Sweet Home Alabama

I’ve been a little off on my posting schedule. Partially because we are away from the shop for the week of Thanksgiving in Birmingham, Alabama, Cliff’s hometown. So, I thought I’d give a quick report on what we have been doing here.

We always find a day to visit Cliff’s favorite haunts, which includes lunch at Golden Temple Health Foods and browsing at Charlemagne Records to restock our vinyl collection at the shop.

These are Cypress trees, sort of looks like star wars.

This year, our visit to Birmingham coincided with an exhibit at the Birmingham Museum of Art, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: American Art from the Yale University Art Gallery. Besides the portraits and political cartoons showing a unique insight to American history, there were also several pieces of furniture—that I was not allowed to photograph—also giving another way to view history. Like the chair by Dick Boyner, a slave who’s owner taught him the craft of furniture making, allowing him to transition into a business owner after his emancipation. Or a Lambert Hitchcock chair, part of the new business model at the time, where chairs were mass produced in one location and shipped throughout the Northeast. (Capitalism has certainly embraced his innovation.)

I really liked this quote:

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

John Adams US diplomat & politician (1735 – 1826)

We took a tour of the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge and saw a lot of birds, sand hill cranes and numerous varieties of ducks.

These are Cypress trees, sort of looks like star wars.

The trees all around where Cliff grew up may explain his love for different species of wood. We identified trees within 100 yards of Cliff’s home that we use in our furniture like Oak, Fir, Hickory and Sycamore.

athose are some of our highlights. Most of all, we hope you all had a great holiday with your family and friends. Happy Thanksgiving.

Why are so many wood finishes bad for the environment?

 

Upon moving into our new shop last winter, we pulled down two old open flame gas fired heaters that were hanging in the shop and gave them away through craigslist. These were a definite fire hazard in a wood shop were the fine sawdust in the air can be as combustible as gasoline. And hey, who needs a heater? It’s Los Angeles!

We are always on the look out for the best quality, lowest VOC finishes available. For lacquer finishes, we try and avoid solvent based coatings in favor of water based. So far, the lowest VOC and best all around performer is Aquadura from SDA Craft, manufactured locally in Long Beach. Knowing that a super low VOC water based finish performs so well, why would anyone want to spray solvent lacquers? If you have to leave the room when you open the can because the fumes make you dizzy, you can bet it’s not good for you, your family, and the big picture in general.

And then the rains came. The beginning of 2009 was rainy and cold (relatively speaking) for us here in LA. The concrete floors in our shop soaked up that moisture and held onto the nighttime lows, so that we were all wearing long underwear and stocking caps all day. Kacey tried to work with fingerless wool gloves. It was a good 10 degrees colder in the shop than outside, and it wasn’t warming up, even after the rains let up. We were working on a small finishing job and our prized water based lacquer would not dry. Two hours after spraying it was gummy and collecting dust like flypaper. This was supposed to be an easy, quick job for a friend, and instead the hours were piling up as again and again, the final coat would not dry clean and clear.

The reason was simple. Too cold, too wet. When the humidity gets above a certain point, and the temperature stays below a certain point, water based finishes get stage fright.

Clearly, we needed a heater. In a panic to finish this job I tried a few stop gap measures: using an electric heating pad from home to warm up the cans of finish; going to home depot and buying several oil-filled electric radiators to safely heat up the spray booth; and blasting the space with some of those super hot halogen work lights, also from the depot. None of this worked, and everything I bought from Home Depot was of such amazingly low quality, that we packaged it all up and returned it. In the end, the weather warmed up enough that the finish started curing on it’s own. I researched heaters to find what would be safe and effective for our needs, and reached back into the karmic pool of craigslist and found a used one. Now the finishing department is a cozy 70 degrees, and drying nicely.

What’s to learn from this other than the technical knowledge of temperature and humidity? If we were using the solvent based finishes, we likely wouldn’t have had this problem, or at least not been stopped in our tracks. The solvents are a chemical “work-around” to overcome natural conditions, so that more finish can be applied faster, easier, more more more!  But at what cost or benefit?

Quote of the month: “The best thing for being sad,’ replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, ‘is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then – to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.” -T.H. White, “The Once and Future King”

This was originally one of our Growth Rings newsletters about woodworking and sustainability. You can read all our archived newsletters on our website.

Wood is our Buffalo

…or so many uses for wood… some are more obvious than others:

• furniture (not necessarily our favorite, but of course we put it first)
• shelter and structures
• orchards of food
• paper
• oxygen
• fuel and heat
• exercise and make-believe

A natural jungle gym

• wood crafts and wooden blocks
• walnut sawdust is a natural herbicide
• eucalyptus oil is a natural fungicide
• marking property lines
• erosion control
• sawdust for cat litter or animal bedding

This kitten is an avid re-user of our Wine Oak sawdust, possibly made from these wine oak cubes.

• fabric from bamboo, though technically a grass
• animal habitats
• beautiful landscape
• shade
• river crossings
• surfboards
• boats
• inspiration for books, literature and art
• cancer-curing medication

The point being, protecting our planet’s trees goes far beyond being a treehugger, trees are crucial to so many aspects of our lives.

Can you add to this list? Please comment. I appreciate your input.

2009 Otis Report on the Creative Economy of the Los Angeles Region | Arts for LA

 

If you are in downtown Los Angeles and free for breakfast on Tuesday, this should be very interesting. The creative economy is crucial to our city’s future. We are pleased to be a part of the local resources.

 

7:30 a.m. Registration and Breakfast

8:30 – 10 a.m. Program Presentation of new findings and employment projections by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC), followed by a panel discussion and Q&A with top business, philanthropic, art, and design leaders.

Omni Los Angeles Hotel at California Plaza
251 South Olive Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012

Fee: $20 (until 10/31); $40 (after 10/31)
Two complimentary tickets for Otis Patron’s Circle members at $1,000+ level and for Otis alumni.

To Register Online: www.otis.edu/econregister09

via 2009 Otis Report on the Creative Economy of the Los Angeles Region | Arts for LA.

Activity in the Woodshop

Taking a quick tour of the shop today. These are the projects we have going on.

A traditional kitchen to be installed this week in Brentwood.

One of a series of reclaimed wine oak doors headed for Glendale.

A huge stack of plywood to complete the art storage cases for the Blum & Poe job.

A pile of salvaged douglas fir from the demo for the kitchen above.

The Band is playing on the turntable.

Chris’s handmade surfboards looking super cool in the back of his pick-up.

New blooms on the aloe vera plants I planted last week.