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:

Continue reading 'The Ducktrap Bay Trading Company'

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.

Continue reading 'The Center For Furniture Craftsmanship'

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:

Continue reading 'A Visit To Lie-Nielsen Toolworks'

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:

Continue reading 'A Lovely Little Lacewood Bowl'

Wow! LumberJocks has done it again! Not only is this one of the best online woodworking forums around but now they have just upped the ante with the LumberJocks Woodworking Awards for 2008!

This is your chance to show the woodworking world your latest project and compete for the coveted title of, get this - The Best Overall LumberJock! Woohoo! Imagine the bragging rights that comes with this one! There’ll be no denying your skills after winning this one!

Seriously, this is a very prestigious award because of the fact that the winner is chosen by our peers - other LumberJocks! Yep, there is no fancy, schmancy convoluted mechanism in place. There are no hoops to jump through, no mountains to climb or songs to sing. We simply do what we do best by doing our best and the winner will be determined by how many LumberJocks believe which project is the best. How simple is that?!

There are two categories, One Man’s Junk, where you create a project using old hardware, reclaimed wood and/or recycled junk and the Serve It Up With Class category where you build a serving tray out of at least two different varieties of wood.

And the prizes… boy, are there prizes! Get a load of this, here’s what’s up for grabs:

Continue reading 'LumberJocks Woodworking Awards 2008'

In keeping with the garden and patio theme here are two small garden benches that I built a couple of years ago. I (my wife) had to give them a new coat of paint this year to ’spruce’ them up a little. Each of them are just over 3 feet long, 12 inches wide and about 18 inches tall.

They are just a couple of pieces of 2 X 10’s and a bit of 1 X 4 that my son brought home from a construction site that I slapped together. However, simple as they are they make great useful, accent pieces. I cut a couple of notches out of the skirt to add a bit of Southwest style.

Here you can see them in the garden and on the patio:

Continue reading 'Simple Garden Benches Add Accent'

Well, my wife and I finally got around to getting the patio ready for summer. As you can likely tell by the recent posts, we have been travelling quite a bit so getting the chance to stay at home and putter around the yard is a real treat!

I came across a gang of little fellows who reside in the gardens around the house and was lucky to catch them all together having a bit of a confab:

These guys were carved 3 or 4 years ago out of either Birch or Poplar logs. There was no finish applied so they are showing wear.

After I snapped the above shot it startled them and they ran off to hide. I was able to spot them again throughout the gardens. Here’s some more photos I captured of them:

Continue reading 'Grinning Garden Gods In The Green'

1. Make your own bench dogs using 3/4″ hardwood dowels and rubber chair leg tips. The rubber tip gives a cushioned grip on your work piece as well as well as keeps the dog from sliding down the bench hole.

2. Using alcohol on a glue line is a great way to clean up excess epoxy, if you do it before it cures.

3. If you find that your chalk line is smudging and becoming unreadable try spraying it with hairspray.

4. A plywood block with a saw kerf in the top edge makes a handy scraper rack.

5. Need to copy something but out of transfer paper? Use a soft lead pencil to shade over the lines of your drawing on the back of the paper. Then tape your pattern to your workpiece and retrace.

These are just a few tips that I picked up over this past week. They come from a variety of sources including books, magazines, newsletters, online and some from personal experience.

There are more Woodworking Tips and Tidbits located here.

Got a woodworking tip that you want to share? Let me know and I’ll add it in a future issue of Tips and Tidbits!

Back to the shop…

At the entrance to the Fraser Canyon where the Fraser River is met by the Coquihalla River lies Hope, a British Columbia town of 8000. In addition to offering scenic trails and pristine lakes it also offers around 30 chainsaw carvings located throughout the town. In fact, Hope is known as the ‘Chainsaw Carving Capital of Canada’! I had a chance to visit and tour some of the Hope Arts and Carving Walk recently and view some of these great works of chainsaw art.

The chainsaw carvings were created by local woodcarver Pete Ryan who came up with a proposal to carve a dead tree for the city back in 1991. A tree in Memorial Park had been pulled down due to root rot and a large stump was left. Pete carved this into a beautiful 12 foot eagle and it was an instant hit with both the tourists and town folk.

It wasn’t long after that he had made an agreement to carve another 27 carvings around town that were sponsored by local businesses. It has worked out very well with tourists coming every year by the bus load to view the carvings.

Here are some photos I took of the chainsaw carvings:

Continue reading 'The Chainsaw Carving Capital Of Canada'

My next visit was to the Museum Of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Where a previous post was focused on contemporary First Peoples woodcarvings the MOA offers insight into the past with the history of these carvings told through artifacts.

The museum was started more than fifty years ago and now houses some 535,000 ethnographic and archaeological objects, many of which originate from the Northwest Coast of British Columbia. It is Canada’s largest teaching museum and its collections, exhibitions and programs are renowned for giving access and insight into the cultures of indigenous peoples around the world.

When I arrived at the information desk I was informed that there was a tour starting immediately so I quickly joined it and took advantage of an excellent presentation by a well informed staff member. I was treated to glimpse inside the rich history of Canada’s First Peoples as told through their woodcarvings. In addition to the long term exhibits I also got a chance to view the visiting ‘Treasures of the Tsimshian from the Dundas Collection’ which included 48 pieces collected by Rev. Robert J. Dundas at Metlakatla, BC, in 1863.

Continue reading 'The Museum Of Anthropology At UBC'