YOU DON'T NEED ANOTHER WORKSHOP

By: Woodeen Alen


However, boardrooms are tied in with what I want to talk about which is space. A pile of chair components is quite manageable while it is a pile of chair components, once you put those components together and it changes from a nice neat pile into twelve or fifteen half completed chairs, then you need quite a different amount of space. The same thing with big tables. If we are doing a monster table there is no way it can be fully assembled to have a look at how it is shaping up and make adjustments to details here and there. The thing has to be put together, more or less, for the first time on site and that is terrifying. So all this leads me to is thinking about do we have enough space. It is a bit like asking do I have enough cramps? To which the standard answer is: you can never have enough cramps. So can the woodworker ever have enough space?


I don't know. I know not far away from here an organisation called Millthome Chairs. They have a tiny workshop designed very carefully around a band saw, designed to hold chair components, because that is what they make, in a racking system based on the dimensions of the tomato box. In this room, really not much bigger than most peoples bathroom, two, admittedly very clever, people make more beautiful Windsor chairs than you can shake a stick at. So why am I itching to get a bit more space? I suppose the answer must be that Bob and Sue's workshop is geared up to a certain type of object of known dimensions where we are a bespoke furniture making workshop and do not know what we are making from one month to the next.


So that is how I justify, in my own mind, what can only be described as absolute foolishness. For what I want to do, in the middle of a recession, is buy a second workshop. They say that during a recession you should just do what you are doing, keep you head down and take no risks. And I am sure that is right but now and again in life you have got to back your judgement and hope you are right and live with the consequences if you are wrong. I have decided to buy a workshop which is a few yards down the road which, until very recently, was run by three of my former students as a furniture making workshop. So now we have the chance to plan out another workshop, equip it and this time get it right.

Our present workshop is already pretty well equipped. We have a 16" Wadkin surface planer, a 24" Wadkin planer thicknesser, a Wilson spindle moulder with sliding carriage for tenoning, a large Wadkin PK dimension saw, a beautiful old Robinson 30" band saw and a Cooksley pad sander. So when we consider equipping the second workshop the immediate question is do we need to duplicate any of these facilities and if so to what extent?


There has been much discussion about this amongst the present members of the workshop and quite rightly so because they are the people using the machines. I think the current feeling is that we should duplicate the band saw, bench saw and planer thicknesser but not necessarily with very large machines. It leaves the question open as to what different roles could the workshops fulfil. The favourite argument at the present is that we should have our existing workshop specialising in solid wood and the second workshop specialising in larger projects and veneer work. This is a great idea for it would mean that most of the lay out in the existing shop could be retained which I am very much in favour of because moving things around is very costly. There is, however, one fly in the ointment, a dirty big fly, the veneer press.

I can remember bringing that veneer press in four or five years ago. It came apart into several big pieces but those pieces took four of five strong blokes a good morning to man handle around the place. You should understand that this is not a modern veneer press made out of pressed steel and hydraulic pipes, oh no, this is an old one. This is an Inter—wood three platen veneer press made in cast iron girders. As you can see, I do not really relish the thought of fooling around with it again. However, all of these pleasures are in the future. I hope in the coming articles to tell you all about it. I also hope to introduce you to the workshop staff, try to tell you a bit about what they are making and how they are doing it. I do not expect these articles will be a blow by blow account of how to cut dovetails or a six part course on how to be a designer maker of finest furniture but if I can express some of our enthusiasm for making things beautifully and perhaps touch on why we do it then the writing of the articles will have been worth while and I hope it will have been good reading. hope to introduce you to most, if not all, of our workshop Next month I may be able to tell you if the bank is going to let us go ahead with this daft idea.

EARLY MACHINES "OLDIES"

I know it is a terribly sexist remark but I do think of the machines in our first workshop as old ladies. Over the years I have had all sorts of lighter weight machines and I have gradually replaced them with either Wadkin or Robinson machines. The golden period of manufacture seems to me to have been in the late 1950's and early 1960's when both manufacturers were making superbly engineered, fully adjustable machines. If properly serviced and looked after they would last certainly one, possibly two, maybe three life times. My band saw is a classic made in about 1960 by Robinsons. It is a 36" model with all the trimmings. It runs superbly, absolutely no vibration. Like all elderly ladies, however, she need polite attention. Her guides need to be adjusted regularly, a spot of oil here and there and a spot of grease here and there periodically. Look after her like this and she is a sweet tempered old soul. Apart from Mrs Robinson, the band saw, most of my other machines are made by Wadkin. I must admit to liking Wadkin. They are horribly expensive but to my mind they are the best. I will give you an example of why I have come to that conclusion. A few years ago I wanted to invest in a new spindle moulder. My aim was to buy a tool that would last out my working life. I bought a new Wilson FM with a sliding table for tenoning, a reversing switch, roll on and roll off tables, all the whistles and bells that would make it a really useful machine. I bought that because I suppose it seemed to offer nearly everything the equivalent Wadkin moulder had but to offer it at £2—300 less. We have had that moulder now for three or four years and it has done a lot of work. No body in the workshop has a good word to say for that machine. The adjustment to the rise and fall is difficult because it is always sticky, the wood chips tend to collect on the travel of the sliding table making the action very bumpy, the sliding table is always out of adjustment for one reason or another. It is a heavy serviceable machine and I am not really knocking Wilson because in another situation it would probably do a very good job but for us it is just not a very pleasant tool to be with. As a consequence I really I wish that I had spent the extra money and bought a slightly better machine. However, I must confess I don't think I will buy new machines again. Not even Wadkin. Where possible I will buy really good quality second hand machines from a reliable dealer.


I have tried buying second hand machines at auction with some mixed success. We got our Wadkin PK dimension saw from an auction five or six years ago. It was the closure of a good, old style joinery firm and there were some very good machines to be had. I had to go down there for the preview and then go down and bid. I then had to send Malcolm and Neil down with a rented truck to pick the machine up. They had to hassle for the best part of the day to get the machine out of the factory because, like most of these auctions, the auctioneers wanted the place cleared immediately. We then had to drive the machine back and unload the rented van. Now that is no joke because one of these big old saws can weigh the best part of half a ton. So we had to rent a forklift truck from somewhere then manhandle the saw into the workshop. I don't think any body enjoyed that days work. It was then the best part of a week's work on Malcolm's part to get that saw running sweetly. It has gone very sweetly ever since but that was a good deal of production time that was lost that cost me a lot more money than I had anticipated. Certainly if I had been doing all the restoration work myself it wouldn't have cost me so much because I am the cheapest worker in this outfit. So now if I need a ~ piece of equipment I go to a reputable second hand wood working machinery dealer. Next month I will take you to meet Brian Stacey of Daltons in Nottingham.


ARTICLE PART 2 By Amas Shadrach

PLANNING YOUR NEW CARPENTARY WORKSHOP

by Amas Shadrach

Well, I have been and gone and done it this time. It's all very well putting in applications for the bank to loan you large sums of money it is quite another thing to have them accepted. I am sure some of the guys in my workshop think I am off my trolley. It wasn't but a few months ago that I was telling them how bad everything was, how we had to keep our spending down to new lower budgets because if we didn't the next cuts we would have had to make would have been human cuts. Cuts in either wages or staff. Now I am twittering on about buying a new workshop, equipping it with this or that kind of planer thicknesser, getting this or that panel saw. It must be confusing and I have no answer to the criticism except to blame the clearly shortsighted attitude onto management.

Planning out a new workshop is always fun. I suppose I have had three or four cracks at it now at different times of my life and in different circumstances and every time I have got it wrong. It seems that the Third Law of Aerodynamics is especially at work in this case. (The Third Law of Aerodynamics states quite clearly that what ever you do you are knackered). Incidentally I got that information on the third law from a very reliable source. Frank was a retired boffin I think from British Aerospace. He came five or six years ago on one of our short courses to learn veneering. In retirement he had set himself the task of making a replica Tomkin long case clock. The whole thing: movement, hands, face, case and all. He sent me a photograph of it just recently. Finally, he had managed to complete what was a major undertaking and the thing is, he had made it absolutely superbly. Frank, if you read this you should share this project with the Woodworker. However, I digress.

When you are laying out a new workshop you can play a particularly entertaining board game. First you need a scale floor plan of your workshop drawn out on graph paper marking where all the doors and windows are and, if they are already fixed, where all the electric points and outlets are. The next stage is to go to the manufacturers of the machines you are thinking of installing and get the plan dimensions of these machines. You then make little card templates of each machine in the same scale as your floor plan then go and look for any other large objects that you might have to install, your bench area, your timber storage area and a storage area for board material. You measure those up and make a little card template to scale to represent them. You are now equipped to play the game which is this: what is the ideal position for each of these machines allowing for you, the craftsman, to work around them and allowing for a board of a chosen dimension to go across that production set up? The key to it is choosing the problem correctly. Are you handling 8' x 4' sheets of MDF or are you handling dirty great 12' boards of Ash or, like our friends the chair makers in Hartland, are your components hardly ever longer than 24".


Given a large enough supply of machine catalogues and enough flexibility of mind to give yourself different problems an inventive woodworker could spend the entire winter playing this game and never make a stick of furniture. Think of it as the woodworkers equivalent to Dungeons and Dragons. There are, of course, several traps, pitfalls and just general cock ups that you can make. I will tell you about one or two just to get you going but it would be unsporting to warn you about everything. You see when you are working in plan like this it is difficult to bear in mind that machine table heights can work in your favour and they can also work against you. For example, if you have the situation where you want to put two occasionally used machines quite close to one another it may be to your advantage that the machine table heights should be exactly the same so the job can run across both tables. The converse of this can apply if your table heights are at different levels. Most band saws, for example, have a table considerably above the common machine table height which may enable you to cast long jobs above other machines. Most planer thicknessers have a thicknessing table below common machine height so position your thicknesser very carefully. For instance, we know in our workshop if you want to plane and thickness timber for a solid wood dining table that is longer than 10 feet we have got to do it somewhere else.



When it comes to choosing which machine to buy I would suspect that our requirements would be rather different from your own. This is a busy commercial workshop. Each machine is probably used by half a dozen different people every day. Some of them may be less careful with it than others so we need machines that can take a battering. Not, I hope, that any of my staff or students would batter any of my old ladies but my machines have to be very solid and reliable. A workshop with one machinist who carefully adjusts and sets the machine up and leaves it that way at the end of the job is not necessarily going to need the heaviest equipment.


TO BE CONTINUED