David Jackson @ SJSU

David Jackson's shop visit to SJSU


Pavel tries out a Japanese woodsaw as David Jackson marks out a quick joint he wants to demo. Shannon watches wearily, fearing a sudden outbreak of psychosis in our normally chill Mr Rakhlin.


Laura attempts to get a shot of the coveted wet stone sharpening technique...





You can check out the rest of the photos, blurry and clear and all on Flickr

Sam Maloof (1916-2009)

Sam Maloof rocking chair


The eminent American woodworker Sam Maloof died just a few days ago at age 93. His work was celebrated for its originality, craftsmanship, simplicity, and elegance. The child of Lebanese immigrants, he was largely self-taught, beginning his woodworking career as a practical way to furnish his and his wife's first house, a simple tract home. He began making furniture out of scraps of discarded fir plywood and oak shipping crates, since they could not afford finished pieces.

Maloof's work was likewise originally valued for its utility, comfort, and functionality, though his freely conceived, even organic designs would eventually be valued as high art. He was the first craftsman to win a MacArthur grant, in 1985, and his furniture was prized by collectors, curators, even presidents. (Jimmy Carter, who visited Maloof at his home in California, called him "my woodworking hero.")




He didn't work from plans, preferring to select a piece of wood and then execute a design that he initially pictured only in his imagination. He made freehand cuts with a band saw to shape the flowing curves that characterized many of his pieces. He was known for his innovative joinery, which never used nails or any sort of hardware. (He once tested the solidness of the joints in a chair he'd built by dropping it off the garage roof: the joints held.) Walnut was one of his favorite materials, though he eventually would come to store more than a half-million board feet of various rare lumbers at his workshop.

Maloof created about 50 pieces of furniture a year, working largely alone. Rather than trying to appeal to a larger audience he followed his own tastes, turning down multi-million dollar offers to mass produce his designs. His home, which has been designated a national historic site, grew gradually over the years into a sprawling property that housed hundreds of his own pieces.


Maloof's home: he added rooms over several decades

Below is a table in a style inspired by Maloof - particularly the direct joining of the legs to the tabletop, which was a Maloof motif. No aprons involved - the tenons are in the tabletop itself.







Q & A with Sam Maloof (from the Smithsonian Magazine)

Where do you get the ideas for your work?
They happen.

Do you work alone on your craft, or with others?
I design and put all pieces together - have 3 co-workers.

Do you ever teach, or take on apprentices?
I give 2 workshops a year for the University of California -Riverside, and also teach at Anderson Ranch, Snowmass, Colorado.

What's the most exciting part of creating your works?
Viewing the end result.

What's the most difficult part of creating your works?
None.

What sort of technology do you use in your work? Has the technology of your craft changed dramatically over the past 100 years?
Common sense. For the true woodworker, not much.

Do you have any advice for somebody just starting out?
Discipline - integrity.

Can you share a "secret of the trade" with us--something nobody else knows or that you found out only after years of experience? Put another way--what do you wish somebody had told you when you were just starting out that might have saved you hours of wasted effort?
There are no secrets. That it was going to be difficult.

What are we missing by experiencing your work through the Internet and not seeing/hearing/feeling/smelling/touching it in person?
Nothing will take the place feeling - touching etc. - but the Internet will let those who cannot attend an exhibit become a part of what is happening.

living wood joinery

one of the extracurricular activities that took up a great deal of my time this semester was grafting, which is an AWESOME phenomena of the plant world that rewards the skilled practitioner with a wider variety of fruit crops or ornamentals than would otherwise be possible.

at its essense, grafting is just the whittling of wood joints (done with live wood of matched size and at a specific time of year). The layer of tissue just below the epidermis (the cambium) is really the only important part of the equation, for this is where moisture, minerals, and sugars are transported within the plant body. If even a small section of cambium is in contact, the plant will be able to repair the damaged tissue along the border and heal the two pieces as one. The moves must be practiced and the tools laid out within reach, for the whole operation must be completed as quickly as possible, preferably in under a minute (contact with the air will dry out the cambium of both rootstock and scion = death).

that said, it's a relatively straightforward process that still doesn't seem like it should be possible. I've got a few years practice, so i went big this year and i completed over 115 grafts of some 40 species. It was a monumental undertaking, and i've been thrilled to watch the dormant buds open up and absolutely gush with leaves, flowers, and woody stems.

i'll have to tend the joints for the next few months to ensure the sealant doesn't open up and dry out the union, but soon enough my yard (and my face) will be covered with apricots, nectarines, plums, peaches, apples, pears, and cherries... yea!

here's a couple links to showcase several types of grafted joinery:

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/grafting.html

http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/horticulture/components/DG0532c.html

salvaging the remnants of ancient forests

in her blog entry last xmas, which is generally hilarious, shannon wrote that "to teach sculpture is to participate in turning valuable materials into waste; sculpture is itself a somewhat environmentally unethical pursuit."

indeed. it is generally unethical to produce non-functional objects from virgin material, especially when it's student work that will likely be discarded or neglected after critique.

but we are not locked in to the cycle of rampant consumption, and as artists (free-thinkers and creatives) we should have the ability, desire, and conscience to adapt ourselves and our ideas to the materials available from salvage and secondhand sources.

thankfully, these wonderful people are here to help us:

http://www.ohmegasalvage.com/Showroom%20Pages/salvage_list.htm

http://www.driftwoodsalvage.com/

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/

http://cache.consumerist.com/assets/resources/2007/06/Freegans%20All%20About.jpg

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/7e/bd/0009bd7e_medium.jpeg&imgrefurl=http://www.ebookee.com/Art-and-Science-of-Dumpster-Diving_190826.html&usg=__gT0xEyxcGXZQRjVH31H4X6YapEM=&h=300&w=229&sz=33&hl=en&start=55&sig2=GZN0KezP_H_LBboGzyDW0g&tbnid=jwoTfjmj4Z9FSM:&tbnh=116&tbnw=89&ei=H1saStDAKpu8swOq2NTaCA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ddumpster%2Bscuba%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26sa%3DN%26start%3D40%26um%3D1&um=1

merry gleaning!

The Tables!

Okay Folks,
I fixed the levels and shrunk the pictures way down in order to post them on the blog. If you want good (hi res) pics, you'll have to email me for them. Congratulations on finishing these with no access to the shop at the end!
And a whopping thank you to Adon and Phil, the best TA's ever. Seriously!
And thanks a ton to Dave for the extremely generous donation of his studio space for several weeks!
Oh, and thanks to all for the "Have fun in Finland" card. I had to hold it up to the bright sunlight at angle to read it, since you all wrote in pencil on dark paper. What was that, Laura-- did you put a teddy bear in a xerox machine and scan him? Well, thanks!

Ali Sajjadi (not quite finished yet)

Anne Taylor

Anne Taylor

Pavel Rakhlin (not quite finished yet)

Nick Gust

David Sandoval (no finish on it yet, still needs some sanding too)

Laura Moll (no finish on it yet)

Andrew Ajemian

Catherine Kirchner

George Ziegler

Jared Aizawa

Nancy Sevier (hey, that's not a table! That's a giant violin chin rest!)

Phil Tuazon (all reclaimed bamboo flooring! Top was trimmed later.)

Robert Hitzeman

Sara Beckton

Sara Beckton

Good Design Article

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/05/20/garden/20090521-lupton-interactive.html
There's a table like the Nakashima butterfly-joint tables, but updated, and a lot of other cool stuff.

Wood to bronze process

This post is a little off-subject, but since readership is down at this point I'm going to publish it anyway. For anyone who's interested in combining woodworking with bronze casting, I wanted to share the results of using a wood model as a starting point for a casting. (I've been taking Metal Sculpture 169 this term along with our wood class.)

Wax is the traditional material used to create models for casting, but it's also possible to use organic materials such as branches, or synthetic materials like plexiglass. The key is that whatever material you use must 'burn out': the model or 'positive' is encased in a plaster and sand mold, then placed in a kiln for several days at high temperature. While it bakes in the kiln the wax or other source material burns away and leaves a cavity in the shape of your original model. Then molten bronze is poured into the mold to fill the cavity and recreate the original form.

The wood class must have been influencing me because I liked the idea of reproducing in bronze the clean lines, angles, and facets you can achieve with wood, as well as having more control over actually assembling a model or form. (With wax, it can be difficult to 'glue' separate pieces together without bending or deforming some of the components, especially if you are trying to maintain straight lines, sharp edges, etc.

I got different opinions about whether the wood would burn out thoroughly when baked in the kiln. Any charcoal remnants inside the mold would not mingle well with the bronze and would produce an incomplete casting. The type of wood was important: poplar (which I used) was a better bet than a harder, denser wood like oak.

I built the model below using the straight poplar rods you can buy at OSH or other stores in 36" lengths, which come in different widths (1/4", 1/2", 1", etc.). I cut these at various angles using the band saw and miter guide in the wood shop, then sanded them on the rotary sander. (This was back when there was still time to do extra work in the shop.)



Below is the model after gating, which creates the channels through which the molten bronze will flow into the cavity inside the mold that is created during burn-out. Gating a wooden model turns out to be similar to gating a wax model: you can melt and attach the wax tubes directly to the wood surfaces. Gates also provide pathways for the burn-out ash to escape the mold after it's been baked in the kiln. In my case it was important to have a lot of gating (even for a relatively small model), because the wood ash was considered more problematic to evacuate from the mold than wax would be.



Skipping ahead to post-kiln baking and 'pour', the results were pretty good. The wood burned out completely, and there was little 'porosity' in the resulting bronze surfaces, which means the bronze completely filled the cavity left in the mold. There was quite a bit of 'flashing', which is the lacy extrusion of the bronze that extends out from corners and edges of the model, but that's pretty typical even for wax models. Here's the casting out of the mold:



Here it is after 'chasing' (removing the gates, then grinding and polishing the surface), and then again with a basic brown patina applied:



This was a fairly simple model - my goal was to move on to something more complex, but just didn't have time this term - I'm hoping to revisit the process later. I like the idea that you can use the wood as a starting point, because it opens up an abstract and geometric element to the bronze which could be interesting. Didn't get to any of these ideas:



Carving or chiseling the wood would give you other possibilities. Another idea would be to build a wood model, make a rubber mold of it, create a wax version of the model, and cast that. The advantage would be you'd retain the clean lines and sharp edges of the original wood, which could be hard to create from scratch with the wax. You'd also end up with a lighter casting - my small bronze, which is only about 4"x5"x5", is heavy (about six pounds). And bronze is expensive - costs about $5.50 a pound. So the one thing I wish I'd done before casting mine is to drill out the legs with a Forstner bit. Or maybe a chisel... or an Oliver mortising machine... endless possibilities.

p.s. If you're interested in bronze casting there are at least two classes this fall at the foundry, and they need enrollment to keep the facility going.