The kickoff event runs from 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm on October 7th and the exhibit will run through the end of October in case you’re unable to attend the opening night. In addition to the over 40 pieces of framed art, we will have matted prints available for purchase, along with notecards, the deck of playing cards I illustrated last year, and several other items for sale as well. We are hoping to have something for everyone there. It’s a great way of picking up a piece of art and helping contribute towards other kids getting critical treatment that they need at the same time.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of woodworking over the last few months trying to improve my furniture building skills. I have more recently begun migrating away from power tools more towards hand tools to help with a few things. With a new daughter that I look after full time, I needed to create a safer, cleaner, and more pleasant workshop. I can now work on a project with her in the next room and keep an ear and eye on her without the unpleasant noise, dust, and danger of my power tools.

Hand tools are a much quieter and pleasant way of working wood. You can work on a project with other people in the room without needing hearing and eye protection or with that pained look on your face as the tools wreak thundering havoc on the wood.

Another thing I really like about hand tools is the relative absence of airborne dust in the house. My shop is much cleaner since I ditched the router table and power sanders. The sawdust, chips, and shavings that I produce now settle quickly to the floor and can be vacuumed or swept up with minimal mess. There is still a small bit of dust to be sure, but mostly produced from hand sanding.

This leads directly to the third thing I like about hand tools: the craft of the process. In order to use hand tools effectively, you have to get in tune with your tools through maintaining them. Unlike power tools that come with disposable cutting edges for the most part, hand tools allow you to easily (with a bit of practice) produce a razor sharp edge with relatively simple tools. I adoped Japanese water stones from my kitchen knife sharpening kit and use a honing guide for my chisels and hand plane irons. It’s amazing how quickly you can learn to produce a perfect cutting edge with a minimum of fuss.

The New Traditional Woodworker

I’ve just about completed all of the projects in Jim Topin’s fantastic The New Traditional Woodworker and am about to try my hand at my first hand tool-only project. I am eager to see how I’ve progressed with my sawing, planing, and joinery. It will be a simple first project but should put my skills to the test.

My wooden try squares

Tolpin’s book does a great job of helping the modern reader decipher the various hand tools out there and select those needed to build your toolkit. He goes on to present various projects to create those devices needed in a hand tools shop to work wood safely and efficiently, including a bench hook for crosscutting boards to length and square, a shooting board which helps square an edge of a board, a wooden try square that you can use in place of a purchased one, which I have been doing, along with many other projects. Because I enjoyed the process so much, I ended up creating three different try squares, two normal try squares and a third dovetail gauge, and find myself using them for marking almost all of my board ends and edges.

I’ve also been scouring the online retailers for vintage hand planes. The Stanley hand planes have the reputation as the best built and most dependable made and fortunately they’re fairly easy to pick them up for very reasonable prices, depending on the model. Based on recommendations from Jim Tolpin’s book as well as Christopher Schwarz from Lost Press Art (formerly the editor for Popular Woodworking Magazine). They recommended a starting trio of a No. 5 Jack Plane, a No. 7 Jointer plane and a No. 4 Smoothing plane. I picked up the first two on eBay and purchased the third from Lie-Nielsen. I am almost scared to use the Smoothing plane as it’s simply beautiful and I’m still a bit afraid of putting the first scratch on it. Needless to say, this will eventually pass but it’s still nice to have a work of art in my workshop.

A Stanley No. 5 Jack Plane on the left and a Stanley No. 7 Jointer Plane on the right

"My Precious" (Lie-Nielsen No. 4 Smoothing Plane

I also purchased a Stanley No. 45 Combination Plane, primarily for cutting grooves, dados, and rabbets. I find that it works remarkably well and is doing a rather nice job of replacing my powered router and router table for most tasks. I am waiting to see how it does at more complicated tasks like edge molding and compound profiles, but there are always the wooden molding planes if it doesn’t quite fit the bill.

Stanley No. 45 Combination Plane - a wonderfully complicated bit of kit

I’ve picked up a few additional tools like a hand drill, braces, bits, etc., and am quickly weaning myself off of power tools and only occasionally use a cordless hand drill for quick drilling tasks. I also still use a drill press for creating perpendicular holes in my projects since it can be quite frustrating to misdrill a critical hole.

Hand saws are the next round for me. I’ve picked up some saw files and a saw set to bend the teeth correctly on dulled saws. It’s a rather involved process to do well, but I’ve ordered a DVD to help with the process. I also have two vintage saws on their way and will complete my needed set soon. I’ll post more details as I make more progress…

One of the refinished chairs, complete with Thumper

As I mentioned in a previous post, these chairs have sentimental value for me. They were my paternal grandmother’s chairs and I can remember rocking away in them as a young boy on Christmas morning waiting until everyone arrived to open gifts. I remember sitting in one of them as an adolescent chatting with my grandmother and trying to relate to a woman who had literally built a business with my grandfather including the shop and their house and had survived a depression and a World War. I remember sitting in one of these chairs after hearing that she was dying from brain cancer.

I inherited these chairs after my grandmother passed away and they have waited patiently for me to do something about their condition. Although the worn arms and tattered fabric had a bit of nostalgia to them, they really didn’t represent the dignity that my grandmother deserved. It was important to return them to a state that respected their era, style, and “look”. These chairs were built in Indiana in 1959 (according to the furniture tag located inside the chairs). and you really can’t find chairs like them anymore. They’re small and relatively light weight and the swivel rocker design is simply perfect for rocking gently with, say, and newborn in your arms.

After stripping the finish from the arms, I applied a deep red chestnut oil stain, sealed that with a coat of garnet shellac, applied several coats of gel mahogany stain to get the deep rich brown color, before sealing that with shellac once again. A few coats of polyurethane and the wood was ready for reassembly. I took the chair seats to Bailey Enterprises here in Missoula where he reupholstered them and replaced one of the broken serpent springs in the seat. Once he had the fabric on, it fell to me to get him the finished wood so he could reassemble the arms before adding the back. This is where I made a classic mistake!

On delivering the arms to Paul at Bailey Enterprises, I was ascending the concrete steps of his shop with the arms in a burlap drop cloth. As I was opening the door to enter, I felt one of the arms slip… the next moment was frozen with the stomach-churning sound of wood bouncing down concrete! I looked in horror as one of the arms bounced a final time before coming to rest at the bottom of the steps. I was mortified… I slowly lowered the other three arms onto the shop floor and made my way down the steps. The arms was topside-down and didn’t show much damage, but as I slowly picked it up and turned it over, my spirits sank as I saw the dozen or so dings, scrapes, and gouges exposing the bare wood in places.

I climbed the steps to where Paul was trying to console me in my moment of despair. “They should be okay. I’ve heard of people steaming out dings like that in furniture.” He was trying to be kind. You don’t steam out gaping holes of bare wood in a finished arm. I knew that I would have to refinish the arm’s top completely and hope that it wasn’t too obvious when compared to the others. Paul indicated that he could finish the first chair and get the other ready to go for when I got the arm refinished. It was the Wednesday before Easter and we arranged to have the arm back in his hands by Monday.

The re-refinished arm...

I went home and showed Angie the results of my idiocy. She tried to look less than mortified and managed pretty well. I went downstairs and began the process of stripping the arm to prepare it for refinishing. After two days, it looked passable and a couple more days of fine-tuning it, it looked like a new arm again. The following day, I placed it in the back of the car and made my way to Paul’s shop. I carried it (with both hands!) up the steps and delivered it safely to his workbench. He said that he could most likely have the chairs ready for the following day. True to his word, they were ready the next morning and I dropped by and picked them up. I installed the bases once I was home and scooped up Maddie before giving them the first trial rock.

The arm prior to refinishing

The "before" image

New changing table installed in the nursery.

I also made the letters on the wall above the changing table. I found a nice font I liked on my computer and printed out huge versions of them which I transferred to a sheet of MDF using a carbon-transfer paper. I then cut them out with a jigsaw, sanded them smooth and coated them with acrylic spray paint. I tried using liquid acrylic but the yellow and blue were far too transparent.

The photo below shows a closer look at the table with one of the hand-painted knobs that I purchased for the drawer pulls.

Closer view of table.

One of the wonderful animal-themed drawer pulls.

I picked up the drawer pulls from Carolina Hardware and Decor who have a great selection of decorative pulls and knobs, many surprisingly still made in the USA. I used a mouse, bunny, bull, pig, lion, and tiger for the dresser.

chair prior to the start of the process

I inherited two identical chairs from my grandmother’s estate when she passed away several years ago. They have been in need of a refinishing job since we obtained them and I am finally nearing completion on the work. I decided to refinish the wood myself and have a professional upholsterer work on the fabric since I had no idea where to even start on something like that.

The arms were in desperate need of refinishing

The well-worn arms with years of happy use.

The chair was ready for disassembly. After “carefully” removing the upholstery from the back, I disassembled the chair into the components.

The disassembled pieces.

The swivel-rocker component from the chair base.

Once the components were disassembled, I deployed the random-orbit sander for some tough love.

The sanded components.

A closer view of the arms, legs, and base.

Here are some photos of the progress as it stands today. I’ve managed to strip both chairs down to the raw wood and reapply an oil-based chestnut stain to give a pleasant reddish tint to the wood. I then followed this up with a sealing coat of garnet shellac before applying a liberal glaze of mahogany stain. This step was crucial to the overall look of the arms and require several days of fine-tuning the final look. I then sealed this layer with several (probably 5-7) seal coats of garnet shellac before finishing the job with three coats of water-based polyurethane. I was able to use water-based poly over the previous coats because I allowed 3-4 days of drying time for the oil-based finishes and then used shellac, which provides a material buffer between coats.

The first seal-coat of garnet shellac is applied.

A better view of the shellacked arms.

The re-finished arms, legs, and base from the second chair.

My goal was to stay true to the original finish while bringing out the natural grain in the wood a bit more (less of an opaque glaze with this application) and keeping that deep, rich finish I’ve always loved about these chairs. I should be getting the seats back from the upholsterer in the next week or so and can’t wait to see how the fabric we picked out looks with the new finish.

Here is a link to the product page on my website: http://www.richadamsphoto.com/Drawings/PlayingCards.html. They’re available for $12.95 and are shipping soon!

I’m excited to announce the return of Mike Sibley (my friend and mentor) to Yellowstone for a drawing workshop in June of next year. Some details include:

Dates:       12th -17th June 2011
Duration:  6 days, 10 am to 5 pm
Location:  Holiday Inn, West Yellowstone, Montana

• Illustrated talk by a Park Ranger so we know what to expect and look out for during our visit to…
• A full day in the Park with assistance on photography, taking that unusual but useful shot, and looking for elements that can be combined into a useful setting. And we provide transport and lunch.
• Improve your photography – late afternoon sessions by talented Artist and Photographer Rich Adams beginning with the basic uses of compact cameras.
• Visits to the nearby Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center to get those photographs that eluded you in the Park.
• Five days of uninterrupted drawing covering drawing from the basics up to advanced.
• AND all tools and paper will be provided. Just bring yourself.

I had been lucky enough to attend a symposium in Bozeman, Montana (the home of the Museum of the Rockies, where Horner is curator) and listened to another presentation for the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators before leading us on a field trip to the Museum of the Rockies where we were given a behind-the-scenes look at the efforts that go into creating and preserving the many exhibits at the museum.

It was one of those experiences that makes you say, “If I ever got the chance to work here, I would be in heaven.” Unfortunately I don’t know how to weld, have never cast a bone in a silicone mold, haven’t created exhibit displays where the specimen can be removed for study and reinserted without causing damage to the display or, more importantly, the bones themselves. Needless to say, I’d need a few more qualifications which is why their current exhibit coordinator is so unique. It’s a great museum and well worth the visit if you even happen to be in Bozeman before traveling down to Yellowstone National Park.

Just in time for Halloween, here is a link to my web page with a recently completed drawing of a Raven. I tried to play around with the graphical elements of the raven to produce a dynamic pose even though he’s perched on a static limb. By spreading the feet, lowering the center of gravity and stretching the neck out just a bit, I hope it imparts a feeling of potential action that I was going for.

The print is available in both 11×14 and 16×20 frame sizes and printed on 100% cotton rag fine art paper with pigment-based archival inks.