Creative Woodworks & crafts 1997-12, страница 5

December, 1997

Some Sound Advice from Way Up North:

The storp of intarsia artist Garnet Hall in his own words

Cold air, warm saw

Have you ever met a Irec you didn't like? I haven't. I can honestly say that I love wood. Wood and woodworking have served me quite well. From building a home to building the furniture to fill it, it's kept me out of trouble.

I live in the great frozen north, better known as Canada, on a farm near Stoughton, Saskatchewan. We're a prairie province, with our main exports wheat, hockey players, and tired old scroll sawyers. T grow wheat and keep bees in the summer, and make sawdust the year round. It's a great place to live, with lots of fresh air and plenty of peace and quiet—except for my workshop.

My wife and T have three children, two girls and a boy. The youngest will graduate this June. We'll finally be free, but we're too broke to go anywhere—kind of ironic, isn't it?

How it all began...

My woodworking adventure has taken me down many roads, a few of which were dead ends, but my enthusiasm has never dampened. I got started building furniture from a Reader's Digest project book. My first attempt was a bed that's still in use. It's not much to look at, but il is strong—it takes three men or two good women to move it.

I continued to build and sell furniture until I joined the Saskatchewan Cralt Council and was introduced to quality craflwork. After that, f created a line of children's toys, which evolved into collector farm toys, which somehow evolved into intarsia.

My first experience with scroll saws was an unpleasant one. I bought a cheap saw that bounced, rattled and rolled, and wouldn't cut butter. It would have made a great boat anchor. Then I upgraded my saw to one from PS Wood Machines, and things took a turn for the better. The saw was vibration-free, would cut anything, and had a very good quick change feature. Inside cuts were now a breeze, so I could incorporate those with my intarsia designs. As they say, now I was cooking with gas.

The next giant step forward was using precision ground blades. With the discovery of these blades, my scroll saw became more effective for intarsia than my old band saw, which by now deserved a vacation.

I soon found that many people were interested in scrolling and wanted to learn more about the craft and how to use a scroll saw properly, so I began to teach scroll saw classes. Scroll saws and intarsia complement each other nicely. Since accurate cutting is the most important part of intarsia, good basic scroll saw skills are very important. Oncc you are competent with a .scroll saw. designing your own intarsia projects is a great next step to master.

The design possibilities for intarsia are endless. The more shows T do. the more project suggestions 1 get. I now have more ideas than a sailor has on shore leave, assuming that sailors like woodworking.

...and where it can lead you

Some of the ventures I'm most, proud of include a 4' x 8'