing cedar shakes–the real ones selected from a pile in the broiling Carolina heat–is good enough to memorialize in a novel. Along with so many waves hitting the Outer Banks’ beaches.

Hope the English Prof is fully retired, still enjoying his carefully crafted custom home. Hope the wife and kids are doing well.