Time to Share

In 1981, I found John Alexander's book Make a Chair from a Tree on my dad's coffee table. I couldn't stay out of this little gem of a book and found its instructions so inviting that I had to try my hand at making a chair this way. I had nearly zero experience with woodworking at that point.  Starting out following John Alexander's book provided a simple and solid understanding of the basics.  It also opened the door to a great friendship with John (later Jenny).

Two weeks with Dave Sawyer in 1985 added to that foundation. All the woodworking courses I heard of were far too expensive for me in my early years.  So, I developed a pattern of learning wherever I could. This happened mostly at my bench, and I always looked for why things work as much as how. With this openness of letting whatever was in front of me be my teacher, I dove deep into the woods I was working with to learn the why behind the how.  I think the one thing that kept me learning fast was the practice of holding questions while gathering related information rather than looking for "the answer" to any of them and checking them off as "I know this now."

When approaching new stuff, I find that I often lack the perspective to fully understand the information discovered. Any conclusion drawn at that point will likely create a false sense of "knowing." The more I learn, the better I can understand what I am looking at, hearing, or reading. This makes the questions more valuable to hold onto than any answer to them. The same question often offers up different thoughts for the same person five years later and five or ten years after that. This approach to discovery keeps the learning alive, the work fresh, and the mind flexible.

A perfect example of this happened to me recently while rethinking how to sharpen plane blades.  I have been hollow grinding my blades for 40 years, knowing that this practice thins the material just behind the edge and potentially diminishes the edge stability.  But, I felt it was worth this sacrifice for the speed of honing I gained.

I found this by asking this question; “what is the most stable shape for a sharp edge in a plane?” Looking at where I wanted the heel of the blade to be and where I needed clearance, I saw that a curved line allows a good relief angle and can put the heel of the blade much lower on the frog. So, rather than thinning the blade behind the edge, hollow grinding, done differently, can actually greatly stiffen the blade's edge, increasing edge stability significantly. I just had to let go of a thinking pattern that had gotten stuck in lessons from the 1980's.  

Over the years, I have had the privilege of teaching in some great schools around the US and England and had some amazing teaching experiences with indigenous tribes of Peru and Honduras. I have been on a 12-year hiatus from hands-on teaching, and I miss the sharing experiences of these classes. It wasn't just about me teaching students. Those experiences taught me a lot as I listened to students' perspectives from a wide range of backgrounds. 

In the past 15 years, my focus has been on design and production. With my wife, Melanie, running the business, I've had more time to enjoy developing designs and systems that employees can use to make complex furniture fluidly. The challenges of this experience brought a whole new level of education into my realm. Having to solve problems in ways that work for all my employees forced me to think more broadly about processes. Every process needs to be as safe, fast and precise as possible with the least amount of skill required by the user.  While all of our employees had solid skills, results varied if the unaided skill drove precision rather than the process supporting consistency.  Variation is embraced in small shops as the beauty of handwork.  But that does not work in production.  It also does not work when teaching classes.  A great process is critical to success.

The breadth of perspective that both of these roads added to my approach to design and making shows up every time I work on a new idea or problem.  Not only has all this helped me design and build better, but my experience in both has become richer and more enjoyable as a result of what I get to do now and what I bring to it.

Every ten years or so, I look back at where I've been and consider what direction to take next. This year, I turned 65 and celebrated 42 years as a professional craftsman. I want this next chapter to include more sharing of what I have learned and bringing more students into what I am exploring now.

To accommodate this shift in focus, we have scaled back on our in-house production and will be moving to a smaller shop in July (this month). 

To share these lessons, we will continue to put short videos and photos on our Boggs Bench Instagram. We've also decided to launch a subscription based educational newsletter to delve deeper.

This is my invitation to you to follow this work. I will share techniques I use now as well as those from a simpler time.

We'll offer an informative newsletter to everybody for free. For those seeking a deeper understanding and exclusive content, our paid subscription offers unique perspectives and techniques and the opportunity to engage with me and our growing community through comments and Q&A.

You'll be the first to know about newly released plans and other random surprises. Instructional videos and written instructions for making jigs, tuning up your bandsaw, and other machines.

So, join me, and let's have some fun!

Brian