There are 28 Journal Items in 6 pages and your are on page number 1
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| And the toy maker rests |
| I'm done! That's right, all done with making and delivering the furniture. All done with delivering the toys. Completely done. No more sharpening the tools. No more worrying about having enough of the right kind of wood for that chair leg. No more trying to get the finish to dry in time. No more late nights trying to squeeze another few toys into the day. Nope, nothing else to do but relax and enjoy the holidays. Well, … unless you count the worrying about the finish being dry enough on the furniture I just delivered this week … or if I had made and begged enough of the toys for everyone … or should really not put off doing a good sharpening job on all of the tools because I know I'll forget and then be wondering why this or that tool isn't sharp in a few weeks when I gear back up for my winter-time work to begin again … or whether that one leg for the Sack-back Windsor chair was going to eventually settle just a bit more than the others and the whole thing was going to be a little uneven. Or or or or …. Well, you get the idea. Perhaps I can just put all of that out of my mind and think about all of the custom pieces I've promised for over the Winter, or the bunch of classes I'm scheduled to give for in the 2 months or the multitude of other normal workshop maintenance I really need to do after a very busy Fall If there's one thing that I'm grateful for … beyond the family, friends and good health of course … it's that a craftsmans' life is never without contemplating tomorrow.
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| Posted by Andrew Hilton on Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 13:36
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| Check That Off the List |
| As soon as I get this blog entry done, I can check another thing off my (all too lengthy and oh so late) list of things to do for the website. See, I'm a list-maker. Anyone that knows me, knows that I like lists. I'm not like those list-makers that get excited about checking items off their lists or when they complete their list. I simply use lists to help me out. A terrible memory for these kinds of things, I must use lists to help remind me of what needs to be done. Forget to include something on one of my lists or just don't make a list, and I'm more than likely to forget it. I've learned to live with it, I suppose. If only I could make a list for peoples' faces! I'm constantly forgetting names but not so much faces. It's just a matter of putting the two together.While I'm a list-maker for many things such as what furniture orders need to be filled or woods I need to be watching for out in the woods for upcoming orders or even what tools/equipment I should be taking to a class or demonstration, what I don't really understand are the list-makers and check-it-off'ers for personal experiences. Here's what I mean … In the past couple of months, I met two very different people in very different circumstances. These two are only the most recent examples of people I run into occasionally in my travels around the country. One of them was a fellow taking one of my woodworking classes up in Nevada. He's taken a couple of classes from me in the past and I know him fairly well by now. We'll call him "Woodworker". The other person was a Lady I met while primitive camping after a nearly week-long demonstration/workshop on traditional woodworking/woodturning in Colorado. I took a couple of days off before heading home and did some truly great primitive camping. We'll call her "Hiker". Well, in my casual talking with both Woodworker and Hiker, it became clear that they, too, were both list-makers like myself. However, unlike myself, they tended to make lists for their personal experiences and relished the fact that they were quickly, efficiently and regularly working on crossing items off those lists.Woodworker as it turns out was on a quest (if you can call it that) to learn as many woodworking skills and projects to go along with it, as he could. Yep, he had a list of several things to learn … hand-cut dovetails, hand-plane usage, bowl turning, John Jordan style surface treatments on turned hollow forms, thin spindle turning, make Shaker Boxes, fine box making, tree identification and so on. When I learned of his list in my talks with him, I, of course, asked what he was going to do when he got done with his list. I figured he was learning a set of skills and projects in order to go into woodworking business for himself or maybe just to figure out what kind of woodworking he wants to really explore as a hobbiest or some similar exercise. No, he wasn't really interested in any of that. I asked him about some of the previous classes he had taken from me. I was wondering how it helped him once he had gotten home or what projects he had used those skills on after the class. Just the standard questions of any class or workshop instructor, you know. He said that he hadn't really done anything concerning what he had learned in those classes. And, in fact, about any of the other classes he had attended by instructors. I must say, I was wondering what I was doing wrong as an instructor!Let's move on to Hiker. Hiker was a very accomplished and active hiker. She shared a great wealth of knowledge on hiking (I don't do much … most of my hiking is limited to just rambling around in the woods looking for trees. I might "hike" for 5 miles a day but it's within maybe 15 acres of woods!). Again, talking with Hiker, unveiled that she was a list-maker. And I do mean a major list-maker. I was impressed. But, she was one of those list-makers that really enjoyed marking things off her list and no so much making the list or needing that list beyond just finishing that list. Hiker was on a long hike. Very long. She had everything planned out to the last detail. I can understand that when it comes to supplies and such things. What I couldn't understand was her near-obsession with "making miles" and how many states she had already gone through and how many was still to be "conquered" (her term). Being the inquistive person that I am, I asked about the trail, wildlife, trees, conditions and so on about her travels so far. Hiker gave a lot of information but it seemed very little of it was personal to her. It seemed clinical. Much like reciting data beamed back from the Mars rovers. Very little emotion was in her words other than passing this marker or that state line or some such paved road. She was relating her march to me and not her life on that journey. I had thought that maybe she wasn't comfortable with relaying such personal information so I switched the conversation to her family to see. Nope, no problem there.So, it seems like these two list-makers … list-checker-off'ers were using their life-experiences as items to be listed, experienced, and checked off of their lists. These two people certainly got a lot of things done and seemed to be quite efficient at it. But what are they missing by taking a list-taker approach to their personal experience lives? Yes, Woodworker eventually might be able to say that he knows most of the skills of a woodworker or woodturner because he has been taught by many fine instructors. Yes, Hiker can say that she has hiked the entire Continental Divide Trail, averaged so many miles per day and hiked through so many states in her life. But, can they say that they have actually lived all that they have done and not merely been present for them? I want to always remember that lists are there to help me live my life … not live my life for the lists.
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| Posted by Andrew Hilton on Sunday, August 30, 2009 at 15:34
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| A little confused ? |
Do we see anything odd about this ...
"All our [product here] are hand crafted, using the latest technology available. "
???
I've been seeing this, or a variant of it, popping up all over the internet in advertisements. I've even been hearing this lately at shows and events. Are these people just a little confused about what HAND CRAFTED really means? Does the public really not feel that these two things aren't opposing forces?
When, we here at Hilton Handcraft of the Ozarks, say that what we make it "hand crafted" we really, actually mean that it was made with our own hands. And not just up to the point of putting that piece of wood (or other material) onto a CNC routher, lathe or other piece of equipment that takes the "crafted" out of the creation process.
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| Posted by Andrew Hilton on Sunday, May 04, 2008 at 06:47
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| Auction |
I went to a small auction in the next town over this weekend. It was the auction of a woodworker that had come to the Ozarks from Utah awhile back and couldn't make a go of it so he was selling his equipment, nearly finished projects and lumber. There was a lot of lumber and especially pine poles. You see, he had one of those many businesses that make the cheesy lodge furniture pieces you see everywhere. Yeah, those ones that are just basic, contemporary pieces of furniture with log slices glued on to the outside to make it look "rustic" and "lodgy", as I've heard it called. Well, at least he had a few good pieces of machinery for sale.
I picked up a couple of small power tools to serve as backups to my main tools and I think I got some good deals even though there was a LOT of other woodworkers there. Well, I say "woodworkers" but I mean that all but a couple were carpenters and home builders looking for skill saws and cordless drills, etc. But, anyway, I did manage to snag a couple of drawknives too. Here's one ...
 
It's a Crown English style drawknife. Unfortunately, that was the better of the two. Not to say that it's a bad tool. Just not one of those great finds. There's a whole lot of these out there. But, on the upside, it looked to be in pretty good condition. It wasn't abused as so many are that you find at auctions around here but it also looked like it was a bit neglected. Not terribly sharp and quite dirty with pine resin stuck all over it. It'll need to be cleaned up and sharpened well but I think it'll be a good addition to my students' bunch of tools. The other one ... well, it'll be a backup for the students when nothing else is available.
So, overall, a decent auction this weekend. Wasn't interested in any of his bigger machinery and didn't wait around for the lumber or poles to sell. It wasn't particularly interesting to wait in the cold for it.
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| Posted by Andrew Hilton on Saturday, January 19, 2008 at 15:22
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| Things I didn't know |
There are, obviously, many things I don't know but in this particular case I found out today that mice like Osage Orange wood. I discovered this little piece of trivia by going through some boxes I had stored in the basement full of some older craftshow items. Looking through there, at the bottom, was some mortar and pestles along with wooden balls that I noticed had some scratch marks on them. Turns out that those were scratchs at all! They were little nibbles, presumably from mice. Well, the hackberry had just a couple of little scratches …. The cherry ones had none (I guess they don't like that) … the oak had a few … but the Osage Orange was really eaten away! One of the 2" balls was nearly half gone. Amazing. They really went after them. So, now, I'll be more careful with packing things up … and set some traps down there too.
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| Posted by Andrew Hilton on Friday, October 12, 2007 at 18:22
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