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If you’ve been playing along at home, you’ll know that this is week number three , of the last four , that I’ve been on the road. Four weeks ago was the infamous “hammock” debacle, then two days after returning to the Popular Woodworking offices, I found myself on the way to Las Vegas to cover the AWFS show (I have two more entries to write about from the show, but those will probably have to wait until next week). And this week, after a full five days in the office, I’m in Berea, Ky., (where the first Woodworking in America conference was held), teaching at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking.
My better half is not sure I reside at the same address any more. And if I didn’t continue to send in blogs, the PW office might forget I’m still on staff (I am still of staff aren’t I, Chris?)
So to make sure my co-workers are aware I’m still kicking, and to provide you with an inside view of a woodworking class at Kelly Mehler’s, here goes:
The project this week is the Baltimore Card Table published in Popular Woodworking‘s June 2005 issue. We began Monday morning at 8:30 and in less than an hour, we were making dust. (That’s the way a class should be, get busy and have fun.)
The task for the class today was to “brick” the table apron and to taper the legs. The bricking portion of the table is slow going because each brick must be buttered with hide glue and positioned on a template. Then, as each row is finished, a router is used to shape the front.
Everyone did a great job because by 5 p.m. all the class participants had the legs tapered and the bricking complete , except for one straggler. If you can’t quite make out the fellow in the back of the bench room still working on his table after hours, it’s Kelly Mehler himself. He doesn’t work on his class projects until all his school duties are complete , then he has the chance to catch up with the rest of the class. (Actually, he was cleaning up his bench and his table apron is complete.)
On Tuesday, we’ll wrap up building the table base and hopefully have the veneer in place. And if everything goes as planned, we should be routing in the leg stringing.
– Glen D. Huey
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I hate to tell you this, but sometimes your camera angles kind of freak me out. I looked at the picture, and the four vertical projects looked like fenders of an old car. So I had to read the story to make sure that Pop Wood wasn’t going into the wooden electric car business (although that might be sustainable if we ccould cover every acre of the Deep South in Southern yellow pine). Sorry for my freakout.