Upcoming Schedule
November 20; Jig
Show and Tell at Frank Woolley’s in Ayer
December 7;
Dinner and auction at Siam Village in downtown Maynard. 6:30 pm dinner, auction
and dessert to follow
January ?;
Interesting Tour/visit
February 19; Box
making at Phyllis Jaffee’s in Westboro
March 19; Frame
and Panel construction and working with
glass
April 16;
Turning TBD
May 21; Working
with hinges at Cliff Clarke’s in Boston
May ?; Workshop,
Plane making with Peter Wilcox in Boylston.
June 19; Fine
tuning your machines
Our next meeting
Our next meeting is going to be at Frank Woolley’s garage/shop in
Ayer. We are once again having a jigs
meeting. This seems to be a favorite
meeting topic and works best when there is a lot of participation. Please bring along a jig that you would like
to show/demonstrate to the group.
Directions
Directions
to Frank’s house.
1
Doug Road
Ayer,
MA
978-772-1874
We
are located about 1 mile north of Ayer Center and 3 miles south of Groton
Center, in a residential neighborhood just east of Groton School Road (Mass.
Route 111).
To
Ayer Center from I-495 southbound (or from Littleton Center):
1.
Take Exit 30 from I-495 onto MA-2A west toward Ayer (or leave Littleton Center
on MA-2A west).
2.
Continue west on MA-2A about 5 miles to the traffic circle where MA-111 joins
MA-2A (with Wendy’s and McDonalds). Enter the traffic circle at 6 o’clock, exit
at 1 o’clock.
3.
Continue west on MA-2A. The center of Ayer is 1.1 miles from the traffic
circle, just after a railroad overpass.
To
Ayer Center from I-495 northbound (or from MA-2 westbound):
1.
Take Exit 29 from I-495 onto MA-2 west (toward Fitchburg).
2.
Go 4 miles on MA-2, and then take Exit 38 toward AYER.
3.
Turn RIGHT at the end of the ramp onto MA-110 east and MA-111 north (Ayer
Road).
4.
Continue 2.2 miles north on MA-110/111 to the traffic circle where MA-2A joins
MA-111 (with Wendy’s and McDonalds). Enter the traffic circle at 6 o’clock,
exit at 10 o’clock.
5.
Continue west on MA-2A. The center of Ayer is 1.1 miles from the traffic
circle, just after a railroad overpass.
To
Ayer Center from MA-2 eastbound (coming from Mass. Turnpike, Worcester or
Fitchburg):
1.
Pass Exit 37 and continue 3.0 miles to Exit 38.
2.
Take Exit 38B to MA-110 and MA-111 toward AYER.
3.
Turn RIGHT at the end of the ramp onto MA-110 east and MA-111 north (Ayer Road).
4.
Continue 2.2 miles north on MA-110/111 to the traffic circle where MA-2A joins
MA-111 (with Wendy’s and McDonalds). Enter the traffic circle at 6 o’clock,
exit at 10 o’clock.
5.
Continue west on MA-2A. The center of Ayer is 1.1 miles from the traffic
circle, just after a railroad overpass.
From
Ayer Center to Woolley’s house:
1.
Just after passing through downtown Ayer going WEST on MA-2A, turn RIGHT
(following MA-2A west and MA-111 north) onto PARK ST.
2.
Continue 0.6 miles north to a Y-intersection. (Tiny's Restaurant is between the
branches.)
3.
Take the right branch (MA-111, called Groton School Road) and continue 0.6
miles north on MA-111.
4.
About 100 yards past the Zodiac Village apartments on the right (looks like a
2-story motel), turn RIGHT onto ROSEWOOD AVE.
5.
Go 0.2 mile and turn at the 2nd RIGHT (about 100 feet before the end of
ROSEWOOD) onto MARK ST (street sign is missing, but some mailboxes are
labeled).
6.
Go 0.2 miles to end of MARK. Turn LEFT onto VICTOR DR.
7.
Go 0.11 miles to DOUG ROAD. Turn LEFT onto DOUG RD. Our house is on the corner
of Doug and Victor, a white raised ranch.
You
may park on the grass along both sides of the road in front of the house.
From
Groton Center to Woolley’s house:
1.
Reach Groton Center from the east on MA-40 west, from the southeast on MA-119
west, from the north on MA-111 south or MA-119 east, or from the west on MA-225
east.
2.
In Groton Center, take Rt. 111 south toward Ayer (Groton School Road).
3.
2.7 miles south of the intersection of Routes 119 &111 in Groton Center,
you will pass Groton Shirley Road on your right, then pass under high-voltage
transmission lines.
4.
2.9 miles south of the intersection of Routes 119 &111 in Groton Center,
turn LEFT on ROSEWOOD AVE. [If you miss the turn onto Rosewood, you’ll see a
sign for the Zodiac Village Apartments on the left. Turn around and look for
ROSEWOOD, on the right immediately around the curve, about 100 yards north of
the Zodiac parking lot.]
5.
Follow instructions #5-7 above from turn onto Rosewood to Woolley’s house.
Dinner and Auction
On
December 7 at 6:30pm we will be having dinner at he Siam Village Restaurant in
downtown Maynard. The cost for dinner is
$5 for members and $15 for non-members.
We invite you to bring a spouse or friend along as well to share the
evening. Immediately after dinner, we
will have dessert and coffee in Maggie Wood’s shop located in the basement of
the building.
It
was brought to my attention at the last meeting as I was giving stuff away that
perhaps someone would have paid a few dollars for my stuff. The person recommended an auction and so we
will have an auction. This is your
chance to clear out your shop of unused or unwanted stuff. Pretty much anything but the dust on your
shop floor can be put up for auction.
The money raised will hopefully be enough to cover the dinner that
everyone will have enjoyed and add a little to the Guild’s coffers.
Directions
and further information will follow shortly.
I hope as many people as possible will be able to come.
-Chris
Kovacs
North Bennet Street school
North Bennet Street
School’s
Cabinet and Furniture
Making Program
By Frank Woolley
In June of 2001 I was
sitting in a pew box at the Old North Church in Boston’s North End, surrounded
by that year’s graduates and their families. I could see my Federal card table
at the front of the church, piled high with diplomas for the graduation
ceremony that was about to begin. Each year the instructors picked one
student’s table to use at graduation, and mine had gotten the nod that year.
Since we only produced four major projects during the two-year program, and
since I had over 600 hours invested in that table, I was more than a little
pleased by their selection. The program had provided what I had moved to Boston
for: the confidence that I could make any piece of furniture that I set my mind
to, and a strong start on the expertise and skills needed to actually do that.
As a retired research manager, I was not planning to make my living with that
capability, but rather could indulge my urge to achieve the perfect design,
perfectly executed. The total immersion in furniture making for two years had
raised my level of work more than I could have in many years of reading and
short courses. The program was excellent for my purposes, but provided neither
the sense of urgency nor the business training that would be needed by those
students who intended to become self-employed furniture makers.
Description of the
program:
Following are my
observations while at NBSS from 1999 to 2001. The head of the Cabinet and
Furniture Making Department has changed since I left, and some significant
changes are being made in the program.
Instructors
are the heart of the program. Their importance to the quality of the experience
was increased by the fact that the instruction was nearly all oral. There were
no books or written instructions. There were two full time and two half time
instructors, all doing some commissioned furniture making on the side. All were
graduates of NBSS, graduating 5 to 25 years earlier, and all were capable and
dedicated teachers as well as excellent craftsmen. The time instructors had for
each student averaged out to a half hour per day (dividing total instructor
time by total number of students), but that went disproportionately to the more
aggressive students and those with the best social skills.
Students
were almost as important to the quality of the experience, since the limited
access to instructors meant that much of the instruction was provided by other more
advanced students. There were about 40 students in CFM, and that number was
limited by bench and machine room space. Each year about two-thirds of the
applications were rejected or delayed, but all well-motivated and prepared
applicants seemed to get in.
Students covered a wide
age range, and about a tenth were women. Overall roughly a fifth of the
students were career changers, a fifth were retirees, a fifth were just out of
high school or college but had no work experience, and the remainder had had several
previous jobs but no real career. The career changers and retirees had formerly
practiced a wide variety of skills and professions: carpenters, tradesmen,
salesmen, lawyers, architects, engineers. Among those coming directly from
other schools were some art school graduates, strong on design and art history
and at NBSS to improve their construction skills.
Some students were
paying their full costs (tuition was about $11k/year), some were on
scholarships provided by NBSS, and many were working part time in millwork
shops, restoration shops, etc. to pay expenses. Most students planned (or
dreamed) of having their own furniture making business eventually; the more
realistic ones planned to work first for other furniture makers. A few planned
museum careers in antique conservation.
Instructional goal
of the program was to impart a high level of those hand and machine skills
needed to make reproductions of American antique furniture (as well as
contemporary designs). It was not intended to teach furniture design, nor did
it pretend to prepare students to operate a small business.
The design specialty of
the instructors was high-style New England furniture from about 1680-1830. They
were less knowledgeable but nevertheless enthusiastic about American antiques
from other regions. They were much less knowledgeable and encouraging about
less elaborate styles, or about more recent or non-American styles.
The design philosophy
shared by the instructors was to faithfully reproduce the aesthetics (outward
appearance) of the best of the original pieces, while improving the hidden
construction to take advantage of the improved materials and understanding of
wood technology that have been developed over the past 200 years. They did not
promote the accurate reproduction of all details of specific antique pieces, so
the issue of creating fake antiques did not arise.
The craft tradition
taught in CFM is based on the English late-19th century Arts and Crafts
movement. It emphasizes precise measurements and joinery, perfection in
decorative techniques, efficiency in machine operations, and careful selection
of materials. In addition, the emphasis at NBSS was on basic construction, with
those skills traditionally done by specialists (turning, carving, finishing)
given much less attention. This craft tradition was followed very consistently,
and justified their hiring only their own graduates as instructors.
The construction
approach involved carefully planning the design and the sequence of steps on
paper. Machines were used wherever speed or precision could be achieved without
sacrificing appearance or durability to accommodate machine limitations. Hand
tools were used wherever needed for higher precision, or where the end result
could be obtained faster than by machine because of the setup time. While hand
tool skills were strongly emphasized, it was because of their versatility and
efficiency when making single pieces of furniture. There was definitely not a
romantic attachment to historical hand methods.
One book, Fundamentals
of Fine Woodworking (Sterling, 1996), written by Robert Ferencsik, a CFM
graduate, and based on the ideas of Wil Neptune, a CFM instructor from about
1990 to 2000, captures the essence of the method taught at NBSS very well. In
addition, six books by the English-trained furniture maker Ian Kirby are
completely consistent with the NBSS method and go considerably deeper: Plane
Perfect (1985) and Down to a Line (1986), both by the now-defunct
Lignum Press (Atlanta), and The Accurate Table Saw (1998), The Accurate
Router (1998), Sharpening with Waterstones (1998), and The
Complete Dovetail (1999), all by Cambium Press (Bethel, CT).
Scheduled instruction
was the first 5 hours of each day with 3-4 instructors on duty, followed by an
optional monitored work period of 3 hours with one instructor present.
Instruction was scheduled 10 months each year, 5 days a week, for a total of
about 400 days in 2 years.
Instructional method
was primarily walk-around one-on-one instruction. In addition, there was a 1-2
hour lecture once a week, with visiting craftsmen-lecturers occasionally. There
was some small group instruction. Much of the instruction, and most of the
corrections and clarifications, were obtained second-hand by asking other
students, because of the limited availability of instructors.
The first several
months were spent on drawings, primarily to teach construction details of
various periods and types of furniture. Then a toolbox was built as a first
exercise in machine operation and hand-cut dovetails. The core requirements for
graduation were three major projects (a table, case piece and chair). Other
projects were encouraged when the minimum three were completed. This emphasis
on three large projects, and the natural tendency for the students to try to
outdo each other, led to production of masterpieces at a cost of many hundreds
of hours. These requirements have been changed considerably since 2001, to
provide a wider range of skills through more but smaller projects.
Safety, particularly
avoidance of hand injuries, was heavily emphasized, with much attention to use
of jigs and fixtures with machines. Dust and noise hazards were given somewhat
less attention.
Equipment and tools
consisted of a mix of large, old (pre-WW2) industrial-size machines, and more
recent small-shop-size machines, mostly by Powermatic. Part of the instruction
was on machine maintenance, so the machines were kept in excellent condition
for accurate work.
Hand tools were owned
by the students. An in-house tool salesman, “Joe” Joseph, provided excellent
service and prices on high-quality tools. There were periodic visits by a
salesman for North respirators. The school organized group purchases of books
and furniture blankets at good prices. Students typically buy at least $1000
worth of hand tools during their schooling.
Drawing tables were
provided that set on top of workbenches. Students used their own drafting
equipment.
The facilities
were the weakest part of NBSS. Student benches were in three rooms on the 4th
floor of a forced merger of several very old buildings with mismatched floor
levels. Each student had a 2’x4’ bench, plus a table and shelves, all in less
than 80 sq. ft. of floor space. Machines were in two rooms, also on the 4th
floor, reducing dust and noise in the bench rooms. A long finishing room on the
3rd floor had a small exhaust fan at one end and a veneer press and vacuum bag
table at the other. There is a freight elevator to the 4th floor, but no
loading dock or parking.
The school is located
in heart of the North End, 4 doors from Old North Church. Although it is
impractical to arrive by car, it is only a 10-minute walk from the Haymarket
T-stop and 15’ from North Station.
No lumber suppliers
would deliver to the school because of the narrow streets and frequent traffic
blockages caused by delivery vehicles. Students would band together to borrow a
small truck for larger purchases of materials.
Pros and cons - my
opinions:
From these
observations, I formed some opinions about the merits of the NBSS full-time
program compared to the alternatives for becoming more skilled as furniture
makers. Other students with different goals than mine undoubtedly formed other
opinions than those I present here.
NBSS has the strong
advantage of having one consistent craft tradition, because all
instructors came through the same program. This develops a higher level of
skill more quickly, but is less versatile than a training that includes other
traditions and more modern methods. The importance of a consistent craft
tradition may not be obvious until you consider how closely linked are the
design and setup of hand tools and shop equipment, and the design of hand-made
joints and decoration. A simple example is the Japanese hand plane that is
pulled toward the operator, rather impractical for someone standing at a
European-style bench but perfectly logical for someone seated on a floor-level
beam while holding the work with his feet, where the strong back muscles do the
work. This is the major limitation of learning through a collection of short courses
and books, unless care is taken to integrate components of various traditions
into a consistent personal style.
A full-time program has
another major advantage of allowing a total focus on learning. The total
immersion in 18th century cabinetmaking, surrounded by others with the same
total focus, creates a deep learning experience. The full-time students were
generally very intense and dedicated, the source of much inspiration as well as
information.
The emphasis on precise
construction and elaborate decoration results in a high level of skills, but
little sense of urgency or cost. The first employer of many of the students
would be faced with imparting the timeliness needed for a reasonable
productivity. The school also made little effort to provide training in other
aspects of small business operation. No mention was made of ways to access the
rich clients needed when your product is reproductions of high-style antique
furniture. The instructors were very knowledgeable and generally very helpful, but
they did not derive the majority of their incomes from commercial work and thus
were not useful role models for future business owners. However, since 2001
there has been an increased emphasis on the marketing and business skills
needed by self-employed craftsmen to survive, and on the time and cost control
needed to make a decent living. The instruction methods made inefficient use of
instructors’ time, and access to instructors was strongly dependent on each
student’s social skills, but this problem has been addressed recently as well.
Some of equipment
is adequate but not modern and oversized for small shops, so not very helpful
in designing a modern small shop. The facilities are crowded and
inaccessible, and the location imposes a huge overhead of commuting time (or
housing expenses) for most students.
The lack of emphasis on
skills traditionally practiced by specialists motivated me to augment the CFM
program by taking carving lessons from Dimitrios Klitsas in Hampden, MA, and
working Saturdays for Bruce Hamilton, restorer and refinisher in West Newbury,
MA. Both are outstanding craftsmen and teachers.
For anyone considering
a serious investment in instruction, there are two other schools nearby
that offer both short courses and full-time programs: Phil Lowe’s Furniture
Institute of Massachusetts in Beverly, and Peter Korn’s Center for
Furniture Craftsmanship in Rockport, Maine. NBSS also has a full schedule
of short courses. They have good instructors, all graduates of NBSS, with the
same advantages of a consistent tradition. They use the same facilities and
equipment as the full-time program, operating during weekends, evenings and
summertime. Phil Lowe was the head of CFM at NBSS for about 10 years, and is a
dynamic and commercially successful furniture maker and teacher. The methods he
teaches are essentially the same as at NBSS, but with more emphasis on cost
control. Phil’s experience is primarily 18th century American furniture. Peter
Korn hires many well-known instructors, but the students must integrate the
varied and sometimes conflicting traditions that are presented. The facilities
are excellent, and hand tools are provided. Peter and many of the guest
instructors emphasize contemporary furniture styles.
