by Elia Bizzarri | Dec 25, 2020 | Chairmaking Tools and Supplies, Classes, Craft Films, Kiln | 3 Comments
Where do you get green wood? I get this question regularly and it's a hard one to answer. Seth and I sell oak splits for chairs, but it's not exactly cheap if you need a bunch of parts. My blog has general suggestions for where to look, but wouldn't it be nice if...
by Elia Bizzarri | Nov 30, 2020 | Classes, Craft Films | 0 Comments
Peter Follansbee and I are planning on a few spoon carving classes in the new year, plus I'm hoping to do a series on making a chairmaking reamer. In the mean time, Curtis and I are doing the last two classes of the Democratic Chair series on October 5th and 12th (we...
by Elia Bizzarri | Sep 26, 2020 | Classes, Craft Films | 2 Comments
Last weekend's spoon carving class with Curtis was a blast. It was great to be able to teach with him and I learned a new way to carve a spoon. We're busy figuring out how to get Curtis's camera into his shop and buying lights for my shop before our Democratic Chair...
by Elia Bizzarri | Mar 29, 2020 | Craft Films | 4 Comments
For your education and enjoyment, here are three short films of woodland crafts from British Pathe, a huge library of vintage films: This short English video shows the making of trugs. I love the shot of the steam box. What on earth is the thing made out...
by Elia Bizzarri | Sep 25, 2019 | Classes, Craft Films | 3 Comments
My greenwood week students are making small bowls this week and I promised them I would post this video of a German dude making a small bowl. I just watched it again for fun: The tools in the windowsill are very similar to what a chairmaker would use for carving seats...
by Elia Bizzarri | Aug 22, 2019 | Classes, Craft Films | 4 Comments
Sangjie Zhaxi is a documentary studies student at Duke University who spent a semester in my shop, taking photos and talking about his life in Tibet. His grandparents in the countryside of Tibet were woodworkers and lived a simple life making many things by hand....
by Elia Bizzarri | Jun 8, 2019 | Craft Films | 0 Comments
As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been searching for old wheelwright videos. I only found a couple of interest, until I started searching for "Radmacher" and other applicable German words. Score! It makes me wonder how many...
by Elia Bizzarri | May 14, 2019 | Craft Films | 1 Comment
I'll be teaching a weelbarrow-making class with Peter Ross the blacksmith next month (there's still a couple spots left) and we'll be making the wheels too. I know little about making wheels, but luckily Peter knows quite a bit, having worked at Colonial...
by Elia Bizzarri | Feb 16, 2019 | Craft Films | 3 Comments
Curtis Buchanan called last week. We talked of our class schedules, springpole lathes (we are both building one) and the book Curtis is reading Craeft: An Inquiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts. Curtis is persuasive; I have...
by Elia Bizzarri | Dec 11, 2018 | Craft Films | 2 Comments
César's Bark Canoe, Bernard Gosselin, provided by the National Film Board of Canada A follower of this blog sent me the link to this video about a Native American making a canoe with a dozen tools and four materials: birch bark he strips from a large birch tree, cedar...
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