Garrett Hack's Demilune Table Class

Bill Satko

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Methow Valley
Larry Merlau, I am reporting in as promised. I am keeping notes and taking pictures.We arrived in Port Townsend on Sunday so that I could be ready for class early on Monday. The weather was a little overcast with a marine push as our ferry left the dock at Keystone, but the sun broke through as we arrived in Port Townsend. The weather has been great ever since with mostly sunny weather in the high 50's or low 60's.There are 9 kindred souls taking Garrett Hack’s Demilune class. Four of us were in Garrett's Splay Leg Table class last year at Port Townsend School of Woodworking. Five of us are from Washington ( 2 from Bellingham, 2 from Seattle and 1 from Spokane) and one each are from California, Montana, Massachusetts and South Carolina. We have a banker, two lawyers, two software developers, two engineers, and one retired person.Monday was spent designing the demilune table, building the bending forms for our front aprons and preparing the 5 thin layers (1/8") of wood required for the front apron. They were bandsawed from stock and the outside faces of the stack was hand planed to a fine finish as it would be difficult to do after they are bent. Here are some pictures of some legs and a front apron that Garrett had brought with him from Vermont to show us what we were going to be doing the first couple of days. The legs are of some beautiful pear and the apron’s outside face is apple.2012-07-16_10-04-06_117.jpg2012-07-16_10-04-50_133.jpg2012-07-16_10-05-16_897.jpg2012-07-16_10-23-39_663.jpgTomorrow, I will post more pictures of our progress on Tuesday and Wednesday. In the meantime, here is some pictures of this mornings walk along the beach to class.2012-07-17_07-40-18_972.jpg2012-07-17_07-40-27_181.jpg2012-07-17_08-01-41_217.jpgRebecca walked over to the school and on our way back to our lodging we stopped on the high bluff at Fort Worden Park and just enjoyed the evening. It is great to be here!2012-07-17_17-31-17_359.jpg2012-07-17_17-31-31_546.jpg
 
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Real shame that boring ol' class is in such an ugly part of the country. :D <--- That green is indicative of my envy. Sounds like a great time, and looks like it's in a gorgeous place. :thumb:
 
Wonderful, whatever you had to give up to attend, I'm sure would be worth it!

Say "Hi" to Garret for me if you get a chance, ask him when he is coming to Japan again? :D
 
Say "Hi" to Garret for me if you get a chance, ask him when he is coming to Japan again? :D

Stu, I will relay your hello to Garrett. He is going to Japan this year. I believe in the fall and also he mentioned that it would be to the far northern part of Japan. I will get better information about his trip. On Sunday, as we were walking around the neighborhoods where we are staying, we bumped into Garrett and spent about an hour catching up. He mentioned the many things he had coming up and I can't remember exactly when his trip over there was planned.

As for everyone else, thanks for the responses and I will try and document a lot more of what we are doing with plenty of pictures. I desire is to show what it is like taking a class like this. First and foremost is the friendship of mostly total strangers who have the common thread of woodworking. Everyone is a joy to be around, because they are so happy. They are doing something they enjoy so much. It does not matter your background, profession, religion or politics as you instantly become friends with a common love. The day I landed off the ferry over here, the stress of work and other concerns dropped away and I felt like a kid again with no worries. I am sure everyone feels the same in the class. We are just a bunch of really happy people having a great time and with a thirst to learn. The way life should be every day for us, but seldom is.
 
I thought I would give a little background on where the school is located. Fort Worden was an Army base from 1902 until 1953 when it was sold to the state. It was part of three forts that were constructed to protect the entrance of Puget Sound with their large gun placements. All of the guns were removed and shipped to Europe during WW1, but all of the concrete placements are still there. Then in 1971 it became a state park. It is an active place as besides the woodworking school leasing space here, there is a printing company and Goddard College of Vermont has their western campus here. Seems Goddard College has several summer programs going with students attending from all over the US. Beside all of that, the state park has housing and dormitory rentals and camping facilities for the general population. It is popular vacation spot for state locals.

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What I don't show is the miles of trails in heavy woods and the miles of beach, including a lighthouse.

Next, on to the woodworking.
 
I thought I would show you my little space that all the fun is taking place. I picked a prime spot near the entrance with its large double doors and large windows. It is also where the sharpening tables are and I have set up my own sharpening stones just a step away from my bench. Just as important, the restroom is only a short run from my bench. An important consideration as you get older!

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The building is separated into two spaces, a bench room where all the handtool work occurs on some very nice benches and a machine room. The benches are rock solid and do not move. The school has a full compliment of Lee Valley tools that are available for use by the students. They have more than enough of each type of plane, chisel, backsaw, etc. You really would not need to bring any tools of your own, but most students do.

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I only got one shot of the machine room, but they have two large bandsaws, two table saws, one large jointer and one large planer. They have assorted other machines, but in general the school is orientated to more of a blended hand & power woodworking with a lot of emphasis on the hand tools. I only got a picture of one bay of the machine room.

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Next, what we have been working on.
 
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Just a side note. Students that fly to the area, generally box up their must have tools and ship them to the school. John from Charleston, did just that. He had built a beautiful wooden tool box with his prized LN & LV planes inside with some assorted chisels and other valuable tools. He shipped the box without any exterior packing, such as a plywood box or even a carbon box. Big mistake on his part. This is what arrived at the school.

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The box is courtesy of the shipping company, and I forget whether if was UPS or Fedex. Amazing there was no real damage, although the blade of his LN 4 1/2 was jammed up into the throat of his plane so tightly, we were worried about getting it out. But all was alright in the end, except for the nice tool box.

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We have been working on two components of the table these first three days. Those are the front apron and the legs. The apron is a curved apron made up of a glued lamination bent over a form. We bandsawed the laminations from solid stock and ran them through the planer, ensuring that we had two good faces for the front and the rear of the laminations. We left those layers a little thicker and then hand planed the faces to a fine finish, removing any tearout from the planer.

We used Unibond 800 for the glue, which Garrett highly recommends. The following are some pictures of the molds, glue up and the resulting laminations.

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And here is my front apron after coming off of the form.

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The front aprons were glued up wider than will be needed. They will need to be trimmed to width and Garrett prefers using the bandsaw over the table for this. But first we need to compensate for any imperfections in the form and any twist in the resultant lamination. We want to try to ensure that the lamination is square to a surface. Garrett showed us how to use wedges to make adjustments to the squareness. It is really a compromise because as you raise one end to bring it more square to the surface, the other end will be less square, but you are trying to reach a happy medium. You then take a shoe and mark a line on the bottom that will be your cut line. You will then cut that line on the bandsaw, then handplane it flat. You then check it again and proceed to mark and cut again until you get the the apron as square to the surface as you can. You then can mark off the finish width and then plane that edge All of this was unknown to me. If I had not taken this class I would be clueless the complications that existed and the methods to fix or minimize them. That is the benefit of a class like this. You are getting the experience and knowledge that only years of trial and error would give you.This is all for tonight. I will get to the legs tomorrow and the inlay that Garrett is already instructing us on. I will show a quick string inlay he did on his leg.


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This last shot is us eating lunch just outside the workshop. I relayed your hello, Stu and Garrett told everyone how you were a great guy and then proceed to tell everyone about the dungeon. It took a little explaining on the part of Garrett. He says hello back. I suspect you will be receiving an email from him in future.

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The front aprons were glued up wider than will be needed. They will need to be trimmed to width and Garrett prefers using the bandsaw over the table for this. But first we need to compensate for any imperfections in the form and any twist in the resultant lamination. We want to try to ensure that the lamination is square to a surface. Garrett showed us how to use wedges to make adjustments to the squareness. It is really a compromise because as you raise one end to bring it more square to the surface, the other end will be less square, but you are trying to reach a happy medium. You then take a shoe and mark a line on the bottom that will be your cut line. You will then cut that line on the bandsaw, then handplane it flat. You then check it again and proceed to mark and cut again until you get the the apron as square to the surface as you can. You then can mark off the finish width and then plane that edge





All of this was unknown to me. If I had not taken this class I would be clueless the complications that existed and the methods to fix or minimize them. That is the benefit of a class like this. You are getting the experience and knowledge that only years of trial and error would give you.

This is all for tonight. I will get to the legs tomorrow and the inlay that Garrett is already instructing us on. I will show a quick string inlay he did on his leg. This last shot is us eating lunch just outside the workshop. I relayed your hello, Stu and Garrett told everyone how you were a great guy and then proceed to tell everyone about the dungeon. It took a little explaining on the part of Garrett. He says hello back. I suspect you will be receiving an email from him in future.


This is really great Bill, but on the last post the pics are not coming through :dunno:
 
I was busy today, getting my apron flat on one edge and ready for trimming to width, but my greatest amount of work was getting four legs that had 90 degree faces and were equal to each other in size and taper. These legs taper continuously from top to bottom. There is no flat spot where the apron meets, which means that the shoulder of the apron will be cut to match the taper of the leg.

Here is shot of two of my legs from yesterday. I was too busy to take pictures today, but I will get on it tomorrow. I now have four legs that are perfect in taper and equal to each other. The grain looks very nice. I will show them better tomorrow.


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Speaking of grain, I have not mentioned what wood my table is being made from. It is Alder. I am continuing my practice from last years class and using an inexpensive wood. My intent is not to build a table, but to have fun and to learn. I found that the stress of bringing some very expensive wood and trying to do justice to it in the short duration that a class is was too much. The focus became the build and not the learning. I know how I work well and a class room atmosphere is not conducive to my best work. So I now approach the techniques with a learning frame of mind and if I make a mistake, no big deal. Now this is not to say I don't try to do a very good job, but I find the stress is a lot less. I also do not feel I must complete the project at the class. All of this just frees up my mind and allows me to learn and enjoy. The Alder is really looking nice for such an inexpensive wood. It is definitively an upgrade from the Poplar that I used for the Splay Leg Table.

Here are a couple of pictures of Garrett making the groove for the leg string inlay. He custom makes his cutters from old saw blades and holds them in a small chunk of wood. The following is a link to a Fine Woodworking video of Garrett making them. <<Link>>
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Here are a few pictures from Friday's class.


Garrett routing out a panel inlay for a leg. He built a small template and used a bit with a bearing. He also routed out a panel without a template.

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The results of another student's leg that was routed without any guide (template)

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The legs have banding that run around the leg and this one student's leg shows the recess for it. This was done by handsaw, chisel and a small hand router. Also shown is a student scratch stocking the leg stringing.
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A shot of my bench and the results of me hand planing the class banding and the banding after it was bandsawed into strips It was a group effort by the entire class.
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Saturday was not a class day, but Garrett and about 5 of us students came in for about 4 to 5 hours to do a little work. Some students had either left for home or went sightseeing. Later that day, we met up with a friend and his wife that live in the area. We became friends after taking classes from Garrett two years in a row. Unfortunately he was unable to take the class this year. We bicycled around Marrowstone Island. It was a beautiful day and I needed the break and the exercise. I have been bicycling back and forth from work, so it was an easy ride for me. The few hills on the island were of a rolling nature, which made for enjoyable ride. There was very little traffic. Just a great day in the sun, surrounded by the sea.
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