Sven and I were a crew of two. We were the crew the owner used in the high end jobs mainly because of Sven being an unbelievably talented carpenter. Sven had gone through his apprenticeship before the portable power tools had arrived on the scene. His hand skills would blow your mind.
Sven liked me so he tried to teach me his ways about things.
He had me buy a 5pt rip handsaw and then told me to re-file it to a 5pt crosscut saw. Of course by hand. Sucker cut like crazy and you could get the job done in 30 seconds that would take fifteen minutes to string an extension cord if you wanted to use a skilsaw.
He once used a section of a tree as the central support of a spiral staircase and with minimal layout and with a chisel and hammer he mortised in the treads and wound them up the tree...like in a day! The next day we shaped a curved handrail. This is with minimal tools.
The intrinsic dangers of Schnapps after work on Fridays.
Sven, when we would discuss how to do something would invariably say, with his pipe in his mouth and smoke coming out as he spoke..."The old fashioned way......it's the best way." And he would grab some hand tools and go at it.
One of his big lessons was both spiritual and practical in a way. Every time we transitioned from the rough framing on a house to inside trim work, we would take a half a day and work on our tools. Handsaws would be re-filed and re-set, chisels and plane blades would be sharpened, motorized tools that needed maintaining would be attended to, the job site cleaned up. It really was a nice way to switch yourself over from big rough movements to movements of finesse. It slowed you down, it re-calibrated you. Centered. And of course the tools were sharp as tools are supposed to be.
With the West Oakland place in construction right now, I've moved everything out, all my tools and stored them outside. This was a hard thing for me to do out of respect for them. But I tried to take all the necessary precautions so they wouldn't suffer any damage from being out in the elements. Anybody who has been to my shop has seen my signs "NO LIQUIDS ON THE TOOLS." I've always wanted to add "even for a nano-second" but I thought that to be too much.
So when I unfurled them to bring them back in for this walnut island job somehow during the winter rains, water had come into contact on the table saw.
No way was I going to start a job like this with rust on cast iron. I pulled a Sven and spent a half day taking care of all the cast iron surfaces. It needed to be done. Out of respect.
It was a pretty cool rust pattern though and I'm thinking of trying to duplicate it on some metal for a photographic background.
This is a European jointer that came with beds so roughly ground and not flat and twisted that I took the machine apart and had the two beds Blanchard ground. A Blanchard grind produces this circular pattern. It's flat now...and smooth as a baby's ass.
The bed with some automobile polish on it.
The circular Blanchard middle pattern that I never tire of looking at.
And taking the time to lay out how the boards will be layed up. My way of using tape.
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