Woodworker's Journal 1985-9-3, страница 4

-Shoptalk-

Good News for Shaker Fans

A bit less than two hours drive from this office is one of the finest repositories of Shaker artifacts in this country. The Sh aker Village at Hancock, Mass. sits today, as it always has, a bit apart from the mainstream of commerce in the western part of the state and looks much as it did 125 years ago.

We visited it in the fall on one of the last mellow days before the hard freeze and felt like travellers in time as we wandered the halls of the Great Communal House and marveled at the ingenuity of the Shaker-built machinery in the shops and laundry.

With the kind assistance of the curator, Tom Harrington, and the permission of the Directors, we photographed and measured many of the lovely furnishings, most of which will be presented in future issues of The Woodworker s Journal, Many readers have expressed an interest in building classic Shaker furniture. We are proud to have the continuing opportunity to provide authentic plans.

There's Usually a Better Way

It's difficult to lay down a neat set of hard and fast rules for working in wood. When one considers the many types of wood and their vastly different characteristics with respect to hardness, dimensional stability, grain structure and other factors, there are not many rules that can be applied without exception. As craftsmen, we deal with an organic medium and no matter how experienced we may be, it sometimes reacts in ways we don't expect. Wood is an incredibly complex and variable material and we often must be very innovative in order to make the best use of it.

Competent woodworkers are proud of their skills and

rightly so; it takes time to develop them, but exceptional woodworkers have not only the skill but also the willingness to try other approaches. Give the same set of plans to twenty different woodworkers from northern Maine to southern California and you may be amazed how different the projects will appear. I witness this phenomenon often and am always intrigued with how our readers have used our plans as a springboard to suit their ideas and the materials available to them. In some cases, readers have shown us a clever improvement on our design or suggested a better way to build a project. We encourage this exchange for the opportunity to learn of yet another approach and pass it on to other woodworkers.

What It's All About

This business of providing information can have its anxious moments, for once the presses have stopped and issues have been mailed there is no turning back. We are always aware of the fact that just one dimensional error on a plan can result in a considerable waste of lumber and time, a situation that later corrections cannot really remedy.

As the complexity of a project increases, so too does the chance for an error. With this in mind, you may well understand why we have been anxiously awaiting reader feedback on the Grandfather Clock presented in the September/ October and November/December 1984 issues.

I'm happy to report that reader letters concerning this project have been coming in and they are jubilant and filled with the sense of accomplishment. One reader summed it up when he said, "It was a joy to build and when completed, an object of beauty to behold, which I guess, is what woodworking is all about.'' Amen, j_im McQuillan

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