Tag Archives: MA

Virtuoso DVD

September 29, 2015 @TheRainford 4 Comments

The Studley Tool-Cabinet and Workbench are the stuff of woodworking legend. I’ve seen the now famous poster of the cabinet in many woodworking shop, school and store. It’s the benchmark by which every other tool cabinet is compared. I know it ran through my head when I was researching the Chandler and Barber Sloyd tool cabinet.

To gaze upon this woodworking masterpiece in person is to be in awe…

Don Williams gazing upon the Studley Tool Cabinet (Photo by Narayan Nayar and linked from http://www.studleytoolchest.com/)

Or so I’ve heard. The cabinet has been in private hands in recent years and other than a grainy New Yankee Workshop DVD and the FWW Poster and Article there were not a lot of places to see it or learn about it.

Earlier this year Donald C. Williams and others organized an exhibit to coincide with Handworks 2 wherein a limited number of folks could visit the cabinet and bench in person. I would have loved to have seen it in person but New Hampshire is a LONG way away from Amana, Iowa and with an infant son at home I could not make a trip of that distance.

I did pre-order Don’s book “Virtuoso: The Tool Cabinet and Workbench of Henry O. Studley” by the Lost Art Press which can be described as high class tool porn. 🙂 It provides lots of background, research and in depth photographic record of each tool in the cabinet along with vivid photographs by Narayan Nayar. The comprehensive book is well worth the read and can be inspirational to even non-woodworkers. There are several reviews of it on other well known websites.

But for those wanting more instant gratification or those of us who don’t have as much reading time as we used to — these days with the baby I’m lucky if I can get an exhausted hour or so in front of a screen to watch something enjoyable, so I figured I’d take a gamble and check out the companion DVD — “Virtuoso: The Tool Cabinet and Workbench of Henry O. Studley” also by Lost Art Press.

The DVD runs for about an hour and fifteen minutes and feels a bit like a PBS style documentary. (Which is something I often enjoy). It’s interesting to see how much emotion folks close to this project felt as they worked with the cabinet and its tools. Don Williams, Chris Schwarz and Narayan Nayar talk about what moved them, their favorite tools from the cabinet, their adventures in researching the cabinet and Studley and even some of the open questions they’d like to learn about if someone out there is sitting on a cache of Studley documents. The disc also has a section wherein Don removes all of the tools from the main compartments of the cabinet and shows each tool to you — basically everything except the drawers. It was very interesting to watch that happen in video as it gives an idea of how well the various trays, doors and holders held in their respective tools and how Studley layered the tools to make an incredible visual composition. Given how hard some were to locate and get in and out I don’t think Studley loaded up his tools each day and night as part of his regular work as I am in the camp that views this as something he did at the end of his career to make a statement/preserve some of the tools, but it was interesting to see some areas did have some wear from repeated use. The video reinforced the inspirational value the cabinet provides and helps to showcase the quiet beauty found in these high quality and time worn tools.

My criticisms about the DVD are all pretty minor: The disc comes in a cardboard sleeve — I’d rather have had a plastic case so it doesn’t get lost on my DVD shelf or a digital download option instead. The chapter transitions all use the same cover image with different text and were a bit slow to transition — and again that is likely just me being a tech nerd. Having attempted to edit a few videos for YouTube and for classes I have a lot of respect for anyone attempting to edit video as it is a VERY tedious process and everyone is a critic. 🙂

So, if you missed the Studley Exhibit in Amana, Iowa this video is the next best thing to seeing the cabinet and workbench in person and I’d recommend watching it. Feel free to share your thoughts on the video in the comments section below.

Take care,
-Bill

P.S. I bought the caliper shown in the featured image at this year’s Nashua Tool Show thinking of the Studley Tool Cabinet.
P.P.S. I bought the now famous poster from Robin Lee as part of the EAIA Annual Meeting Auction — now I just have to find some time to make a proper frame for it, so I can proudly hang it up out in the shop.
P.P.P.S I don’t have a direct association with the Lost Art Press other than Chris being a friend of mine and having bought a ton of stuff from LAP over the years. The links above generate no income for me and are provided for your ease in finding the book and DVD.

Fine Homebuilding, Historic Places, Portfolio, Preservation, Writing

Reproducing Traditional Molding for the Alvah Kittredge House

July 19, 2013 @TheRainford 7 Comments

The Alvah Kittredge House in Roxbury Massachusetts is a great example of high style Greek Revival architecture in Boston and a tangible link to the city and the nation’s early history.

Alvah Kittredge House in the 1880s (Photo Courtesy of Historic Boston Inc)

The Greek Revival Style was most popular in the United States during the second quarter of the 19th century. (Approximately 1820-1850) During this time period the population and economy was also growing by leaps and bounds. The United States was still a young nation and many folks wanted to show off their new found affluence. During this period of great optimism there was a strong belief in the American Democracy and many associated the ideals of the new nation with those of early Greek Democracy. Around this time, access to Greece and the designs of antiquity were also coming into the mainstream as influential citizens like Thomas Jefferson read books like ‘The Antiquities of Athens‘, Benjamin Latrobe and others built out Hellenistic monuments and public buildings in Washington D.C. and other large east coast cities, and builder’s guides like Asher Benjamin’s ‘The Practical House Carpenter’ proliferated the tool chests of local joiners and carpenters. Given this atmosphere many folks wanted to have their own building look like a Greek temple. For most of the ‘middling’ Americans, especially those in more rural and western locales the scale and details would be simplified down to keeping classical proportions and greatly simplifying details to meet their budgets — pilasters instead of columns, simplified moldings or even flat boards attempting to echo the pediment and other design elements of a Greek temple.

Looking up at the portico of the Alvah Kittredge House (Photo by Bill Rainford)

In places with money — like public buildings and mansions — the builders could afford to go big with design elements like a colonnaded portico and carved relief details in the pediment etc. The Alvah Kittredge house is a great example of a high style Greek revival home which reflected the wealth of its original owner, and of Boston and the US in general at that time. Not only is the house unusual given how the city has grown up around this once grand country estate, but the scale of the front facade needs to be seen in person to be properly appreciated. The two story portico with its double hung windows and high ceilings required wide and detailed moldings in order to be the appropriate scale for such a magnificent home.

The original crisp detail of this hand run molding is obscured by the many layers of paint over the generations. (Photo courtesy of the Taunton Press)

This 8 inch wide molding was made by hand using traditional wooden molding planes likely on site and from eastern white pine. This is not the sort of thing you can buy at a local big box store, or millworks supply company. The best way to replicate this sort of casing is to make it from the same materials and in the same manner as the original joiner….

Using a molding comb to capture the profile. (Photo courtesy of the Taunton Press)

I started by capturing the molding profile via molding comb or profile gauge which aids in transferring the profile to the newly prepared stock.

Setting in the details with a Snipe’s Bill plane. (Photo courtesy of the Taunton Press)

Next by using traditional wooden molding planes I carefully set in all the major transitions in the profile

Using traditional molding planes to replicate the profile. (Photo courtesy of the Taunton Press)

Many of these planes I use date back to the time period when the Kittredge house was actually built and yields results that simply cannot be duplicated by machine. The original handwork had variations and facets which catch the light differently when compared to stock that is milled by a machine.

Section of new molding alongside an original sample — a nice match. (Photo by Bill Rainford)

The end result is a near identical match that will help insure that future generations living in the Kittredge house will be able to enjoy it’s many details in much the same way as Alvah did when the house was first built.

If you’d like to learn more about how to make traditional moldings, please check out the related article ‘Master Carpenter Series:Traditional Molding’ I wrote for FineHomebuilding which can be found here (There is also a related video series which you can find on www.finehomebuilding.com/extras for the Sept 2013 issue)

-Bill Rainford
Preservation Carpenter, Joiner, and Instructor
https://rainfordrestorations.wordpress.com

P.S. The above post was written for my friends at Historic Boston Inc here. You can learn more about Historic Boston and specifically about the Alvah Kittredge House here.

Historic Places, Turning, Woodworking Techniques

Turning Ovals at the Old Schwamb Mill

April 30, 2012 @TheRainford Leave a comment

If you’re an avid wood turner and live in or near New England this is a road trip worth taking. The Old Schwamb Mill in Arlington MA (a short 1 block walk from the North Bennet Street School’s Arlington campus — and on the road to historic Lexington where I lived for a long time) is a great afternoon trip and the sort of place you could drive by every day and never notice — as I did for years. Once discovered, this site is a real gem, and also home to a Shaker furniture and supply store.

You may be asking yourself, “how do I turn an oval frame?”

The magic is in the head stock — one of only a handful of this 100+ year old design known to still exist. And there are 3 or 4 of them at the mill. As the head turns there is a mechanical movement that moves the piece being turned up and down so that the wood is consistently presented to the tool at the tool rest. It also makes for a rhythmic noise as it runs. It’s not like most turning — think of it like scraping with style.

The mill has been at this location for 300+ years and making world famous oval frames for 137+ years. In addition to the lathe shown here there is also a massive version in the basement along with several other unique belt driven tools which expedited the process of making and joining these interesting frames. Work from this mill is in the White House and other similar places around the world.

If you’d like to visit the mill, you can find more information here on there web site: http://www.oldschwambmill.org/

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Historic Places, Portfolio, Timber Framing

Timber Framing at Brookwood Farm

April 25, 2012 @TheRainford 2 Comments

There are a few different methods for laying out the joinery in a timber frame — scribe rule, square rule, mill rule etc

This post will take a deeper look at some Square Rule based framing.

Back in the fall of 2009 we worked on a frame which will be the workshop of an NBSS student using the Square Rule method. The project was carried out at Brookwood Farm in Canton MA which provided a great backdrop for our work along with the location of a later Scribe Rule project — restoring the old English style 2 bay barn that was discovered on the property.

Rather than custom scribing each joint in the frame — which is labor and time intensive, square rule framing allows you to effectively make some parts of the frame interchangeable (Think Model T Assembly Line) — so braces, joists are all cut to the same size to start. This method of framing came from the USA and was in part an answer to the need to speed up production as America rapidly expanded westward. Effectively you are using a square to find/define the virtual ‘perfect’ smaller timber inside the potentially rough stick you are working on — thus where the joinery is cut you are cutting back the side opposite your reference faces to square up that smaller perfect timber. This way you have nice clean and consistent mating surfaces. In the joint below you can see this on the top of the timber where it goes from clean cut joint to the rougher edge as the timber came from the mill.

This system allowed craftsmen (and women) to cut joints on the ground or in separate locations and then put them together for the first time at the time of raising. For those new to the trade that can seem daunting — but with practice and the old adage of ‘Measure Twice, Cut Once’ its not as scary as it might seem.

Below is a slideshow outlining the process of building a timber framed workshop/barn