People are more important than things.
- Rev. Robert E. Ives
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Welcome to the 7th email newsletter of
the Maine Coast Craft School.
May 2018
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- A note about the quote we used in newsletter #6 and which we attributed to Goethe -
that quote actually traces to W.H. Murray's The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951.)
Check out this link if you're interested in more information!
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Our 1st community workshop - February break, 2018
Ash Pack Basket Making
As a kick-off to 2018, we hosted a split brown ash pack basket making class in February, three days for friends and mostly local folks.
Our friend Kerry Lambertson drove in from Minnesota to lead the workshop and we had a whacky, great time pounding ash and weaving together.
Kerry says: "Ash baskets are made by utilizing a property unique to genus Fraxinus. These trees, when pounded with a heavy hammer, will de-laminate into individual annual growth rings, providing a durable and beautiful material for weaving. The craft was developed by the indigenous nations of eastern North America, and many fine baskets are still woven today in Algonquian communities from Nova Scotia to Minnesota.
I learned basketry in 2007 from April Stone, a member of the Bad River Ojibwe band of Wisconsin. Over the intervening years I have felled, pounded, and woven with many black ash trees from the swamps and creek beds of northern Minnesota where I live. While I'm involved in lots of different forms of woodworking (most recently apprenticing with a violin maker in Nova Scotia), I find ash basket making to be altogether different and endlessly interesting."
It really is somewhat mystefying and magical that a log, when hit with hammers and clubs (hit hard, and a lot), is able to produce lovely strips of material, perfect for basket weaving.
The three days were tremendously successful, so much so that we weren't able to invite nearly as many people as we would have liked, and our space was really a little too packed. We definitely want to do more of these kinds of workshops in the future.
Our vision is to offer short, affordable workshops during the off season, so that our immediate community can be involved in the life of our school and experience the satisfaction of pursuing and making more hand crafts. We were excited to create a space for families - both parents and children, since we know it's hard to have an open door for the chaos and the need for flexibility which family life invariably requires.
Happily, some friends who were with us for the three days in February didn't get enough pounding and weaving and were inspired to find an ash log of their own. We joined them at their place in New Hampshire for some more basket making last month!
It's lovely to see handcrafting in many places these days.
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Summer & fall classes
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Our second season is shaping up to be another great year - some of our classes have already filled, but there are still spots available in a variety of classes.
We keep the website numbers as updated as we can, so if you're interested or curious, check there to see dates and whether there’s room in a class.
All materials and tools are provided for classes.
There’s still room in the June 25 - 30th Traditional Green Wood Spoon Carving. A wonderful and full week of carving spoons together, for all levels of skill and experience.
We’ll start by looking at trees and natural crooks from which to make curved wooden spoons. Larger serving spoons will allow more room for practicing knife and axe skills, but people will be free to experiment and play with all sorts and sizes of spoons and utensils. Students can experiment with our collection of Scandinavian style carving axes to rough out spoon blanks and get a feel for different weights and styles of axes. We've also got block knives to try for the roughing out process. We’ll discuss layout and design choices before we dive in with straight and curved knives to refine and shape our spoons. Kenneth will introduce a variety of techniques and tool choices, such as bent and dog leg gouges, as alternatives or additions to the standard sloyd knives for carving. Emphasis is placed on designing for curvaceous, flowing lines in these everyday items. Much attention will be paid to proportions and resolving facets in a pleasing way. Because of our small class size (limit of five) Kenneth is able to work with each student to improve and deepen their sense of carving wherever they are in terms of familiarity with design choices, tool skills and previous hand work experience.
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The five day October 8 - 13th Build a Shavehorse class still has three openings.
In this workshop everyone will build their own, custom fit shave horse. This incredibly useful accessory for the green woodworker is basically an ergonomic quick release vise, workbench and seat all in one. Because it is important to have a shave horse fit the user’s bodily proportions and project needs, making one’s own shave horse is a very practical and satisfying project. There are several ways to customize a shave horse to a particular purpose which makes using the shave horse all the more rewarding and pleasing. Kenneth’s “dumb head” style shave horse has a unique adjustable head that allows quick and easy adjustments for varying thicknesses of stock to be clamped. There are many foundational skills that will be taught during the workshop, including shaved, octagonalized through-tenoned legs, large scale mortise and tenon joints with wedges plus precision drilling with hand tools. Tool care and sharpening will also be covered. Kenneth will give a presentation on historical and modern examples of the many variations of shave horse design too.
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For the three day Knife Making and Sharpening class, August 10, 11 & 12, Kenneth will be helping students fashion their own sloyd carving knives. We were able to purchase top-quality, rough-ground knife blanks in 3 different sizes from Svante Djärv for this knife making workshop. Students will each carve and mortise their custom hardwood handles. We’ll learn about safe knife use and care, and we’ll learn about the specifics of sharpening and have time for supervised practice to really get a hands-on understanding of sharpening. Lastly we will learn the traditional and practical skill of hand stitching leather by designing and making a custom leather belt sheath in the Skandinavian tradition. There is something especially satisfying in using a tool that one has made themselves.
Currently there are two spots left.
All three of these classes are excellent for beginners as well as advanced wood workers and students will come away with a plethora of new skills and remarkably useful projects.
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Tool (wait list) news
And finally, some news about tools!
Spring comes late here in Maine, but it is finally here, along with some tools from Sweden, as we promised.
Our order of Svante Djärv’s tools made it in last month - the ten Little Viking axes that we could order were all spoken for and have been sold, but we will list the (few) tools that were not claimed from our waiting list in our online store. We still have one of Svante Djärv’s small carving axes, one or two hook knives, three sloyd knives and an awl. We also have some of the aforementioned rough ground knife blades if people are up for making handles, it’s a great way to get an excellent hand forged carving knife for a little less.
We have a rather extensive wait list for Hans Karlsson tools.
We’ve been thinking of it a little like a trip to the DMV here in Maine, where you get a ticket and wait until your number is eventually called (in Maine, the people at the DMV are all very friendly and helpful, unlike other places we’ve lived where going to the DMV was usually a nightmare.)
With that analogy in mind, we are doing our very best to work our way through each request in turn, and to be friendly and helpful and expedient. But it’s taking a while. Currently we are working on number 30, not sure how far we’ll get before we run out of tools. There are 152 names on our list and so there are actually lots of people who haven’t even made it into the "waiting room" to get a number, for which we are sorry.
A bit more information about this batch of tools: we submitted a very large order to the Karlssons last July, but around Christmastime they requested that we cut about 2/3 of the total, saying that they could not actually produce that many tools after all. We were able to order 148 individual tools.
With that said, the first part of our order of Hans Karlsson tools has begun to arrive. We’ve had some issues with customs/Dept of Homeland Security holding parcels, so it’s been slow getting the packages when we thought they were finally, finally here.
Angela has begun the process of contacting people & sending invoices, to our alumni and then in chronological order - the first names on the list have been there since February 2017.
We are very grateful for everyone’s patience and good humor!
Once we have determined what (if anything) is available after we have done our best to fulfill the requests we have on our list, we’ll post items for sale in our online store.
(we already know there will be no HK adzes or axes)
Keep an eye on this newsletter in the future. It is a tricky process to release tools online without a rush and a resulting crash of our website...
We dislike the current online tool-release/purchase-scramble way of doing things, especially if the technology malfunctions when too many people click on the same button at the same moment.
We’re going to keep thinking about it and if anyone has a great system for this situation please send us a note describing it.
At this point, we’re not sure when we will reinstitute the tool wait list - we need to work through some of the requests we’ve got first and then we’ll know more how to proceed.
We feel committed to providing what service we can, so the list seems an important part of what we are able to offer, and we’d like to find a way to make it work efficiently and democratically.
Please know that if you sent us a note or signed up through our online form, and received an email back acknowledging your request, we promise we’ve got you down and will be in touch as we make our way through the tool request/wait list.
(If you did not receive an email acknowledging your request it means you are not on our list.)
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Jason Lonon adzes
Jason Lonon is working on another batch of adzes for us sometime in the next month or so. We are keeping a waiting list for his tools (most of the adzes have been spoken for from this next shipment though.)
Jason has been working very hard to address the adze shortage and provide us with a consistent supply of adzes, so our wait list for his work has been manageable.
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And now, we'll leave you with a few images of what's happening here at our craft school/construction site on the Old County Road in Bristol.
Sheathing and roofing are coming along nicely now that the ice and snow have receded, and with MANY heartfelt thanks to our friends Richard and Seward.
The metal roofing is on its way and we're looking forward to cutting the windows into the beautiful patchwork of our salvaged-sheathing-board walls.
The image of Kenneth (below) working on the timber frame in his bug head net is from early May a year ago, the fabulous structure that has become our school still mostly raw materials - not bad for 12 months doing it all ourselves!
The clearing beyond Kenneth in the photo is where the school building now stands.
This week is the official beginning of our second season, with a six day Coopering class. (scroll down for some images)
Our first birthday - we're grateful to be at it for a new year!
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- So that's it for now.
all the best to all of you,
Angela & Kenneth Kortemeier
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the Maine Coast Craft School, LLC
Kenneth and Angela Kortemeier
260 Old County Rd
Bristol, ME 04539
mainecoastcraft@gmail.com
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