As for turning, “Turning is kind of like playing the piano. You can buy a Steinway, but unless you, first of all, have a teacher to guide you and then, secondly, practice, you’re not going to be very good at it,” Conover says.

His Conover Workshops classes include Bowl Turning and Woodturning Tools and Techniques. In addition to having been the woodturning columnist for Woodworker’s Journal for 11 years, Conover is the author of several publications, including The Lathe Book, co-host of WJ’s “Getting Started in Woodturning” DVD and a founding member of the American Association of Woodturners.

When he downsized six years ago from a 3,500-sq-ft shop to an 1,100-sq-ft “retirement shop” at his Parkman, Ohio, facilities (40 miles southeast of Cleveland), “I kept all my lathes,” Conover says.

Hand Tools and High-tech Other shop equipment includes a Felder sliding table saw with a shaper head, a Hammer 12″ jointer-planer, band saw and drill press. There’s also a big collection of hand planes because, as Conover says, “I’ve always had a real love of hand tools.”

A six-day hand tool joinery class is a long-running course offering. “I had one doctor tell me it was the most intense experience he’d had since medical school,” Conover says, with class time stretching to eight or nine hours a day if students choose to work beyond a dinner break.

“On the other end of the spectrum,” he says, Conover also offers classes specializing in the use of Festool machinery, “and now I’m even playing around with the Shaper Origin CNC Router.”

He describes the Shaper Origin’s navigation via scans of patterned adhesive tape as “creating a sort of celestial path that it can set a GPS up on and navigate.” Recently, Conover used the tool to cut a piece for wife Susan’s loom, drilling a hole with accuracy down to thousandths of an inch.

Weaving and Woodworking Overlap

Susan Conover is also part of Conover Workshops, teaching courses in spinning and weaving from a six-loom home studio. Among her fiber arts experience is spending five years as operations manager at Vavstuga Weaving School in Massachusetts.

Ernie Conover says that, “We have found there is an overlap between people that have a spouse that weaves and a partner that likes woodworking.” He and Susan will often offer simultaneous courses, allowing participants to “buddy up on hotel rooms.”

The Conovers also travel to teach courses to either clubs or individuals, with Susan having taught fiber arts classes in South Dakota and Colorado in fall 2023 and Ernie recently scheduling a hand tool joinery class for the Western Ohio Woodworkers in Dayton for February 2025.

Other Learning Options

At their Parkman, Ohio, headquarters, Ernie limits his woodworking classes to a maximum of four students. It used to be eight at the older, larger shop, when he also had more assistance from an apprentice.

Lately, however, he’s been offering a lot of private lessons. Those might happen either at his shop or the student’s, with price breaks occurring for additional enrollees. “They save a little bit every time they can bring another person into the game, and if you can find three to four to take one of the scheduled classes, I’ll run it at the same price as the scheduled,” Conover says.

Private lessons, however, also provide the opportunity to tailor woodworking content to students’ specific interests. “I have two fellows here that are local who take a two-day class about four times a year from me, and we just figure it out as we go,” Conover says.

For more information, visit conoverworkshops.com or call 440-346-3347 for information about woodworking and woodturning classes.

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I lived by the motto, “From firewood to firewood.” This was helpful at first. I didn’t worry about perfection as it wasn’t going to happen anyway. I turned a lot of “roadkill” blanks, and when things went sideways with one of them … well, no big deal, it started out as firewood anyway, so into the burn pile it went. Turn and burn, man!

The one good thing that came out of this approach was a willingness to discard any piece that wasn’t as good as I could make it. I sign all my work, even in the early days, and I don’t want someone someday to pick up a crap bowl and see my name on it. Around about bowl #50, I had a bit of an epiphany. I wasn’t really mastering the craft but relying on a mix of skill and luck to produce a signable piece. I realized I needed to commit to a bowl, start to finish, if I wanted to become a better turner. Once I mounted a blank on the lathe, I had to learn how to deal with whatever was thrown at me. The time it took to complete a bowl wasn’t important, only the end result. It helped that I had a day job!

If the blank I cut had unbalanced grain, I dealt with it. I made a three-pin driver with two adjustable pins so that I could orient and tilt the poorly cut blank on the lathe to balance the grain. I figured out how to do interrupted cuts to true up the wobbly off-axis blank. And the next time I cut a blank, I made sure the grain was as symmetrical as it could be before it went on the lathe.

Lessons in Patience

I learned how to adjust the design of the bowl on the fly to compensate for “design opportunities” presented by bad wood and catches. I learned how to inlay splits and voids that emerged. If a bowl warped as it dried, I learned how to remount and re-turn it back into symmetry. Some bowls needed to be re-turned twice because I didn’t let them fully dry, so I learned patience.

Annular marks caused by over-pressuring the heel of the gouge were a problem — and always in the inside of a bowl. I learned to grind the heel down to minimize these marks, and I learned to float rather than pressure the bevel of the gouge.

For some reason, I like to turn spalted wood. Some spalted blanks were more “mulchy” than others — turning them required liberal use of a hardening oil or even a mix of hardening oil and varnish to stabilize them before the final turning and sanding.

Torn grain happens, and sometimes you just have to resort to an “80-grit gouge” to get rid of it. I learned to sand to 120-grit, flood the bowl with tung oil (or linseed), let it harden and then sand back with 80-grit almost to bare wood. This cuts through any turning glaze, reduces, if not eliminates, torn grain and fills in pores in the wood. Then I apply a light coating of tung oil, give it a day to harden, do a final sanding with 120-, 180-, 260- and maybe 320-grit and apply the final coat of finish.

I’m still not very fast. But my percentage of signables is way up there, and I’m fast enough to at least earn minimum wage, so I’m happy.

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Dad took up woodworking as a hobby after watching his father and older brothers build their woodshop projects. He made his first woodworking creation in junior high school back in 1960 — a flying wooden goose with copper wings that still sits perched on the wall of his workshop today. Recently, he took it down to show us the intricate curves of the wood and how difficult a project it was for him as a teenager. No matter how difficult, Dad loved the challenge. As a CPA and accounting professor by day, he’s a natural at working with dimensions, angles and measurements. When building a project, he never forgets to remind us, “Gracie and Leslie, you measure three times but you cut only once.”

Of course, Dad has made mistakes along the way. He’s thrown away projects, started over, wasted wood and spent extra money. But once his projects are complete, they are always beautiful and well worth the time and effort. They’re even more special to our family because he made them.

Just Couldn’t Wait!

In 1984, Dad began working on a grandfather clock. He found the design and plans in the November/December 1984 issue of Woodworker’s Journal, as a matter of fact. Falling in love with this new and detailed project, our dad started ordering wood, sharpening tools and getting to work on it — his first grandfather clock! Unfortunately, that magazine issue only provided part one of the clock build. He was so excited to keep building and finished the clock up to the end of part one in no time. He knew he needed part two to finish it and recalls that he just couldn’t wait!

Since Woodworker’s Journal was only published every few months, Dad reached out to the magazine by phone to request the rest of the clock plans, hoping he could continue sooner than anticipated. The magazine staff was kind enough to not only get back to him but also print out the second installment and mail the plans to him before they were even published! Now, four decades later, he still has that printed paper plan.

More Clocks Coming

After years of designing and creating new projects, Dad has started to build grandfather clocks once again. He’s working on the second and third clocks now, and we can’t wait to see how they turn out! The original sits in our family home, and the two new clocks will be for us, his two daughters. Reading your articles and thumbing through the pages has led Dad to create the most beautiful pieces of woodworking throughout the years … from small table clocks to outdoor benches, wooden reindeer lining our front yard for Christmas (we even were in the newspaper once for those!), figurine chests, a Murphy bed for Leslie and even a dining room table for Gracie’s new home.

Over the 40 years that have passed since Dad made that first clock, he says a great deal has changed in the woodworking world — digital clock mechanisms, easier tools for creating delicate moldings, new advanced saws and sanding machines … But one thing remains the same: his creations are still filled with beauty and love, and they remain timeless for our family. Dad’s first clock has inspired us every day of our lives, thanks to his woodworking skills and that original two-part article from 1984.

By Grace and Leslie Blix

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In the past decade, Dan has built about 5,700 tables. At one point, he had four employees, but “I hated it. It just wasn’t fun anymore,” he says. Now, “It’s back to me and my CNC.”

Although he started out making custom tables from demolished barnwood, Dan now considers himself a small manufacturer. “You cannot make custom furniture at a reasonable price and expect to thrive,” he says.

“When you have a flat piece of 8/4 wood that’s 96″ by 45” wide, your job’s halfway done. I can have the CNC running while I’m wide belt-sanding tabletops,” Dan says. “I can come in on a Monday, glue five tables up; on Tuesday, I can start sanding down; on Wednesday, I can start putting on varnishes; and then Friday, I can start adding the legs.”

The CNC is a key element of the “Akin,” Dan’s favorite among his table styles. “What I love about this style, is it’s made 100 percent on the CNC,” he says. “There’s not much labor involved, except for routing the inside.”

Although he’s recently started outsourcing metalwork to a welding shop, for a long time Dan did everything in house. “I took a lot of pride in that. But with business, sometimes you have to relinquish a little bit,” Dan says.

He’s learned other business lessons, too. He calls building a kiln and a sandblasting booth “two of my biggest, most expensive mistakes.” An idea that paid off was pitching his work to HGTV designers. On a friend’s advice, Dan started looking up shows’ designers and asking if they’d be interested in his tables. Several have been used on HGTV.

“Most people don’t turn down a table, especially when it’s fun and creative,” he says. His tables are often shipped to a filming location, used to stage a set, then returned to him for later sale.

That led to the hosts of Renovation 911 contacting Dan to build for their show about restoring damaged properties. HGTV pays for a piece that the homeowners keep. “It’s a little more sentimental, and normally it’s a dining room table,” Dan says.

His involvement with IWF was more serendipitous. In 2022, he was invited to participate as an influencer and subsequently invited to become a spokesperson for IWF. He views his contributions to IWF’s Network News publication and plans for classes at IWF 2024 as being a liaison between large tool manufacturers and garage woodworkers.

“The problem is, people get into woodworking, and they only know what’s at Home Depot,” Dan says. “Then they’ll dive into it a little bit more, and they’ll learn what’s at Rockler. If you’re a small business and you want to take that next step up, that’s when you start going to the woodworking shows.” Dan would like to see tool manufacturers bring their smaller items to the show, and he’d like to educate garage woodworkers on what a CNC can do for them, bringing both ends of the spectrum together.

For himself, Dan’s trying to maintain woodworking as his “therapeutic getaway,” even though actual vacations still involve work. On a trip to Costa Rica, Dan visited local lumber companies and “just fell in love with monkeypod and Spanish parotas and wild cashews and teaks and eucalyptus,” which he considers more sustainable than North American hardwoods. “A walnut tree grows three inches a year, where a monkeypod tree grows three to five feet a year. So there’s a big misconception that everybody thinks [if] you’re going down South to get this wood that you’re doing deforestation, when we’re actually doing the opposite.”

He uses these woods in his tables and some other items. “Over the years, I’ve found that tables are my bread and butter,” Dan says. “That’s what I like making. It’s a simple process to make a table if you have the right equipment and the space for it.”

Dan’s photos and videos are on TikTok and YouTube @the_voice_of_woodworking and on Instagram @countrytables. His website is countrytables.com.

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Ian told Sam he did not want the lumber. But Sam gave him the wood anyway — what are friends for? Along with the lumber, Sam included information about the oak tree’s history.

The Sacred Oak of Oley

This ancient and impressive oak tree is located in Berks County, Pennsylvania. The county was home to Daniel Boone’s parents and Abraham Lincoln’s grandparents. Daniel was born in the Oley Valley in 1734 when the oaktree was already at least 200 years old. But as important as those folks are to our history, that’s not how the oak got its association with the sacred. The native Lenni Lanape of the region have historical stories of the tree helping to make peace between tribes. It became a revered tree where sacred meetings were held.

Sadly, the Lenni Lanape people suff ered the same mistreatment and displacement that most Native Americans suff ered through.

The tree is a yellow or chinkapin oak, Quercus muehlenbergii. After arbor work was done on the tree a while ago, Talarico was given some large limb segments. He quarter-sawed them and gifted the odd pieces of the lumber to Ian as mentioned earlier. Here is what Ian had to say about it.

In Ian’s Words

“At the bottom of the invitation to the birthday gathering was a caveat: ‘No Gifts.’ The various bottles of champagne and single-malt were an easy forgive. Sam Talarico ignored it. With a smile and some explanation, he presented me with two boards of wood. In the hurly-burly of people arriving, his truncated explanation evaporated and his suggestion that I might use the wood was D.O.A. Even a preoccupied glance at the pieces told me there was nothing in their future. A fire came to mind.”

But Ian’s interest was sparked by the history of the tree. The first I heard of the tables was on a phone call with Ian: “Rob, I’ve done something that I’ve never done before.” This perked my interest because I was assuming the universe of woodworking things Ian has not done by age 90 was pretty small.

The “thing” he didn’t do turned out to be following his training and order of work. As long as I’ve known him, he begins each project by defining the problem to be solved by the furniture, material and budget constraints, followed by working drawings, perhaps mock-ups or a model. Not possible here.

So as he told me, “I winged it … a process of designing and making which is antithetical to my training, my professional life and my teaching.”

With intentions to honor the Native Americans to whom the tree meant so much, he started to work. There was not much material available.

“The newly sliced boards were only about 5/16″ thick, and in less than half an hour they showed signs of mild cupping and twisting.”

Nevertheless, Ian made use of the salvageable stock, torsion box technology, bits and pieces of the oak waste and lumber and veneer from his shop to create these two lovely tables. It’s another chapter in the long and curious story of the Sacred Oak of Oley.

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His 12- and 14-year-old sons both play youth baseball, and Little keeps busy during practices by whittling in the stands. A couple of years ago, he set himself a challenge of making a “fungo bat” — a long, slender bat that coaches or parents use during practice. “It’s something I’d use with my kids, so I just thought, ‘this is something I want to try,'” Little says.

“As soon as I made that bat, the kids were like, ‘well, I want a bat,’ so they each got a bat,” Little says. Then he showed one to a coworker whose son also plays baseball, and got another request, “and then it just started to escalate from there.”

An engineer by day, Little has now made about 200 bats in his garage workshop for his apexbats.com side business. He starts with billets of maple or ash, or upon request, birch or beech. “I only make game bats with the best possible grade that I can get,” he says.

Most critical for purposes of bat-making is the density of the wood, which, in combination with the bat’s design, impacts its weight. Bats for adults generally use higher density wood — sometimes extra dense if it’s meant to be a heavier training bat — while Little tends to make kids’ bats from lighter, lower density pieces.

He also tests the quality of the wood using an ink dot test. This involves putting a drop of wet ink on a piece of bare wood, then observing how far it deviates from a center line as the ink bleeds.

He’s adapted this test from a Major League Baseball requirement that the ink bleed no more than 2.86 degrees away from the center line. “It’s really just saying, ‘Is your grain straight in this wood?'” Little says. “If it’s not, then it’s gonna have much more likelihood of breaking. I don’t want to have a kid break a bat because I used poor-quality wood.” Because bats are made one at a time, customers can choose how the weight is distributed through the barrel of the bat (whether it’s balanced or end-loaded): the bat’s length and weight; how much the knob tapers for their personal comfort; and barrel and handle diameter. “Some like it to just feel a little thinner in the hand, and some like it to feel a little thicker,” Little says. “If there’s a model that I’m finding is a very popular combination, I’ll make a story stick that has all the key points,” he says. “It’s really quick for me to grab that, and it cuts down a lot of time.”

Customers can also choose to have the bats “cupped,” or somewhat hollowed out, on the end. Cupping a bat, Little says, can help remove some weight or balance a bat out so it swings a bit lighter. “I start by drilling a center hole, then I use a router with a guide pin to cut out the rest, and then I go back with a larger drill bit to drill it out again, because it leaves kind of a core.”

Customers also get to choose the colors of their bat, for which Little uses oil-based stains applied by hand. He’ll burn in personalized messages with a small laser engraver, and he applies the Apex Bats logo with an ink transfer using freezer paper. “I tape that to an 8×10 sheet of paper and print it off in a mirror image, then quickly flip it over and rub it on. I like the way it looks, and it’s embedded into the wood, so it’s never gonna come off,” Little says.

Most of the bats Little makes are game-quality bats; about half of them are for kids. While he’s not pursuing the lengthy and costly process to become an approved bat vendor for Major League Baseball, Little is reaching out to town ball teams and has made bats for wood bat tournaments. “I don’t know if it’s a nostalgia thing, or if people are just looking for something different,” he says.

A version of this article originally appeared at: eplocalnews.org.

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I didn’t start out wanting this kind of life. Once, I was just like everyone else. I did repair jobs around the house, built sheds and decks and knocked together bookshelves using big box store lumber — just another weekend warrior. Then I took a woodturning class and learned how to make things like pens and handles. If only I’d stopped there! But no, I had to take a class on bowl turning. And I was hooked.

Accidental Success

In the early “Wheee, I just turned a round thing” stage, I was very pleased if I wound up with something marginally usable. I rarely could make two things that looked the same. And I used a LOT of sandpaper — otherwise known as the “80-grit gouge” — to smooth over poor tool-handling technique. Success was purely accidental, and the results were at best “interesting.”

The next step in my evolution from accidental to intentional woodturner was focused on acquiring good toolhandling techniques. I call it the “YouTube” stage. My goal was to produce a turned surface that could be finished with minimal sanding. I watched a lot of videos and went through a lot of firewood. After 50 or so bowls, I had the whole technique thing down pat. And I could repeatedly produce similarly-shaped objects. But the silly bowls were still ugly. Oh well, from firewood to firewood…

Technique as Means to an End

The third step was perhaps the most important in my development as a turner. I call it the “intentional design” stage. I thought about what I liked and what I didn’t in examples of other turners’ work — the proportions, rim detail, foot dimensions and overall shape. I read about the golden ratio. I looked at examples of color and patterning in raku pottery. I sketched out scale drawings of work I intended to produce and evaluated them in terms of both form and functionality. Technique became just the means to an end, and success was not accidental but intentional.

At the end of this intentional design stage, I was able to produce objects that I liked. Other people liked them too, so I was able to start selling my work. This pleased my wife to no end, because the house was getting a bit cluttered with bowls.

The fourth progression is what I call the “druid” stage. I work exclusively with locally- sourced green wood. Green wood gives you the opportunity to use the wood grain as an intentional design feature. Showcasing unusual feathered or fiddleback grain in a turned piece is done by choosing where to take wood from a tree. This requires looking past the surface of the tree to visualize what the grain looks like under the bark. I’ve also learned how to position the piece on the lathe to balance the grain of the finished piece.

See It, Do It, Teach It

The fifth and final stage is the last stop on the “see it, do it, teach it” train ride. Learning how to convey muscle-memory skills and intuitive knowledge to new and emerging turners has been fun but also very challenging. It has forced me to examine what I’m doing, understand why I do it and find ways of sharing that knowledge with others who may have very different learning styles than me. And I practice what I preach with every woodturning class I now teach.

The post Rick Weil: Five Stages of a Woodturner appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

Icelandic lore says the dwellings are for the huldufólk (“hidden people”), who provide their visitors with strength, good luck and good health. Jerry first learned of the concept when he and his wife watched the movie Eurovision, in which an Icelandic competitor in a singing contest visits an elf house for good luck. His research since then indicates that many Icelanders still believe in the concept.

“It’s important to them to have this understanding that there’s something that might be a little more wonderful out there,” he says.

The first house Jerry built, now installed in a whiskey barrel koi pond in their backyard, was a birthday gift to his wife. He has since built seven altogether, using a sawmill’s discarded log offcuts.

Design ideas might come from dollhouses, haunted houses or the window and door placement in a children’s playhouse. “Each house has its own personality,” Jerry says. They’re intended to be whimsical: in some, solar lighting mimics a fireplace’s flickers for a few hours after dark.

Positive Responses

Responses from the public have been positive. Icelandic people have appreciated finding a slice of their culture in Minnesota. People also appreciate the wonder, Jerry said: he told of a woman who approached him during an installation to tell him how wonderful the project was, and how children would love it.

“I said, ‘You’re allowed to like it, too,'” Jerry says. “When we’re kids, we’re told to believe that reindeer can fly. You have the kids so excited they can’t sleep at night because they know something amazing’s going to happen. If you want to come to the elf house and feel like a kid again, just know that it’s OK to want to believe in something again.”

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Currently I’m teaching sculpture and design at Butler University, and I teach woodworking at my studio and at the Indianapolis Art Center. My teaching goals include instilling lifelong art appreciation, passing on real skills that transcend mediums, getting others excited about making and experiencing art and helping my students discover they can have an impact on society through visual conversation. I’m also tutoring an intern from Butler, and that’s a great joy for me.

I have been an educator for almost as long as I have been an artist, and I find that teaching informs my personal work because I am relating to the greater community. Public art is for the community, and you must know the people to be able to reach them. I still use my motto, “It’s not just woodworking. It’s a lifestyle.” Making functional art embodies the same intentions as the other aspects of having a rich and fulfilling life.

Speaking of life, I’m now a mom to a hilarious, clever and handsome 1-1/2-year-old boy named Arthur. Currently the drill is his favorite tool, but I’m sure that will change as quickly as his shoe size does. Arthur’s father and I have just bought a house with a lovely yard that will hopefully accommodate my new awesome woodshop very soon!

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I called Ian Kirby out of the blue in late 1999 after reading parts of his book The Accurate Router (Cambium Press). I found his direct language and instruction refreshing amid so much romanticized writing about the craft of woodworking. We chatted for a bit, and by the end of the conversation, Ian had agreed to try working with the Journal and me.

Twenty-plus years later, he is still putting up with me. (In fact, I may have found a kindred spirit.) But by the time Ian and I started working together, he was a well-established author, teacher and designer. Having worked in the earliest of days with Fine Woodworking and American Woodworker magazines, his reputation was well established. But what most periodical readers know of Ian’s work is the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

Ian has degrees in furniture design, wood science and wood technology. His classical woodworking training was in the British Arts & Crafts tradition. He arrived from England where he was teaching at the university level in the early 1970s on a sabbatical year. Over the next few years he taught at various institutions stateside. In late November 1976, he opened his own studio teaching woodworking, focused on design. He is also an industrial designer and consultant. There is more to this tale than I have space to tell, so I will focus on his work with our magazine.

Emphasis on Design

Ian made it clear straight away that he would prefer to use our pages to focus on design and woodworking- related topics, not simply be building boxes (in his terms). That was wonderful for me, as I knew many folks who could build things but few who could teach the building blocks of woodworking mastery. Ian is at his heart a teacher. As a result, I am certain that Ian has produced more pages teaching design and proper technique in our magazine than has been published in any other consumer-focused magazine. We have covered drawing, designing with mock-ups, essays on seating and a host of other topics. It is something I am very proud of. At one point, we collaborated on a three-DVD set called The Way to Woodwork. In my (very biased) opinion, it’s some of the best woodworking video that has been produced.

Even at 90, Ian is not one to let the grass grow under his feet. For example, his current endeavor is designing furniture to be built from a kit. His first piece is a small table that will be a joint project with Rockler. His design inspiration came from the proportions of the ash tables on the opposite page, lower left.

As Ian continues to look to the future, I will keep working with him but also treasure these past many years of time spent with such a rare talent. Happy birthday, my friend, and continued good luck to you!

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