Popular Woodworking 2002-08 № 129, страница 31

American Woodshops

The

Teaching Shop

Scott Phillips visits the shop of Parkman, Ohio, educator and toolmaker Ernie Conover.

It is my opinion that the recent impressive growth in woodworking in this country can be traced to the American Revolution. My theory is that it's the independent American spirit that inspires woodworkers to dream of new things and to create new projects. One of our country's biggest dreamers is Ernie Conover of Conover Workshops (www.conoverworkshops.com). Conover is a woodworker, turner, tool manufacturer and educator who has made all those things work together in one place: a workshop that most folks would fantasize about.

Located in the bucolic village of Parkman, Ohio, Conover Workshops is in the center of Amish country, surrounded by a peaceful quality that is rural America at its best.

Two-thirds of the second-floor space is dedicated to many handmade and Ulmia workbenches. Conover limits most classes to eight students for personal attention.The hardwood floors are much easier on the back and feet and make it a comfortable area to work in.The ladder in the background accesses the third-floor attic that stores an eclectic collection of jigs, fixtures and tools.

Conover and his wife, Susan, own a farm house and a 3,500-square-foot gable-roofed vintage barn. Throughout the years they have industriously added rooms to the farm house and many tools to the barn.

First and foremost, Conover Workshops is a school. In his classes, Conover teaches students first how projects are designed. Next he focuses on hand and power tool techniques used in making projects.

This is a European style of teaching woodworking, and it puts a great deal of emphasis on mastering all the hand and power tool skills required to become skilled. Each proj-

Born and raised in Ohio, Conover holds a degree in business administration. During the early 1970s he plied his skills as an intelligence officer in Germany, then during the next 15 years he co-founded and developed Conover Woodcraft Specialties. The company manufactured a unique line of reproduction hand tools and produced the Conover 16" lathe. In the course of this endeavor he identified the need for quality educational woodworking classes, and that eventually lead to Conover Workshops.

ect in the class is designed so students' fundamental skills progress as they tackle each successive project in the course.

Conover's barn workshop is divided into four large work zones. On the ground floor is a small store that sells refurbished old hand planes, chisels, layout tools, books and more.

Next to the store is the lathe area, which is a turner's paradise. Conover is one of the country's leading turners, and has been instrumental in helping to grow the American Association of Woodturners. So it should come as no surprise that 10 lathes (Nova and Conover), with a variety of Sorby and Crown chisels and sharpening aids, are located here.

On the second floor there's one huge room with large banks of windows that is home to more traditional handmade and Ulmia workbenches than I have seen in one well-organized space. The barn's massive hand-cut and hand-fit beams help to inspire an interest in learning things the right way. The workbenches are arranged so that eight to 10 students have their own work area. Various guest instructors, all leaders in their respective fields, share their talents at Conover Workshops, offering courses in a soup-to-nuts, hands-on series of classes leaning towards hand-tool techniques, with a healthy reverence for the safe use of power tools.

The fourth work zone is a smaller room on the barn's upper level that has mostly

30 Popular Woodworking August 2002