Dunbarhamlin at Wilton

[woodbloke]

It was a real pleasure to welcome Steve Hamlin to Wilton this weekend for a training course. Steve wanted to get to grips with much of the basic bench hand skills such as:

marking out and the use of all the different gauges:

chopping mortises and cutting tenons:

as well as marking out and cutting a through dovetail:

Steve also wanted to learn about horizontal and vertical paring, here's something that I picked up very early...Steve is right handed:

Here's a few shots of Steve planing a piece of rough sawn AO Wakawood all to a finished dimension, using only the woodie jack and my A1 Norris panel plane...no scrub plane (not needed)

and checking for wind:

During the course of the weekend, Steve also had a chance to use the LN shoulder plane:

After an excellent day on Saturday, we had a pheasant casserole with vino and then settled back in the lounge for some serious woody talk:

Today Steve made a small panel in American Cherry and had some further practice in techniques learnt yesterday:

Chopping shoulders with the 25mm LN:

and all under the constant Woodbloke eyeball!

Here's Steve at the gluing stage of the panel construction:

and having cleaned it up with the LV BU smoother, he's putting a small chamfer on the edges with the LN block:

At the end of the course, this is what Steve achieved:

A through dovetail joint in elm
A haunched tenon
A exposed and wedged through mortice and tenon ( :-k I wonder why I got Steve to do one of those)
Planing a lump of rough sawn AO to a smooth exactly dimensioned finish, straight true and out of wind.
A cross halving joint
A small panel in American Cherry, all joints cut by hand and the panel material planed to size from rough stock.
I have to take my hat off to Steve because he worked really hard and absorbed everything that got thrown at him...which was a huge amout! A thoroughly nice bloke and a fantastic weekend... I know that Steve gained a lot from it - Rob

 

[Paul Chapman]

Looks like you had a good time. Well done, Steve, those pieces look excellent =D>

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[Philly]

Sounds like a real productive weekend - well done to all involved!
Philly

 

[Rich]

Fantastic that, thanks for showing us, would that I could learn those skills under a watchful eye, sadly (or excitingly) it's all trial and error with me, but it's still nice to see good work and lovely hand tools also.

Regards,

Rich.

 

[TrimTheKing]

Looks like you had a good time, both of you. Good work Steve.

Cheers

Mark

 

[dunbarhamlin]

Ha! Had a ball. (And a big thank you to Alison for putting up with me.)

Suspect there are lots of folks who are where I was - having learnt from books and fora - well, to all of you - if you get the chance, go see Rob!

My problem was that, I knew roughly what I needed to do, but without having a tutor/mentor hovering over me (one on one makes a HUGE difference here,) I did lots of things (most things) either cack handed or just made them difficult for myself by my stance.

Having been a professional teacher, Rob devised an intensive lesson plan and was then able to point out the error of my ways. (Somehow he even refrained from calling me a ham fisted clod.)

The consequence is that, though my test pieces all have little faults (far fewer than I could have imagined at the start of the weekend,) I now now understand just where the errors crept in and know exactly how to correct my mistakes, either patching up after the event, or more importantly, by simple changes in the way I work, avoiding them in the first place.

(One thing Rob was too nice to mention is that I rather desperately need an optician - I've sort of sand papered my specs a bit - read blind as a bat on a foggy day)

Chuffed to bits with the weekends progress.

[edit] pipper, who sprinkled all that white paint on my head - sure it wasn't that colour last time I looked [/edit]

Cheers
Steve

 

[Woodmagnet]

to you both. 8)

 

[BradNaylor]

I'm torn...


One side of me says 'What's the point? I could do all that in a couple of hours with a planer/thicknesser, router, spindle moulder, and bandsaw.'


The other side of me says ' That looks fun. I've not those things by hand for 30 years. I wouldn't mind a refresher.'

Am I getting old?

How much do you charge?

When are you next free?

Cheers
Dan :wink:

 

[wizer]

You're in this for money Dan, there's a difference. When you collect your bus pass next week, you'll have time to practise woodworking as a hobby/passion.

Looks like a fun weekend hope that booze didn't effect Sunday's results!

 

[woodbloke]

Ha! Had a ball. (And a big thank you to Alison for putting up with me.)

Suspect there are lots of folks who are where I was - having learnt from books and fora - well, to all of you - if you get the chance, go see Rob!

My problem was that, I knew roughly what I needed to do, but without having a tutor/mentor hovering over me (one on one makes a HUGE difference here,) I did lots of things (most things) either cack handed or just made them difficult for myself by my stance.

Having been a professional teacher, Rob devised an intensive lesson plan and was then able to point out the error of my ways. (Somehow he even refrained from calling me a ham fisted clod.)

The consequence is that, though my test pieces all have little faults (far fewer than I could have imagined at the start of the weekend,) I now now understand just where the errors crept in and know exactly how to correct my mistakes, either patching up after the event, or more importantly, by simple changes in the way I work, avoiding them in the first place.

(One thing Rob was too nice to mention is that I rather desperately need an optician - I've sort of sand papered my specs a bit - read blind as a bat on a foggy day)

Chuffed to bits with the weekends progress.

[edit] pipper, who sprinkled all that white paint on my head - sure it wasn't that colour last time I looked [/edit]

Cheers
Steve

Hi Steve - it was great to have you in the 'shop here, I didn't mention though all the other stuff we touched on like veneering, sharpening, use of the AirPress, using the shooting boards for different applications, setting out work...and the list could go on.
As we discussed over the weekend, a visit to Specsavers would work wonders :lol: I've got the same sort of problem but if I take off my gogs for close work, everything comes into focus, which unfortunately doesn't happen with your eyesight.
It was evident, again as we talked about, that you were naturally a little hesitant in strange surroundings and with different tools, but once you got into the 'flow' of things and gained more confidence in using the kit there was a vast difference in the way you went about stuff at the bench and the results speak for themselves.
One thing that I tried (and I hope I succeeded) to do is to get over the idea that making stuff, even at the level we were doing, requires a big thought process, in other words, you really have to 'think' your way through a project before ever picking up a plane or square.
It's interesting to note that there was no sandpaper used this weekend...all the work was finished straight from the plane - Rob

 

[paulm]

Looks like a great time was had, and I can vouch for Rob knowing his stuff alright having had the odd bit of guidance on cutting dovetails and seen some of his work up close :shock:

Great to see all those workshop and wip pics too, always interesting.

Cheers, Paul