A man begins with timber that was felled and bucked to length with a
two handed crossbuck saw, scabbed off with an adze and slabbed out
rough with a pitsaw.

The slabs are horse carted to his shop, stickered up and left to sit,
hidden from the sun but not from the air, so that the slabs can cure.

In the fullness of time the man returns to the pile and runs a plane
across the slabs to check figure and color.

He brings the successful slabs into the shop and renders them closer
to final dimensions with crosscut and ripsaws.

He further saws and planes the sticks into the pieces that will form
his invention.

He joins the pieces together with hand tools and scrapes them into a
condition to receive finish, using pieces of steel that he has formed
and tempered himself.

His measuring tools are his intellect and a story stick.

He works for eight days in the shop.

The joints are hermetic.

When he is done, he has created a Goddard-Townsend Blockfront Desk.





A man buys some 4/4, 5/4, 6/4 S4S timber and a sheet plywood.

He spends two days calibrating his tablesaw; one-half day setting his
jointer; one-half day setting his shaper; one-half day setting his
planer; three days building router jigs; one-half day calibrating his
chopsaw; one-quarter day checking everything with a moisture meter;
one day reading instructions for his alignment tools; two days
studying the effect of gamma rays on freshly sawn cherry...

His measuring tools are tapes, lasers, dial calipers, proprietary
devices that are specifically not made out of sheet metal, feeler
gauges, mass spectrometers, and generally anything that will measure
in angstrom units.

He works thirty-six weekends in the shop.

The joints are hermaphroditic.

When he is done, he has created a Pukey Duck, or perhaps a multi level
display device for chatchkies.







WoodDorking has always been about Material, Tools, Craftsmanship and
Mind - but the order of their relative importance is relatively
important to the final outcome.*




* (concept stolen from a man who taught the throwing of hand
grenades, "There are only three things that you have to remember -
pull, throw and duck - but the order is very important".)










Regards,

Tom Watson

tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)

http://home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1/