Eleven Hundred Hours- in One Piece? (actually it's for a five piece set
- but
still - 1,100 hours?)

The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts exhibit “Inspired by
China” has 29 pieces done by 22 furniture makers from around the world.
One of those who participated in this exhibit is Joe Tracy from Main.
Inspired by the Chinese invented Tanagram (google tanagram ) he designed
and made a five piece set comprised of two small, tall tables and three
shallow cabinets, each on its own tall table. He has 1,100 hours in
this set! At 8 hours a work day, you’ve got 173 work hours per month -
so he put over six months in this set of pieces.

For the weekend warrior, a project that takes 6 months to complete isn’t
all that unusual. Hell, it was over a year before I finished Das Bench
(http://web.hypersurf.com/~charlie2/D...CBbench0.html), and there
were a lot of starts and stops, along with a lot of head scratching.

But Joe Tracy makes furniture for a living so I suspect the 1,100 hours
were “billable hours”, not elapsed time. Can you imagine going to work
five days a week, eight hours a day, working on one set of pieces - and
do that for over six months - and at the end of six months have five
coherent pieces?

I get distracted easily, heading off in one direction and then going off
on various tangents along the way to a finished piece - if it actually
gets finished at all. The discipline this man must have to do what he
does, and what he does is pretty amazing.

Let’s start with his choice of materials - quarter sawn wenge veneer for
the cabinets, with split curly redwood medallions in the cabinet doors,
red palm for the table tops, Damascus steel door pulls and silver foil
on the inside s of the backs of the cabinets. With the exception of the
split redwood medallions in the doors, everything is flat planes and
straight lines, not a curve or a roundover to be found - no place to
hide a mistake - one careless chisel or plane cut and the part would
have to be made over again. The skill, and confidence this man must
have to do what he does is astounding.

You really have to see these pieces - and study them - to really
appreciate what he’s done. There’s an article in the February 2007
issue of Woodwork - A Magazine for All Woodworkers “Joe Tracy: Inspired
by China” with an interview with Mr. Tracy, accompanied by photos of
these pieces and some details of how they were done. If you can get
your hands on that issue have a look at that article - and then study it
- for an hour or two. If you aren’t inspired to take your woodwork up a
notch - well there isn’t enough sawdust in you yet.

charlie b
who is now looking for the book about the pieces in this exhibit. I
REALLY want
to see some details of this set of pieces because there have to be a lot
of
gems to study - and maybe include in some future project.

Charlie b,

Eleven Hundred Hours- in One Piece? (actually it's for a five piece set
- but
still - 1,100 hours?)
But Joe Tracy makes furniture for a living so I suspect the 1,100 hours
were "billable hours", not elapsed time. Can you imagine going to work
five days a week, eight hours a day, working on one set of pieces - and
do that for over six months - and at the end of six months have five
coherent pieces?

Recently was at a woodworker's shop and he had several pieces that
were well over that, if my memory serves me right. Formally a
professor
at a community college in art, so his time was factored over
years.

Regarding Mr. Tracy, I would think that perhaps he didn't spend the
hrs straight.
I'd imagine part of the time was getting the wood, drying it if not
already dried,
milling it, etc. LOTS of time right there! Still tho, I am in awe of
the
hrs. I have several projects where I've spent 40 hrs and still not
done
and that's over several years. I'm in the running for the "king of
unfinished projects".

MJ Wallace

On Wed, 13 Jun 2007 09:03:24 -0700, charlieb
wrote:

But Joe Tracy makes furniture for a living so I suspect the 1,100 hours
were “billable hours”, not elapsed time. Can you imagine going to work
five days a week, eight hours a day, working on one set of pieces - and
do that for over six months - and at the end of six months have five
coherent pieces?

Yeah, but when people quote numbers like that I always think they are
including an awful lot of standing round scratching one's butt, err, I
mean "thinking", talking to the neighbor who walked by, taunting
spiders with a piece of scrap, etc, etc.... Just because you went
into the shop at 1 and came out at 5 doesn't mean you actually did 4
hours of work. He's probably got 5 hours of adding up all his minutes
and making them all nice in a spreadsheet factored in there too.


-Leuf

But Joe Tracy makes furniture for a living so I suspect the 1,100 hours
were "billable hours", not elapsed time. Can you imagine going to work
five days a week, eight hours a day, working on one set of pieces - and
do that for over six months - and at the end of six months have five
coherent pieces?

Some of the most prize shotguns that come out of the Beretta factory have
several thousand hours just in *engraving*.

steve

Ah but engraving is certainly not traditional woodworking, it is more akin
to carving . As fast as he was I would imagine Grinling took even more time
than that. I think it might be more like Leuf said, doing anything but
actually working on said pieces . For what it is worth I did a complete
library from a wreaked room in less time than that, including all doors
computer station fully paneled walls trimmed out and cased entrance [see web
page] oh and all the drawings for approval.....mjh

http://mikehide2.tripod.com/id26.htm



"Steve Wolfe" wrote in message
. ..
But Joe Tracy makes furniture for a living so I suspect the 1,100 hours
were "billable hours", not elapsed time. Can you imagine going to work
five days a week, eight hours a day, working on one set of pieces - and
do that for over six months - and at the end of six months have five
coherent pieces?

Some of the most prize shotguns that come out of the Beretta factory
have several thousand hours just in *engraving*.

steve

"mike hide" wrote in message
. ..
Ah but engraving is certainly not traditional woodworking, it is more akin
to carving . As fast as he was I would imagine Grinling took even more
time than that. I think it might be more like Leuf said, doing anything
but actually working on said pieces . For what it is worth I did a
complete library from a wreaked room in less time than that, including
all doors computer station fully paneled walls trimmed out and cased
entrance [see web page] oh and all the drawings for approval.....mjh

http://mikehide2.tripod.com/id26.htm


Looks nice. If he really wanted to have a double door, it should have been
double width.

On Jun 14, 3:34 am, Leuf wrote:
On Wed, 13 Jun 2007 09:03:24 -0700, charlieb
wrote:

But Joe Tracy makes furniture for a living so I suspect the 1,100 hours
were "billable hours", not elapsed time. Can you imagine going to work
five days a week, eight hours a day, working on one set of pieces - and
do that for over six months - and at the end of six months have five
coherent pieces?

Yeah, but when people quote numbers like that I always think they are
including an awful lot of standing round scratching one's butt, err, I
mean "thinking", talking to the neighbor who walked by, taunting
spiders with a piece of scrap, etc, etc.... Just because you went
into the shop at 1 and came out at 5 doesn't mean you actually did 4
hours of work. He's probably got 5 hours of adding up all his minutes
and making them all nice in a spreadsheet factored in there too.

-Leuf

Or maybe he's a wannabe lawyer with a very modest concept of
"billable" hours.

FoggyTown