Great Little Video

[Trafalgar]

I posted this link in another thread but thought I would post it again by itself. Great video about a tool chest and by extension the British Arts & Crafts movement:

http://www.finewoodworking.com/item/323 ... fts-legacy

Terrific shop shots from both sides of the Atlantic...

 

[John15]

Many thanks CS for posting this video - missed it the first time around. I enjoyed viewing it very much.

John

 

[Trafalgar]

Glad you enjoyed it! Lot of good stuff packed into seven minutes.

 

[G S Haydon]

Thanks Charles, that was new to me and very enjoyable. Carries over very well into a book I've been reading.

 

[adrspach]

I can now add myself to one of those admirers with dreams to be able to do something like that once in the future.

 

[matthewwh]

Thank you Charles, what a wonderful piece!

 

[bugbear]

Great content (thanks for posting the link) but would have been much better
as a webpage mixing text and photographs, as opposed to a pseudo-video.

BugBear

 

[Trafalgar]

Barnsley looked to be from Central Casting. Helluva nice house, workshop, and lumber storage facilities. He appears to have done very well during his time.

 

[nathandavies]

Brilliant, thanks for that. When I retire.....

 

[Trafalgar]

Glad everybody has enjoyed it. The still photos of the Barnsley shop would be neat to have and study.

 

[custard]

I trained at Barnsley, not much has changed nor is it likely to. Most of the apprentices still arrive by bicycle (if they lodge in Petersfield the hill is a killer), there's a communal wall hung tool chest and a communal floor standing tool chest. Everyone has tool space under their benches, but you tended to have only a fairly basic collection of tools (the culture for example was one bench plane only, a number 07, and idolising of tools was, if not frowned upon, then regarded as a bit suspect), so the communal tool chests are where you'd go for a saw file or a carving gouge or a low angle spokeshave. The video described the apprentice life as "monastic" and that pretty much captures it. There was a very regular routine, with a bell sounded in the morning and afternoon for a fifteen minute tea break, lunch is eaten at your bench if it's cold or outdoors overlooking the South Downs if it's warm. But the most "monastic" element is the respect afforded concentration and the devotion to the task, if someone is in the zone you don't interrupt, consequently hours might pass with no one in the workshop saying a word!

When I was there a regular visitor was the retired head craftsman who worked under Edward and trained Alan Peters. He started during the war years when there was no machinery (the video said machinery didn't arrive until the 1950's, but I seem to recall being told that electricity wasn't installed at the workshop until the 1960's). Some of the stories he told made you appreciate how hard the job was when every board had to be sawn and dimensioned by hand. It gave a real sense of heritage to know that you were making much the same apprentice pieces in much the same way that he and Alan Peters (and hundreds of other fine craftsmen and women) had made. Indeed the octagonal breadboard seen in the video was the first piece we all made. It needs to be understood that Barnsley doesn't take beginners, and you need to take a stiff practical test to get in, indeed many of the people who are there as apprentices are already accomplished craftsmen in other wood related skills like musical instrument making, or they've completed three years of cabinet making training elsewhere. Yet everyone starts with an oak board and is told to make an octagonal breadboard. The general reaction was "well, this won't take long, I'll have this done by the afternoon". It comes as a humbling shock to be told that your efforts aren't nearly good enough, that a minute sliver of light under the straight edge is unacceptable, that a difference of less than a millimetre between the length of any two edges of the octagon renders the piece scrap, that the merest hint of dubbing over on the underside chamfers is far below the standards required. So you make it again, and again, until finally you get it right. After that the complexity of the pieces just keeps ratcheting up, with more and more curves and fewer and fewer reference surfaces to work from. You make the piece to the expected standard, then you make it again, only this time it's against the clock, because as well as an institution it's also a commercial workshop where a craftsman's time is money.

 

[Trafalgar]

Fascinating. You're very lucky!

Neat bit about the 07. Now I understand Alan Peters' only using an 07.

 

[Paddy Roxburgh]

Custard, I've read before about the no.7 being the only bench plane in the Barnsley tradition. I find this hard to imagine as I mostly use a 4 and a block and find the 7 really unwieldy. On an instrument making course I went on they got me to flatten violin plates with a seven and I found it hard to handle, I usually only use a long plane (a wooden one) for truing edges.
Have you carried this over into your work or do you now use a variety of bench planes?
Paddy

 

[Peter Sefton]

I usually take my students down to the Barnsley workshop every other year or James Ryan comes to visit us. They have been investing in some very good machinery replacing the original kit they had. The ethos of quality and craftsmanship is still the same but the apprenticeship is now down to one year with the strongest maker staying on for longer. A great bench training and still very well respected, theory and design is not taught as most joining the workshop have already undergone an intense course like ours or been at uni for three years. Thanks for posting Charles

Cheers Peter

 

[G S Haydon]

Custard, thanks for the insight. It must of been a fantastic experience being part of that for a while.

 

[Trafalgar]

Are there any other Barnsley alumni(ae) on the board?

 

[custard]

Custard, I've read before about the no.7 being the only bench plane in the Barnsley tradition. I find this hard to imagine as I mostly use a 4 and a block and find the 7 really unwieldy. On an instrument making course I went on they got me to flatten violin plates with a seven and I found it hard to handle, I usually only use a long plane (a wooden one) for truing edges.
Have you carried this over into your work or do you now use a variety of bench planes?
Paddy

I don't like having too many tools or machines. It takes time to get any tool working just right and to learn how to get the best out of it, plus tools take up space and need looking after, so I try to have just enough to do the job but no more.

I did just use an 07 for quite a while, and like anything you get used to it, although I always used a few different irons in it that had been prepared differently. Incidentally you can always fasten the 07 upside down in a vice and run small stuff over it. But I now use three bench planes.

A Record 05 with two irons, one quite strongly cambered and one very strongly cambered. Both irons are Ray Iles D2 steel. D2 may not take the keenest edge but it's very tough and can take quite a beating, which is what's needed because this plane just gets used for truing the edges of plywood or MDF, truing the edges of UF glued laminations, or cleaning up boards that have been laying on a gritty floor before running them over the expensive knives in the thickness/planer!

A Lie Nielsen 07 with three frogs (45, 50, and 55 degrees) plus a selection of A2 irons with different cambers and one with a moderate camber and a 20 degree back bevel. I true every board by hand before edge jointing and this is the plane I use. For thinner boards I use a stronger camber, for thicker boards a less aggressive camber. For book matching wild grain boards I use a higher pitch. But all this variation (and it really does make a difference) is available from one single plane.

A Veritas bevel up jack plane with three irons ground at different angles in PMV II steel plus a toothed iron in O2 steel for scotch glue veneering. This plane has a Lie Nielsen "Hot Dog" permanently attached and is the plane I use for shooting and as a general purpose plane. I used the Lie Nielsen version of this plane for quite a time in the same capacity but I couldn't make it hold the lateral adjustment when the iron was extended or retracted. The Veritas tote isn't great and at some point I'll get around to making a replacement, I see Veritas have technical drawings for the tote on their website so they've made it a relatively easy fix. I like their PMV II steel. It's a bit of a digression but I'm selling more and more live edge, slab top pieces. The slabs generally need flattening by hand as they're often too wide for my machines, so I get quite a bit of practise with hand planes and I can see how PMV II is holding a good quality edge that bit longer. Incidentally, one of the main issues I see with hobbyist woodworkers is that they don't sharpen their tools nearly enough. On a tough hardwood I'll hone after ten to fifteen minutes constant use, and I'm glad of the break! Then I'll re-grind every seven or eight honings (always being careful not to remove the edge so the camber and shape is preserved), so some days I might be grinding the same iron three or four times and honing twenty or thirty times! The bevel up planes have a lot to offer, but their biggest shortcoming in my view is that cambering is much more difficult. Not impossible, just more complicated and difficult to achieve consistency, which is why they haven't replaced the 07 or 05 in my tool box. On the plus side they're great for shooting (easy to grip firmly and squarely), and fast to swap irons around.

I also use the Veritas low angle block plane, again with multiple PMV II irons, it's bigger than most block planes and I have a wooden front knob on it, so it sometimes get used as a kind of small smoothing plane.

If I made more very large case furniture I might feel the need for a large carriage maker's/rebate plane like the Lie Nielsen 610 or 10 1/4. This would be useful for drawer fitting. But as most of the drawers I make are only average size I get by with a Lie Nielsen 507, a 1 1/4" shoulder plane, or 80 grit abrasive paper glued to a trued up block.

Incidentally, I'm not spoiling for an argument about plane choices. If someone's tools works for them in the woods they use and for the things they make, then that's pretty much the end of the matter as far as I'm concerned! Somewhere I'll have the Barnsley recommended hand tool list, If anyone's interested I could dig it out; it's not particularly long!

 

[custard]

Are there any other Barnsley alumni(ae) on the board?

I think Peter Sefton might have trained at Parnham under John Makepiece. He'll have been present at the birth of some remarkable furniture!

 

[Trafalgar]

Keep it coming! The Barnsley list would be great!

Dare I ask how you were taught to hone? :wink:

Tool backs out of flat, unpolished, generally unkempt? :mrgreen:

 

[Peter Sefton]

Are there any other Barnsley alumni(ae) on the board?

I think Peter Sefton might have trained at Parnham under John Makepiece. He'll have been present at the birth of some remarkable furniture!

It was Makepeace who inspired me to become a maker after meeting him at the Royal Show when I was 14, but I went straight to college in Bristol to study furniture. It was a great course and we had a John Makepeace apprentice with us along with those from Gordon Russell and other good furniture companies.

Alan Peter's would come in on occasions and also Allen Malpass who was X Barnsley, it's great as a youngster to be exposed to so many good makers all with different experiences and techniques.

Cheers Peter