Hand Tool Headlines
The Woodworking Blogs Aggregator
Over 70 different woodworking blog feeds from across the 'net all in one place! These are my favorite blogs that I read everyday... Note that these posts only cover the previous 2 months and posts older than that fall off the list. Use the search box below to Google the top 20 (my rating - the search plugin will only allow 20 so I had to choose) of those blog sites. Enjoy!
Finely Strung
Guitar labels
The crypt is the oldest part of Winchester cathedral, dating from the 11th century. In a pleasing contrast, it contains something entirely modern – a mysterious life-size statue of a man standing upright, looking down at a pool of water held in his cupped hands and contemplating the reflections he sees there. The sculptor, Antony Gormley, created it from a plaster cast of his own body. After the cast had hardened, it was strengthened with glass fibre and covered in sheet lead. He talks about the technique here.
I’m grateful to Winchester-based photographer Joe Low (www.joelow.com), for letting me use the image below. He took this spectacular photograph of the statue in the winter when the crypt was flooded.
My friend Gill Robinson, a professional artist (and enthusiastic amateur guitarist) who also lives and works in Winchester, incorporated a witty allusion to Gormley’s statue when she designed a guitar label for me at the end of last year.
And for clients who might prefer something more traditional, she produced a scraperboard drawing of the west front of the cathedral.
Here’s one of Gill’s luminous landscapes – a watercolour of Welsh mountains. More of her work, including portraits of guitarists Mark Eden and Christopher Stell can be seen here.
Satinwood guitar
Although many people prefer guitars made of dark coloured wood, lighter colours can make good looking instruments too. The back and ribs of this one are in satinwood (Chloroxylon swietenia), a dense hardwood from Sri Lanka rarely available nowadays but which in Georgian times was widely used as a veneer in furniture making. It’s hard, brittle and difficult to work with hand tools but it bends fairly easily and, because it doesn’t contain large pores, finishes well with French polish. As its name suggests, satinwood is strongly reflective and when polished takes on a shimmering, almost iridescent, quality (sometimes called chatoyance) that’s impossible to capture in a photograph.
The rosette and bridge decoration are burr ash and the bindings are Rio rosewood. The soundboard is European spruce.
As usual, click on the thumbnails for a larger view.
