I recently returned from spending a couple of days with David Marks at his studio in Santa Rosa, CA. I had attended a workshop with 7 other woodworkers last July in David's studio and was so impressed that I signed up for a 1 on 1 weekend. David is very open to whatever you want to do, turning, flatwork, marquetry, etc...for me I wanted to run through doing some dovetails. I have done dovetails before with so-so results.
We selected wood from David's huge stockpile, a couple of pieces of contrasting wood, curly maple and walnut. We discussed design details and proceeded with sizing the pieces. Using the table saw, jointer, planer and drum sander. His jointer has a 2 blade cutterhead so I needed to really slow down my rate of feed to get a good cut on the curly maple. David back bevels all of his jointer and planer knives. He sends his knives out to Forrest tools in New Jersey for sharpening. We were getting some tear out in the curly maple while running it through his planer so we wet the wood which produced very good results.
We laid out the dovetails and proceeded to do the initial cuts on David's bandsaw. David likes using his bandsaw for dovetails which he has demonstrated on his Woodworks show before. He has 4 bandsaw's in his shop, Delta 14", 20", MM20 and MM36. We used his Delta 20" for the dovetails.
Once the pins were cut I got to try out my new LN chisels. Wow!!! We discussed sharpening techniques and proceded to sharpen my chisels using waterstones. The results were excellent. David was impressed with the lie-nielsen's. He typically uses japaneese chisels. Next we used the pins to lay out the tails and then proceeded to cut out and fit the dovetails. The results were excellent!
If anyone is thinking about spending some time with David in his studio all I can say is go for it!! He makes you feel very comfortable. I had a great time learning some new techniques, swapping stories and laughing!
Couple of pics:
1)Dovetail results
2)Setting up the bandsaw
3)Redwood sphere David is working on for an upcoming exhibition, this sphere weighed almost 400lbs at one time. David hollowed it out on his huge Oneway lathe then boiled it in water and gave it an alcohol bath to bring the moisture down to an acceptable level for finishing. I am sure it is going to be an awsome sculpture when he is finished!
Jim
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I'd love to be able to have an opportunity like that. Looks and sounds like you had a wonderful time and have some great results to show for it! You DO realize your next project post will *have* to include some of those wonderful dovetails, right?!
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Originally Posted by Jim Barrett
