Best selling wood projects - Visit to the Alexandria Seaport Foundation Virginia

Best selling wood projects

While in the USA in November, I was delighted to visit the Alexandria Seaport Foundation, in my quest to check out youthworking programs which use woodworking activities.
This pic shows me outside the ASFs floating office.


Some background info from their website:

Doing Big Things with Small Boats!
Through the building and use of wooden boats, the Alexandria Seaport Foundation helps at-risk youth turn their lives around and provides families, community groups, and schools with meaningful educational, social, and recreational experiences. Full-time apprentices earn their GED and prepare for a career in the building trades. The latest additions to our program include vocational training in green construction, a summer program, and an afterschool program.

Special thanks to the legendary Joe Youcha, the hands-on Executive Director of the ASF, for meeting with me and showing me around the workshops. An inspirational guy with a very exciting set-up. One of the wonderful things about this program is the use of volunteers from the community, who work alongside the young people as they build the boats together.


This pic shows Joe Youcha (right) chatting with one of the young participants, who was working on varnishing this beautiful wooden boat he had helped to build.

Prior to the Global Financial Crisis, the ASF had a very high success rate in transitioning the young participants into the mainstream workforce. With high unemployment in the USA now, these outcomes are more challenging to obtain - however the organisation through its wonderful commitment to its participants is exploring other creative ways to assist the trainees to find ways into the workforce with their woodworking skills.

There is a lot of complex maths involved in setting out the hull of a wooden boat. The ASF program has developed very effective ways of teaching mathematics to young people who may have been able to make sense of it in school.


This pic shows the guys working on the preliminary setting out being done for another boat hull.




Beautiful boats made in a very positive learning environment. This program was very exciting, and I was so pleased to be able to check it out!

The website for the Alexandria Seaport Foundation is definitely worth having a look at:

http://www.alexandriaseaport.org/



For more great info and pics about the ASF, check out the Meyer Foundation Annual Report via this hyperlink: http://www.meyerfoundation.org/annual07/seaport#/images/annual/seaport/sp10.jpg
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Best selling wood projects - Visit to Covenant Houses Artisan Woodshop Washington DC

Best selling wood projects

It was a pleasure to visit the Artisan Woodshop program, run by Covenant House, while I was in Washington DC recently. This program is a job training initiative focusing on teaching woodworking skills to youth at risk including homeless young people.



Over a 4 month period, they learn not only a range of woodworking skills, but they also develop many of those employability skills employers require.
Learning just to be reliable and turn up for work is such a basic and critical attitudinal skill which the young participants acquire during their training.

Up to 8 young people participate in the program at any one time, and are currently making table and chair sets which are then given to needy families in their communities. The trainees are paid the minimum wage while they are engaged in the program.

In this picture Greg is chatting with Kevin, a program participant. It was a delight to hear Kevin speaking about how his view of furniture and timber has changed now that he understands how furniture is made and the effort which goes into making it. Like most woodworkers, he now finds himself picking up furniture to see how it is put together. That is a good sign! Thanks to Kevin - keep up the great work, mate, and I hope you find some work as a result of your enthusiasm and the training youve received!


Special thanks to Training Instructor Justin Couch, for generously giving his time to spend with Rosemary and myself.
It was great to hear from Justin about the background toe the program and the way the program has modified along the way. His manner with the young participants is clearly one of those ingredients which helps make the program work well. Justin and I are pictured here together.

The US economy has been hit hard by the repercussions of the global financial crisis, so finding employment for the trainees is a very tough challenge at the moment. I wish the staff at Covenant House and the Artisan Program and the young participants the best of luck as they respond to this challenge. Check out their blog at www.chdcartisans.blogspot.com for more info.

As a woodworking youthworker myself, it was inspiring and encouraging to learn about this fantasic program.
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Best selling wood projects - Visit to Washington DC Guild of Woodworkers

Best selling wood projects

While in Washington DC recently, I was privileged to be able to visit the November meeting of the Washington Woodworkers Guild. Like the Fine Woodworking Association of Western Australia, where I am a member, the Washington group at the meeting was made up primarily of older blokes and just a few women. There were about 35 people present, and it was an honour to also be offered a 15 minute slot to speak about Woodworking in Western Australia.
I gave the Guild a few samples of WA native timbers I had brought with me especially for the occasion. The meeting also included some business, the sharing of tips and ideas for jigs, some input by a member with suggestions about safety in the home workshop, and the primary speaker - a sales representative from Felder who was speaking about the European style combination machines they have brought into the US market. This session generated some very interesting discussion amongst the meeting about riving knives, safety guards, the pros and cons of combination machines, and sliding tables on table saws. The Australian OH&S standards are very close to the European standards, whereas the USA does a bunch of stuff very differently, so it was fascinating to be there for the discussion. I have been reading a number of US woodworking magazines since the 1980s, so it was a delight to be there and to start to understand woodworking in this country.
Special thanks to President Stu & to John Machey and the members for welcoming me to the meeting. I am particularly thankful to Bill Walmsley for kindly giving a ride all the way home across the city!
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Best selling wood projects - Rebuilding termite eaten joinery

Best selling wood projects

I was recently approached by clients in Northbridge, who live in their 1903 semi-detached cottage. Joe and Annes front door joinery had been eaten out by termites some time ago. The joinery was fairly standard, consisting of a 5 foot long 12" x 3" jarrah sill, jarrah stiles and mullions, headerand transom, with 2 leadlight sidelights, 3 top lights, and 2 wooden panels below the mid-rails.

Assessing the damage.
Amazing little things, termites. They had travelled up the joinery via the softwood beading and mouldings, eating out much of the jarrah transom just above the door, some upper areas of the jarrah mullions and stiles, and a significant portion of the jarrah sill. Most of the leadlight panes were held in place only by many layers of paint which covered the eaten out beading and mouldings.

After removing the security fly door, front door and leadlight panes, I was then able assess the extent of the damage. My task was clear - replace as much of the joinery as possible and rebuild it in situ as it was not going to be possible to remove the whole piece of joinery. I was up for a very interesting challenge!

Fortunately the four mullions/stiles and the header would all be able to be used, as most of the damage was surface damage. The termites had been after the softwood beading and mouldings. However the sill and the transom would need to be replaced, plus the wooden panels and all mouldings and beading.

Replace and rebuild.

First I cut out the sill (no easy feat) and replaced it. The only suitable material I had been able to find was find was a 10" x 3" piece of wandoo. It was heavy! I added a piece of jarrah to make up the width, under the door. The tenons on the bases of the mullions were still in good condition, so I was able to cut the sill to house it around them. The result was a very solid new joint between the mullions and the sill. Nice.

These pics show the sill being chopped out, and the new sill installed.

The next task was to replace the transom. Once this was done, I made new mid-rails and fitted these. Then the bottom rails of the side panels were constructed, and the panels made up and installed.

This pic shows the new transom under construction on the portable bench. There was a lot of hand work to do on site to make and fit the components.

After the refurbished joinery was cleaned up, the leadlight panes were put back in place and the beading mitre cut and nailed in place. Then the finishing mouldings were added around the wooden panels and in other places as required. Beads were added full length down the inside walls, and other finishing touches including sealants were added to hold together the render and mortar which was frittering down the openings adjacent to the joinery.

Re-hanging the security fly door was a challenge, as the opening was now slightly different to what it was when it had been installed. I had squared up the joinery, so there was a bit of trimming and fine tuning to do to re-hang both the security door and the front door. However the net result was a very nice job. It was all as solid as it would have been when the house was built in 1908.

This pic shows one of the completed wooden panels with new mid-rail above, mouldings added, beading completed and leadlight panes re-installed. All old nail holes and surface termite damage have been filled, so its ready for painting. Thats up to Joe and Anne now...

This pic shows the job almost complete. The joinery has been re-built, the security door re-fitted and hung. Now it was just a case of re-hanging the front door and cleaning up.

I am looking forward to seeing it all with a new coat of paint.

Honouring the original makers.
When I do jobs like this, working with old joinery and furniture, I always find myself thinking about the blokes who built the stuff in the first place. It was evident that most of the work was done by hand, including the dressing of the timbers. This was apparent due to the variations in the dimensions of the timber over their length - including the sill and the stiles and mullions. The bottom wooden panels had obviously been added on site by the carpenter/joiners who installed them, as they had used some of the flooring as the bottom panels. The floors are kauri pine, and the termites were not too keen on this. So there was mostly only surface damage to the panels. I replaced these with new jarrah panels. So here we are just over 100 years later - I hope my rebuild of this joinery has done the original tradesmen proud.

New life for damaged material.
After I finished the job, in my workshop I was able to re-use enough of the timber in these panels to make Joe and Anne a beautiful kitchen chopping board with breadboard ends. A nice touch to use some of the old damaged joinery and give it a whole new life again . Now thats a low carbon solution! Timber is a wonderful low-energy high-carbon material which can be re-used again and again for centuries, so long as it does not rot or is not totally eaten by termites!

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