Continuing down the road a few miles from Rockport, Maine and my stop at The Center For Furniture Craftsmanship I drove to the seaside town of Camden and stopped in at The Ducktrap Bay Trading Company.

The Ducktrap Bay Trading Company is a gallery that has been in Camden for over 25 years that features carved wildlife and marine art. There are almost 200 artists represented here and most of them have some relationship to Maine.

I spoke at length with Joyce Lawrence, who, with her husband Tim, owns and operates the gallery. She was happy to share her vast knowledge about the individual artists and their work. She was also very friendly, so much so that the only thing missing was a cup of tea, and I’m sure that if I stayed long enough I would have had that too!

The quality of work and the variety of different styles is outstanding. You’ll find small carvings, large carvings, carvings in the round, relief carvings, wall carvings, scrimshaw and more! Here’s a couple of photos:

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After leaving Lie-Nielsen Toolworks I continued my trip over to Rockport, Maine and dropped by The Center For Furniture Craftsmanship for a short visit. Earlier, knowing that I was going to be in the area the following week, I sent an email to them inquiring that if I dropped by would I be allowed to tour their facility. I received a quick reply back saying that yes, I was welcomed to come by anytime, and welcomed I was! From the moment that I opened the door of the main building until the moment I left I was made to feel at home – a woodworker’s dream home!

The Center For Furniture Craftsmanship offers courses in furniture making, woodcarving, woodturning, marquetry and finishing. It was founded in 1993 with a mission “to provide the best possible education for people who want to design and build functional, beautiful, and expressive work out of wood to the highest standard of craftsmanship”. It quickly attracted a distinguished visiting faculty, including internationally respected furniture makers such as Alan Peters, Michael Fortune and James Krenov. In 1996 the school moved to its present location and in 1999 it became a non-profit educational organization. The Center is widely recognized as one of the top furniture making schools in the world.

Once inside the main door I was greeted by a staff member who explained to me the layout of the school grounds and what the purpose of and what classes were going on in each of the buildings. I was then told to feel free and wander the grounds, drop in on the classes and to ask questions of the students and faculty. From there I roamed the school grounds feeling like a kid on Christmas morning with every door opening like unwrapping a present.

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On a recent trip to Maine I was able to drop by the Lie-Nielsen Toolworks showroom in the small town of Warren on Route 1. Lie-Nielsen Toolworks is a is a family-owned business which produces some of the finest woodworking hand tools available, most notably, their planes.

Lie-Nielsen Toolworks began in 1981 when founder Thomas Lie-Nielsen acquired the tooling, plans and components necessary for producing an adapted Stanley #95 edge trimming block plane from Ken Wisner who was ready to leave the business. Since then the company went on to improve and refine designs, use better materials like manganese bronze, ductile iron castings and cryogenically treated A-2 steel and introduce new tools. Today they make over 50 types of planes, saws, and spokeshaves, as well as socket chisels, screwdrivers, marking and measuring devices and workbench hardware.

You are welcomed to try out any of their full line of tools on one of the workbenches available in the showroom. You’ll also find a selection of other tools, books and DVD’s.

Here are a couple of photos of my visit:

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Well, I finally got back out to the shop after being “on tour” recently and I got a chance to do a bit of woodturning. I chose a piece of Lacewood that I had sitting here on the bench for the past little while. Perhaps you remember back about a mouth ago when I had a small piece of Lacewood and turned a candle holder as a ‘practice’ piece before turning a bowl out of this wood.

The bowl is 5.5″ in diameter and 2″ tall. It is finished with the EEE Ultrashine and ShellaWax combo.

Even though I’m quite happy with the final result I doubt if I will rush out to purchase any more Lacewood bowl blanks any time soon. Unlike the candle holder I found turning this bowl a real challenge since the wood seemed very brittle which caused finishing issues with the end grain. I can assure you that it was much larger in diameter when I started!

Here are some more photos:

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