I was just watching a video on U-tube where someone was SHOWING how the secret compartments they had made worked. To say the least I found this appalling. They are called secrets for a reason! Am I upset because he is giving away trade secrets? Eh - whatever.
What I am upset about is that someone commissioned the piece to be made in good faith in order to hide something. If they choose to tell about their piece - so be it. But for a furniture maker to be telling how & where & TO WHOM he sold this secret compartment is appalling.
For thousands of years before banks were commonly available it was the furniture makers job to make secret compartments to hide valuables in. Most often if someone could afford to commission a piece of quality - they could also afford your head in a ditch. Hence the tradition of keeping secrets was founded and enforced with a furniture maker until it became a point of swelling pride.
Then some yahoo (who does BEAUTIFUL work BTW) goes and puts it on U-tube for the world to know not only who to rob...but how to open the compartments and where to find them!.....even worse some other country with cheap labor will steal his ideas (since he showed in great detail how the system worked) and mass produce them at 25% of his cost.
How does someone so talented make such a dumb mistake?
Friday, August 20, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Trophies
We all like receiving trophies. I make a lot of them for customers. But, like many I don't receive many myself.
Today I received one of the best I have ever been awarded.
Back up one year. My daughter's friend from High School was working on his Eagle Scout award.
He was to make a podium for the High School wrestling team. One of the types that has a 1st, 2nd, & 3rd award levels. He asked if I could provide (donate) the shop for him to build it and offer some advice on construction methods. To which I agreed (what kind of a schmuck wouldn't?) He came over a few days later and built the podium to the concept of a kit. (Part of it he had to instruct younger scouts to finish the project, this is a leadership award after all).
That was a year ago (+) and I haven't thought about it much since.
Today he came back around saying he had been accepted to a prestigious college. Letting it be known that it was in no small part due to his Eagle Scout award as his grades weren't all that good. What he brought with him was a thank you card. Written by his own hand.
And there you have it - MY TROPHY. A hand written thank you. By a 18yr old boy turning into a fine man.
This card will be hung in my shop to remind me that while cash for a job well done may be nice (And a necessity of life) sometimes there are payments that are worth so much more.
Today I received one of the best I have ever been awarded.
Back up one year. My daughter's friend from High School was working on his Eagle Scout award.
He was to make a podium for the High School wrestling team. One of the types that has a 1st, 2nd, & 3rd award levels. He asked if I could provide (donate) the shop for him to build it and offer some advice on construction methods. To which I agreed (what kind of a schmuck wouldn't?) He came over a few days later and built the podium to the concept of a kit. (Part of it he had to instruct younger scouts to finish the project, this is a leadership award after all).
That was a year ago (+) and I haven't thought about it much since.
Today he came back around saying he had been accepted to a prestigious college. Letting it be known that it was in no small part due to his Eagle Scout award as his grades weren't all that good. What he brought with him was a thank you card. Written by his own hand.
And there you have it - MY TROPHY. A hand written thank you. By a 18yr old boy turning into a fine man.
This card will be hung in my shop to remind me that while cash for a job well done may be nice (And a necessity of life) sometimes there are payments that are worth so much more.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Do you walk on water?
Neither do I. Although it seems many of us believe we do.
Point in Case:. I am a furniture maker working towards my masters ------------ . I ask A LOT of questions. I ask my friends, family, other professionals around me. Heck I've even asked strangers!...What do I ask them? I ask "what do you think of this?" Or that? Or the other...Why?....because the more I learn the more I understand that I haven't learned much, LOL.
We are in a trade that is AT LEAST 7000YRS OLD (that is the age of the earliest known piece of furniture - a stool) and honestly I realize that in my short 42yrs I haven't had TIME to be exposed to everything that has been learned in this trade in the last 3 1/2 millennium.
Back to the case
I walked into a friends shop the other day (He is a commercial cabinet maker) and he was making a dresser for his soon to be born daughter. He was using drawer fronts that were left over for a job a couple of yrs ago. Now dont get me wrong they were NICE drawer fronts - solid beech and 5 piece - and he had made the dresser to match them. Kinda. What he had done was make a European style cabinet and slapped a face frame on the front of it with a typical 1/4" back with the sides and front going flat strait to the floor. Now this is going to be a very nice Euro/American style cabinet. It is not however going to be a nice dresser.
It lacks legs...or ornamentation or supports to the back or quality drawers (He was ordering them made with a butt joint const.) He put a roman ogee around the tops on 3 sides to 'dress it up' as he put it...but again this would look good sitting in your kitchen as a bank of drawers, but this was a DRESSER for a LITTLE GIRL! it needs a toe kick & a wall to be attached to as he built it.
My problem here is this : He didn't ask any of the 7 guys around with furniture making experience.
Was he required to? No. Should he have?...Why not? We are all friends & more than willing to help in any way we can...We are all like surrogate dad wannabe's for him and happy about his new born to come. So there would have been no shame or downcast looks at him...We all know what we know & for each of us what we know is different from the next guy.
BUT apparently he believes he walks on water. He among all of us is the only guy to never ask for help, or advice and is insulted if advice is offered freely (So I didn't on this occasion). Its sad for me to think of his little girl growing up with furniture for the next 20yrs that her mother would be proud to have in the kitchen...but will always look out of place in her bedroom - especially that of a little girl.
Lesson
If you want to be good at anything - leave the ego at the door. There is more to learn than you have time to and it never hurts to ask, all you can do is learn.
P.S.: It took me 15yrs to learn this lesson and still sometimes struggle with it.
Point in Case:. I am a furniture maker working towards my masters ------------ . I ask A LOT of questions. I ask my friends, family, other professionals around me. Heck I've even asked strangers!...What do I ask them? I ask "what do you think of this?" Or that? Or the other...Why?....because the more I learn the more I understand that I haven't learned much, LOL.
We are in a trade that is AT LEAST 7000YRS OLD (that is the age of the earliest known piece of furniture - a stool) and honestly I realize that in my short 42yrs I haven't had TIME to be exposed to everything that has been learned in this trade in the last 3 1/2 millennium.
Back to the case
I walked into a friends shop the other day (He is a commercial cabinet maker) and he was making a dresser for his soon to be born daughter. He was using drawer fronts that were left over for a job a couple of yrs ago. Now dont get me wrong they were NICE drawer fronts - solid beech and 5 piece - and he had made the dresser to match them. Kinda. What he had done was make a European style cabinet and slapped a face frame on the front of it with a typical 1/4" back with the sides and front going flat strait to the floor. Now this is going to be a very nice Euro/American style cabinet. It is not however going to be a nice dresser.
It lacks legs...or ornamentation or supports to the back or quality drawers (He was ordering them made with a butt joint const.) He put a roman ogee around the tops on 3 sides to 'dress it up' as he put it...but again this would look good sitting in your kitchen as a bank of drawers, but this was a DRESSER for a LITTLE GIRL! it needs a toe kick & a wall to be attached to as he built it.
My problem here is this : He didn't ask any of the 7 guys around with furniture making experience.
Was he required to? No. Should he have?...Why not? We are all friends & more than willing to help in any way we can...We are all like surrogate dad wannabe's for him and happy about his new born to come. So there would have been no shame or downcast looks at him...We all know what we know & for each of us what we know is different from the next guy.
BUT apparently he believes he walks on water. He among all of us is the only guy to never ask for help, or advice and is insulted if advice is offered freely (So I didn't on this occasion). Its sad for me to think of his little girl growing up with furniture for the next 20yrs that her mother would be proud to have in the kitchen...but will always look out of place in her bedroom - especially that of a little girl.
Lesson
If you want to be good at anything - leave the ego at the door. There is more to learn than you have time to and it never hurts to ask, all you can do is learn.
P.S.: It took me 15yrs to learn this lesson and still sometimes struggle with it.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Do I look like a furniture maker now?
Well here I am in the beginning of the next step: turning my log into lumber.
Guess what I found out about trees? God apparently didn't make them with the intention of going through my bandsaw. They are lumpy, twisty, and have this funny bark stuff on the outside. Which generally says my bandsaw is too small and the tree is more powerful than it.
Speaking of powerful trees, who'da thunk they were 85% water. And water weighs 7lbs per gallon. Don't think that's much? Go measure your milk jug. It's not that big of a branch. Now stack that milk jug on top of itself 9 times and tell me how heavy the branch is?
So with all of that said, I'm finding out both how strong I am and how out of shape I've become. And how much both of those effect being able to make a rectangular piece out of a round branch. Especially a branch that's too big around to fit under my 6" clearance on the saw. So you'll find a couple of things have happened. Some of the logs I've had to center split with a chainsaw first, while others I've used chisels, mallets, a hatchet even to remove the bark to thin them down. (Thinking about that - where did I put my draw knife?)
All this fun and I'm on branch one of five, plus two trunks and a burl of tree one out of nine! A lot more blogs to come about the trials/ tribulations and back pain of milling a tree.
Speaking of powerful trees, who'da thunk they were 85% water. And water weighs 7lbs per gallon. Don't think that's much? Go measure your milk jug. It's not that big of a branch. Now stack that milk jug on top of itself 9 times and tell me how heavy the branch is?
All this fun and I'm on branch one of five, plus two trunks and a burl of tree one out of nine! A lot more blogs to come about the trials/ tribulations and back pain of milling a tree.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
First day of a Master?
If this was it take it back! LOL. I started today in earnest working on my masters project . My friend Bob was kind enough to give me an olive tree from his back yard. Sooooo
Step 1. Remove tree … Mother told me there would be days like this
Lets back up. 4 days ago I caught either bronchitis or walking pneumonia. Couple that with the fact that I’m in season for my allergy induced asthma and that’s where I start today – not breathing.
Yeah, uh huh, 1 branch. This tree is HUGE. This 1 branch , one of the smaller ones, was 9ft long and 8” in dia. After pruning it to a ball head, with several smaller ones able to be used for lumber as well (I will have pen blanks for sale not TOO far down the road) in total I harvested 4 logs (5 1/2ft , 4ft,6ft and 3ft…remember I had to clean cut them all after they were grounded)…..but lets not forget the foliage.
So here’s the count…. 4 logs and 2 truckloads of foliage .
So I take it back to the shop to mill it down to rough lumber. Getting there at 4PM. By 8PM I was calling Kat to bring me my rescue inhaler that I foolishly left at home, a 16 mile round trip for her – she loves me. . . or my life insurance isn’t paid up :/
1. (1) I DID get 1 branch to the shop…..remember this started with step 1 up there LMAO yeah right
2. (2)1 did get ¼ of 1 log milled down….the other 3 and 3/4 logs? Not so much.
3. (3) I got all the ends of all the logs painted to slow the drying process in order to allow me time to mill them & then air dry them
Why didn't I have a better plan you ask?...after all I AM working on my masters project??!!
To this I say : I'm a furniture maker not a lumberjack or millwright!!! ( though I may be when Im done! )
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Where did he go, George?
Well the entire month of May was a blur. Where to begin.
My partner (who handles all of the advertising/ business end of the shop) went away for a weekend to visit friends the first weekend. This meant things were a bit hectic, but manageable. So there was a post at the beginning of the month.
However, the second weekend her father collapsed in his home and had to be rushed to the hospital. After a few days of poking and prodding and tests they really still aren't sure what happened. But needless to say that weekend and the week after were a whirlwind.
The third weekend of May we had her family reunion. And with her father sick, we still had to figure out how to get everyone there. Definitely stressful.
So the last weekend of May we decided to take the 3 day weekend off and do a lot of nothing. Sorry, but I think we needed it.
While all of this was going on, I had someone come in and ask me to do a prototype of a credenza with the promise of many more to come. I took the time to talk with them and decided to start trying to see if I could work with them. There's an old phrase about how sometimes it isn't everyone else. They told me about all of the people who they had tried to work with and all of the things they had done wrong. I had given them the benefit of the doubt because I know sometimes you really do just find a lot of people who say they can do more than they can. But after a few weeks of back and forth with committees to make every little decision and nit picking about things that weren't reasonable for anything less than machine production (I wanted to move a heat vent 1/32 of an inch), all with the promise of lots of work - but not a lot of pay per piece, I decided this just wasn't going to be a good fit. I let them know and they didn't even bat an eye as they took their stuff. Which tells me that was a point they were accustomed to getting with people. Yes it was a job, yes it might have even been a lot of work going through the shop. But when they start out that unrealistic, there's a point where it just isn't going to be worth the amount of work and headache and problems.
So, it's June now and my daughter will be graduating from high school next week. So a lot of preparation is going into the last weeks of school and organizing the family to see her walk and for the party that comes after.
I'll try to get a few blogs posted - but as May reminded me, you can't always get what you want.
My partner (who handles all of the advertising/ business end of the shop) went away for a weekend to visit friends the first weekend. This meant things were a bit hectic, but manageable. So there was a post at the beginning of the month.
However, the second weekend her father collapsed in his home and had to be rushed to the hospital. After a few days of poking and prodding and tests they really still aren't sure what happened. But needless to say that weekend and the week after were a whirlwind.
The third weekend of May we had her family reunion. And with her father sick, we still had to figure out how to get everyone there. Definitely stressful.
So the last weekend of May we decided to take the 3 day weekend off and do a lot of nothing. Sorry, but I think we needed it.
While all of this was going on, I had someone come in and ask me to do a prototype of a credenza with the promise of many more to come. I took the time to talk with them and decided to start trying to see if I could work with them. There's an old phrase about how sometimes it isn't everyone else. They told me about all of the people who they had tried to work with and all of the things they had done wrong. I had given them the benefit of the doubt because I know sometimes you really do just find a lot of people who say they can do more than they can. But after a few weeks of back and forth with committees to make every little decision and nit picking about things that weren't reasonable for anything less than machine production (I wanted to move a heat vent 1/32 of an inch), all with the promise of lots of work - but not a lot of pay per piece, I decided this just wasn't going to be a good fit. I let them know and they didn't even bat an eye as they took their stuff. Which tells me that was a point they were accustomed to getting with people. Yes it was a job, yes it might have even been a lot of work going through the shop. But when they start out that unrealistic, there's a point where it just isn't going to be worth the amount of work and headache and problems.
So, it's June now and my daughter will be graduating from high school next week. So a lot of preparation is going into the last weeks of school and organizing the family to see her walk and for the party that comes after.
I'll try to get a few blogs posted - but as May reminded me, you can't always get what you want.
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Maredyl says: