We sat down recently with Working and asked her about her plans for the Ranch program, and her observations on general trends in the world of woodworking.

Background Check

With an MFA in furniture design from the Rhode Island School of Design, Working has taught at RISD, the California College of Arts and Crafts, and Laney College in Oakland. Before that, she owned and operated a successful furniture design and fabrication business in the San Francisco Bay area, which she ran for more than 10 years. More recently, she exhibited with woodworker Stephen Proctor at the Tercera Gallery in Palo Alto, California, and her work will be featured in an upcoming book on contemporary furniture by Michael Hosaluk, being published this fall.

Mixed Media

While she definitely has her own agenda for the future of the woodworking program, Working also recognizes the value of what she is inheriting.

“I think Gail Fredell (the former director) built a strong wood program at the Ranch during her tenure here”, she said. “I’m fortunate to be in a position of building on that very sound foundation.”

A strong personality with a lot of hands-on experience, Working will undoubtedly leave her own personal stamp on the program. With her background in mixed media, it’s no surprise that she envisions a certain amount of experimentation in the woodshop.

“I personally work in a wide range of media, and I see more and more woodworkers mixing media in their work … adding metal, paint, textiles and so on. There is also a lot of interest in developing and inventing sustainable materials and methods of work. For example, there seems to be a lot of interest in creative uses of recycled materials, salvaged woods and certified woods.

And there is a desire for information about sources and characteristics of the new, ecologically sensitive materials we are seeing in the industry, such as sunflower board and wheatboard. Plus, of course, there is a huge amount of interest in non-toxic, environmentally sensitive methods of finishing.”

A New Outlook

New materials aren’t the only trend Working sees in the woodshop. Perhaps it’s that global economy we keep hearing about, or the blossoming of the Internet, but she definitely notes a change in attitudes … a desire to break down barriers and explore new methods.

“Along with what I think is a related interest in hand tools and pre-industrial techniques” she says, “I think America’s woodworkers are now more curious about non-Western methods, techniques, tools and design philosophies.

“I believe people who are interested in woodworking are generally pretty soulful: they’re looking for that hand-body-spirit connection that David Pye describes so eloquently in his essay “The Workmanship of Risk”: Whether they use machines or hand tools makes little difference. The risk remains, and the search for a voice.

Hands-On Solutions

While the Ranch is a very progressive, innovative campus with significant past successes, woodworkers generally have a reputation for being a little conservative. Given their somewhat tenuous reluctance to experiment, how does Working see her role in encouraging mixed media in the woodshop?

“I’m committed to developing workshops which address this” she says. “As director, I will actively encourage investigations in mixing media, in cross-cultural fertilization, and in environmental education and research. The workshop we had this summer, Incorporating Metal and Wood, is a good example. It focused on low tech metalworking techniques (really, almost 19th century methods), which could be all be done in a basic garage or home woodshop with minimal tooling. To tell the truth, that workshop was a lot of fun.”

Mixing the Old with the New

Working is obviously excited about possibilities for change, but she also is a strong believer in preserving the traditional way of doing things. The Ranch has, for almost half a century, passed along the accumulated learning and wisdom of some of the planet’s premier woodworkers. The students and faculty have always had a strong grounding in traditional methods.

“We will always offer good, solid basics in the techniques and joinery of woodworking,” she told us. “After all, you have to know how to construct, before you can deconstruct! But we will try to stretch the imagination, and expand the language. For example, next summer, the Ranch will offer a workshop with Osumu Shoji, master woodworker and teacher, who is the Director of the Shinrin Takumijuku School of Woodworking in Japan. That would make an interesting story: perhaps the Journal can visit again while he’s here?”

(Ed note: we’d love to!)

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That wasn’t necessarily the plan. Starting out in 1962 as a small tool and die shop in California, the company found a niche in industrial and electronic markets, where their precision sliding mechanisms were eagerly embraced. Success followed and, by the 70s, Accuride had gone global and opened a factory in West Germany.

About that same time, according to Deborah Kniegge, Accuride’s Director of Marketing Communications, the company first introduced a family of slides that pioneered big changes in how furniture was manufactured.

“Many manufacturers were still using wooden runners and roller bearing slides,” Deborah recalled. “We had to convince them to switch over to more expensive, but more precise ball bearing slides for the woodworking industry.”

But Accuride found that maintaining precision can be challenging. “Wood is never perfectly straight,” Deborah explained. “There are all kinds of variances. When it gets hot or cold, dry or humid, wood swells and shrinks. We had to develop breathing tabs and movement rails to accommodate the tolerances.”

By the end of the 70s, the company had introduced the first complete family of power slides for the wood office furniture industry. The product line included the 200 and 400 series slides for file drawers, box drawer slides, pencil drawer slides, and even the Flipper Door Slides® for overhead storage bins that are a mainstay of corporate offices. With the 80s, came an expansion into the United Kingdom, a wide increase in applications, and the start of the company’s relationship with Rockler Woodworking and Hardware.

“Rockler, which was called the Woodworker’s Store back then, was our entry into the home hobby market,” Deborah recalled. “They are the one who created the interest and ultimately the demand for our products among hobbyist. Even today, our marketing to the home hobbyist continues to be done through distributors.”

As the line between commercial shops and high-end amateurs has blurred, hobbyists have embraced and adapted the full range of Accuride slides. The company’s relatively petite 2632 slide originally came out of their design work for the toolbox industry, but its small profile makes it ideal for home-scaled projects. Keyboard trays, self-closing mechanisms, and the whole range of load-bearing and different-sized slides have found their way into home-made pantries, entertainment centers, computer desks, and kitchen cabinets.

At the recent IWF in Atlanta, the company continued its long tradition of innovation and enjoyed a steady stream of shop owners and distributors, millwork operators, and residential cabinetmakers of all kinds and sizes. Among the products previewed, two will be of special interest to woodworkers:

According to Deborah, people were always jerry-rigging some sort of mounting on this huge, beefy slide (up to 60″ long). The brackets make the slide more user friendly and applicable to big kitchen pantries. Now they’re even capable of handling large television sets — with the brackets, the slides are load-graded to 350 pounds!

Starting with a heavy-duty slide, the company added a self-closing mechanism to create the perfect slide for kitchen recycling bins, waste containers, laundry baskets, or pet food bins.

Most of the company’s other product lines are strictly commercial and even woodworking product development is still guided by commercial applications. Accuride values their home hobbyist customers and works hard to support them: “We encourage all of our customers to contact us with ideas and problems,” Deborah explained. “We get a ton of home hobbyists calling or emailing our tech support, and we’re happy to answer their questions. We want them to use our website, and we give them the same priority as our large customers.”

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The table, as stated earlier, has lift technology built into its solid phenolic top. Then they added a separate micro adjust dial. This dial is integrated with, but rotates separately from, the lift mechanism & thus allowing you to zero out the dial after you make your coarse adjustments. (Thereafter, the lifts’ 1/64″ registration to a quarter turn of the lift handle makes ultra accurate adjustments simple.) In addition, the Mast-R-Lift housing on this unit has dust collection built into it for effective dust extraction.

The combination of JessEm’s Mast-R-Fence and the new Mite-R-Slide is another step to super accurate routing. The miter gauge slides on a polished steel rod that affixes to the back of the fence. This is so strong and so smooth that you really need to try it out to fully appreciate it. At the Atlanta show I put my full body weight on the slide (I weigh just a bit over 200 pounds & if you count by tens), and my buddy was able to push the gauge, with me leaning on it, easy as pie. The positive detents at 5° are a great setup aid. When you consider all these features working together, it is easy to see the new offering as a complete routing “system.”

With that said, quality always comes with a price attached. (Although, as my father taught me: “If you buy the best, you only cry once” & as opposed to every time you try do fine adjustments with a lesser quality tool.) This combination of JessEm’s router table accessories will be sold for about $674.00. If you think of this as a simple router table top and fence, that price would be startling. (After all, you still need to buy a router!) But if you think of it as a dovetail jig, box joint jig, shaper, molding maker and ultra accurate machining station & now you are in the ballpark. It fits into the stationary tool market.

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Lee Grindinger: Your chisels are too dull for the softness of pine. The softer woods like pine are tough because their softness makes it easy to crush the fibers rather than cut through them. I stress this point when I teach woodcarving. The cutting edge must be sharp enough to cut the wood before the pressure exerted crushes the fibers. Softer woods require extremely sharp chisels to avoid crushing. You may consider an alternative to a mortise chisel for pine such as hand cut mortises or using a router.

If you want to make your mortiser work in pine you need to sharpen the chisel. Comparing the mortise chisel to your bench chisels, you’ll see the bezel is on the inside. It’s imperative that the mortise chisel be sharpened and polished with the plane of the outside surfaces left completely flat and straight to the cutting edge. All of the honing is done on the inside of the chisel while the lapping is done on the outside. The drill bit should be set just inside of the cutting edges.

Rob Johnstone: Drilling square holes is such a great idea…but it comes with some challenges. While I can’t say from here what the exact problem might be, but there are some simple steps to improving mortising attachment performance. First, all the cutting edges of the chisel and the auger need to be very sharp. Even a new tool right from the box should be honed to an extremely sharp edge. Second, the chip ports on the chisel may have burrs on their edges, which impede the waste from exiting the chisel housing. Try filing the edges of the ports to make sure they are smooth. Also, it occurs to me that a slow bit speed may be more appropriate for hardwoods and a faster speed for softwoods. The combination of a slower bit speed, and the more aggressive “bite” that a softer wood tissue will allow the bit, may be creating chips that are simply too large to push out of the chisel’s waste port. If you speed up the bit and cut a little slower into the softwood, you may get better results.

My best advice is just to keep on trying different techniques until you find one that works.

Simon Watts: Pine is harder to cut cleanly than walnut because the fibers tend to compress. Try a higher speed and make sure the chisel is as keen as you can make it — hone each side flat on a medium water stone.

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Michael Dresdner: One and a half horsepower is about as large a motor as can run on a standard 110 house outlet (typically 15 amps.) Go much larger and you are into larger wiring and breakers, which means a separate line from the breaker box, or more commonly, a switch to a 220 motor, which uses two hot leads and a ground instead of one hot and one neutral. In short, consider your electrical situation first. Larger motors are always nice, but once again, it only makes sense if you will need the extra power. You won’t need it for cutting sheets of 3/4″ plywood, but if you plan to cut thick slabs of dense wood, it could be handy.

Rob Johnstone: The 1-1/2HP is the practical limit in my opinion. For one reason, you only have a single belt drive to transfer the power to the arbor assembly. With cabinet-quality saws, for example … that have larger motors … there are often three belts to effectively transfer the energy. Also, the increased weight of the larger motor hanging off the back of the contractor’s saw will increase the torsion on the trunnion and arbor assembly, exacerbating the likelihood of racking the saw blade out of alignment if you try to tilt the blade and cut a miter.

Simon Watts: It’s unwise to tamper with the power of a motor. The unit–bearings, gears, etc., have been designed for the rated horsepower.

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Michael Dresdner: Here’s a compromise: Put it in the unheated garage, but build an insulated box around it. Force the returning air back into the heated area by venting from the box. Within minutes of turning on the dust collector, the small air space around it will be warmed up and you will have your space, your noise abatement, AND your heat.

Rob Johnstone: I love the idea of putting the dust collector in the garage area. You will suck heat out of your shop, but gain valuable space in the bargain. I don’t know how to do the cost benefit evaluation … but the tradeoff seems reasonable to me. Here in Minnesota, many shops have the dust collectors outside. There are a couple of problems to evaluate that you may not have considered. I remember freezing my sorry butt off while standing on a ladder and using an electric heat gun to thaw a woodchip clog which had frozen solid in the ductwork as it exited a nice warm shop into a 20-below-zero morning. While I doubt that your system will experience that sort of problem, the warm to cold situation may cause condensation problems. Also, speaking strictly for myself … out of sight means out of mind. It is hard enough to remember to properly check dust collectors when you are looking at them every day. But if they are out of the shop, I would forget more easily.

Simon Watts: Much better to segregate the dust collector. They are noisy brutes and will often allow the most dangerous particles- three microns or less – to escape into the air you are breathing.

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Michael Dresdner: The color is not the issue. What’s important is that you’ve violated one of the rules of using dyes – that they go only onto raw wood. That means they should go under the filler, not over it.

Dyes, whether aniline, metallic, mono-azo, di-azo, or others, are crystals once their solvent evaporates. The crystalline structure has the interesting habit of reflecting light at the opposite end of the color wheel from the color of the dye. In other words, a red or reddish dye, left to crystallize on a surface, will reflect a green cast in raked light.

The problem is not the color, but the fact that excess dye is on the surface. Dye should be absorbed into wood, and any that is not absorbed should be wiped off completely. Think about it — dye reverts to its powdery crystalline form once the solvent evaporates. If you have a layer of powder (any type, really) on top of a piece of wood, you have a good likelihood that whatever you put on top of it will not adhere. Of course, if you apply a finish that re-dissolves the dye, you will get better adhesion, but also bleeding as the dye “walks up” through the solvent.

Although you did not mention it, I should remind readers that alcohol and oil soluble dyes should be strained or filtered prior to use. There is often a precipitate of agglomerated dye that collects in the container, and this can also contribute to adhesion and color problems. On the other hand, straining is usually not needed with water-soluble dyes or with liquid dye concentrates.

Next time, apply the dye to the raw wood, and wipe it ALL off while it is still wet. It will put the dye down into the wood and leave none on the surface to cause problems. As a bonus, you won’t see a green reflection, either.

Simon Watts: If you want to darken the mahogany a solution of potassium dichromate is the classic means. The stronger the solution the greater the effect. This is not a stain – it reacts with the wood in a way I don’t have space to explain.

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Virgil Johnson: Building a Houseful of Beautiful Furniture

Virgil’s wife, Christine Johnson, wrote in to compliment us on the article we wrote about her husband. She’s proud of his gift for woodworking and loves to brag about all the beautiful furniture he’s made

Bobby Michelson: Throwing the Ball Higher

Bobby Michelson, himself, wrote in his thanks for our article, commenting that it makes him sound like he knows what he’s doing!

Web Surfer’s Review

Harry Rudin wrote all the way from Oberrieden, Switzerland to tell us how much he enjoys our reviews … and the fact we don’t have cookies on our site.

Readers Response

Carbide Cutters: They’re everywhere!

It makes sense, to Eric Armstrong, to take the differences between carbide and HSS into account when choosing a blade. For saw blades, he prefers carbide for rough-cuts and HSS for finish work. For drill bits, however, he prefers a third choice: titanium. He’s got a set of Bosch titanium bits – with tapered helix for faster finishes and screw starters – and he likes ’em a lot.

Tool Preview

Ryobi Six Pack: A Shop All Wrapped Up for Christmas

Eric Armstrong also liked our article on the Six Pack. In fact, he almost bought one at HD, but then remembered he already has a great drill, power saw, saber saw, and even some flashlights. What he doesn’t have is a compound miter saw and would really like the one in the Six Pack, plus the portable workbench, and speed saw … sold separately.

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