Bob Easton

Chocolate powered woodworking

Bowl #5 – WIP

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Work In Progress
2020 was catastrophic in many ways. Maybe in 2021 we can start to return to normal. All of the artists mentioned in this post lost significant income in 2020 due to pandemic related cancellations. Let’s help them recover some of those losses.

Here is my small step, a bowl of Tulip Poplar. All the roughing work is done and it now sits quietly drying. (no cracking sounds so far) The only prevention I took to thwart cracking was to rub a candle over the end grain of the handles. The handles are the places where I have seen cracking before.

Photo of a rough carved bowl sitting on my workbench.

Dave Fisher saw most of his 2020 in-person classes cancelled. So did the chairmaker Ilia Bizzarri. Ilia and his colleagues developed an alternative, live streaming via Zoom meetings, and put together a number of classes of interest to chairmakers. Then, he created a class featuring bowlcarver Dave Fisher as the guest teacher.

Billed as three 2 hour sessions, they ended up overdelivering, over 9 hours. The sessions featured Dave demonstrating techniques, which Ilia then copied in his own shop, using the picture-in-picture capability of Zoom. Along the way, they intermixed live Q&A from class members. All seemed casual and flowed smoothly, not overly managed, a result of experienced artists doing what they love, and with the assistance of a couple of Ilia’s colleagues, Seth & Ian, who did behind-the -scenes assists in various ways.

I’ve watched all of Dave’s YouTube videos, watched his video series produced by Fine Woodworking in 2017, have carved a few of my own bowls, and with all that experience thoroughly enjoyed this series of classes. The format, and the amount of time offered gave us much more depth than we see in the other video productions.

Well done, and highly recommended! Recordings of these classes are available for people who missed the live sessions.

Other woodcarvers I follow:

Mary May continues adding a new lesson every week to her School of Traditional Woodcarving. Almost all of her in-person classes were cancelled in 2020, but this year is already looking better for her. Some time ago she started having live streaming sessions once a week, Tuesdays at 1 PM Eastern, on Twitch. Be on time to see her live streams as they happen, or show up later and pay a subscription fee for replays. Subscribe to her newsletter to learn of recent lessons, Twitch sessions, and upcoming in-person classes.

Alexander Grabovetskiy continues adding new videos to his School of Woodcarving site. Like the others he had a lot of cancellations in 2020 and is looking forward to in-person classes this year. He too does live streaming videos on YouTube and other media. Alex’s live stream sessions remain on his YouTube channel for later playback in case you miss the live event. He too has a newsletter where you can learn about upcoming live streams, latest school lessons, and future in-person classes.

Bottom line: we have all missed a lot of things in 2020, and all of these artists took big hits in revenue. I’m doing what I can afford to help them now and hope you can too.

3 More Walking Eagles

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photo of 3 walking canes

A few years ago, I made one of these in walnut. Last year, another in cherry for one of my brothers. Now, three more in cherry, two for my other brothers and one for me. We’re all aging and gratefully still fully mobile. The time might come when one of these is handy. As I learned 6 decades ago as a Boy Scout: “Be prepared.”

I have already adjusted mine (far right) for the height I find comfortable. My brothers are about as tall as me; I’ll let them adjust their own. Here’s a useful guide for getting the right length cane.

Today’s temperature in the Peoples Republic of New York started at 15° Fahrenheit, leaving the shop at 36°. My cold tolerance in the shop bottoms out at about 50°. During the recent cold spell, I’ve deferred heavy work (such as hacking out bowls) abandoned the shop, and moved my carving bench and carving tools into a heated room, ideal for the detail carving of these eagles.

detail photo of 3 walking canes

As with earlier walking canes, these are built with a foxed tenon and finished with several coats of Birchwood Casey Tru-Oil gun stock finish.

Grinling moved

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The Grinling Gibbons Society - Celebrating 300 years of his Life and Legacy

More than a lifetime, 300 years! When we make thing to “last a lifetime,” do we ever imagine them lasting 300 years? Many of Grinling Gibbons carvings have done just that. Next year, 2021, will bring the 300th anniversary of his death, and celebrations are being planned by a newly formed British Grinling Gibbons Society. Those plans aren’t quite online yet, but I’m watching for their announcements and will add them here as soon as they appear.

Bigger and Better

Photo of Grinling Gibbons statue at the V&A Museum

Hannah Phillip, Programme Director of the Grinling Gibbons Tercentenary, contacted me a few months ago while she was getting started planning the tercentenary events. Hearing of the events, I decided to make my previously published Gibbons articles and photos freely available for the Tercentenary.

photo of zooming in 3 steps

So, I’ve moved them from this hobby blog to a new home all their own. I’ve also upped the ante on photo resolution. All of my own photos are available in the full resolutions that come out of the cameras. Yes, we have images of manageable bandwidth on web page articles, but click through to get the full detail. A couple of hundred images from 13 locations exist now, and I’ve reserved space for a couple more locations where Hannah might enable us to take yet more photos … when pandemic travel permits.

Since one of my early goals was to bring more, and larger, photos of Gibbons work into being for all who care about them, all of my photos at the new site are being offered as “Public Domain” under the Creative Commons Zero, CC0, license. The Tercentenary organizers, you, and anyone else can use my photos as you please without license constraints.

Visit the new Grinling Gibbons Photo site.

P.S. In addition to the photos Eva and I managed to capture on two trips to London, I have included articles about modern day woodcarvers who imitate Gibbons in their own unique and beautiful ways: David Esterly, Patrick Damiaens and Alexander Grabovetskiy.