The Joy of Woodworking Activities at the June O'Connor Centre.

During January I had the pleasure of running a four day woodwork program at the June O’Connor Centre in Joondalup, as part of their Day to Day Living (D2DL) Program. Around 12 participants and one staff member took part in the program. Over this time the participants each produced a kitchen chopping board and a bedside table. Despite the heat and cramped conditions, there was plenty of enthusiasm and laughter throughout the very successful four day workshop.

The June O'Connor Centre provides wonderful facilities via 5 centres across metropolitan Perth. From their website: "June O'Connor Centre (Inc) is dedicated to developing the awareness and support for people in the community suffering a mental illness. " www.joc.com.au

I set up my portable benches and tools, and we took over the art space at the Centre. We also spilled out into the area at the back in the adfternoons when we had some shade there. This area we used for glue-ups and for polishing.

Some of the gang at the end of Day 1, with their completed kitchen chopping boards.

Through this very enjoyable program, the participants learned and applied a number of traditional woodworking hand skills to make their kitchen chopping boards and bedside tables.

Vicki cleaning up her table frame prior to joining it to the top.


Stuart cleaning up surplus glue after completing his glue-up of the frame.

The participants used several types of planes, scrapers, saws, cramps, and measuring tools. The only power tools used were cordless drills for the drilling. A range of timbers were used, including Jarrah, Marri, Sugar Gum, Sydney Bluegum, Spotted Gum, Sheoak, Vitex, and New Guinea Rosewood. The making of the frames included cutting the rails and shooting the ends square, making the dowel joints, and gluing the frames up. Making the tops included shooting the butt joints and cutting and planing the tops to size. Pocket hole techniques were used to connect the tops to the frames, and used Cabot’s Danish Oil as the finish after the final scraping and sanding.


Some of the gang at the end of Day 4 with their completed tables.

These activities enable just about anybody to be able to use tools and make things they would never have thought of as possible previously. It is very tactile, physical, creative and satisfying. It gets people talking, working together, laughing and inspiring one another. Nice, eh?!

The participants at the June O'Connor Centre in Joondalup had a great time - and so did I!!

Rebuilding termite eaten joinery.

I was recently approached by clients in Northbridge, who live in their 1903 semi-detached cottage. Joe and Anne's front door joinery had been eaten out by termites some time ago. The joinery was fairly standard, consisting of a 5 foot long 12" x 3" jarrah sill, jarrah stiles and mullions, headerand transom, with 2 leadlight sidelights, 3 top lights, and 2 wooden panels below the mid-rails.

Assessing the damage.
Amazing little things, termites. They had travelled up the joinery via the softwood beading and mouldings, eating out much of the jarrah transom just above the door, some upper areas of the jarrah mullions and stiles, and a significant portion of the jarrah sill. Most of the leadlight panes were held in place only by many layers of paint which covered the eaten out beading and mouldings.

After removing the security fly door, front door and leadlight panes, I was then able assess the extent of the damage. My task was clear - replace as much of the joinery as possible and rebuild it in situ as it was not going to be possible to remove the whole piece of joinery. I was up for a very interesting challenge!

Fortunately the four mullions/stiles and the header would all be able to be used, as most of the damage was surface damage. The termites had been after the softwood beading and mouldings. However the sill and the transom would need to be replaced, plus the wooden panels and all mouldings and beading.

Replace and rebuild.

First I cut out the sill (no easy feat) and replaced it. The only suitable material I had been able to find was find was a 10" x 3" piece of wandoo. It was heavy! I added a piece of jarrah to make up the width, under the door. The tenons on the bases of the mullions were still in good condition, so I was able to cut the sill to house it around them. The result was a very solid new joint between the mullions and the sill. Nice.

These pics show the sill being chopped out, and the new sill installed.

The next task was to replace the transom. Once this was done, I made new mid-rails and fitted these. Then the bottom rails of the side panels were constructed, and the panels made up and installed.

This pic shows the new transom under construction on the portable bench. There was a lot of hand work to do on site to make and fit the components.

After the refurbished joinery was cleaned up, the leadlight panes were put back in place and the beading mitre cut and nailed in place. Then the finishing mouldings were added around the wooden panels and in other places as required. Beads were added full length down the inside walls, and other finishing touches including sealants were added to hold together the render and mortar which was frittering down the openings adjacent to the joinery.

Re-hanging the security fly door was a challenge, as the opening was now slightly different to what it was when it had been installed. I had squared up the joinery, so there was a bit of trimming and fine tuning to do to re-hang both the security door and the front door. However the net result was a very nice job. It was all as solid as it would have been when the house was built in 1908.

This pic shows one of the completed wooden panels with new mid-rail above, mouldings added, beading completed and leadlight panes re-installed. All old nail holes and surface termite damage have been filled, so it's ready for painting. That's up to Joe and Anne now...

This pic shows the job almost complete. The joinery has been re-built, the security door re-fitted and hung. Now it was just a case of re-hanging the front door and cleaning up.

I am looking forward to seeing it all with a new coat of paint.

Honouring the original makers.
When I do jobs like this, working with old joinery and furniture, I always find myself thinking about the blokes who built the stuff in the first place. It was evident that most of the work was done by hand, including the dressing of the timbers. This was apparent due to the variations in the dimensions of the timber over their length - including the sill and the stiles and mullions. The bottom wooden panels had obviously been added on site by the carpenter/joiners who installed them, as they had used some of the flooring as the bottom panels. The floors are kauri pine, and the termites were not too keen on this. So there was mostly only surface damage to the panels. I replaced these with new jarrah panels. So here we are just over 100 years later - I hope my rebuild of this joinery has done the original tradesmen proud.

New life for damaged material.
After I finished the job, in my workshop I was able to re-use enough of the timber in these panels to make Joe and Anne a beautiful kitchen chopping board with breadboard ends. A nice touch to use some of the old damaged joinery and give it a whole new life again . Now that's a low carbon solution! Timber is a wonderful low-energy high-carbon material which can be re-used again and again for centuries, so long as it does not rot or is not totally eaten by termites!

Visit to the Alexandria Seaport Foundation, Virginia.

While in the USA in November, I was delighted to visit the Alexandria Seaport Foundation, in my quest to check out youthworking programs which use woodworking activities.
This pic shows me outside the ASF's floating office.


Some background info from their website:

Doing Big Things with Small Boats!
Through the building and use of wooden boats, the Alexandria Seaport Foundation helps at-risk youth turn their lives around and provides families, community groups, and schools with meaningful educational, social, and recreational experiences. Full-time apprentices earn their GED and prepare for a career in the building trades. The latest additions to our program include vocational training in green construction, a summer program, and an afterschool program.

Special thanks to the legendary Joe Youcha, the hands-on Executive Director of the ASF, for meeting with me and showing me around the workshops. An inspirational guy with a very exciting set-up. One of the wonderful things about this program is the use of volunteers from the community, who work alongside the young people as they build the boats together.


This pic shows Joe Youcha (right) chatting with one of the young participants, who was working on varnishing this beautiful wooden boat he had helped to build.

Prior to the Global Financial Crisis, the ASF had a very high success rate in transitioning the young participants into the mainstream workforce. With high unemployment in the USA now, these outcomes are more challenging to obtain - however the organisation through its wonderful commitment to its participants is exploring other creative ways to assist the trainees to find ways into the workforce with their woodworking skills.

There is a lot of complex maths involved in setting out the hull of a wooden boat. The ASF program has developed very effective ways of teaching mathematics to young people who may have been able to make sense of it in school.


This pic shows the guys working on the preliminary setting out being done for another boat hull.




Beautiful boats made in a very positive learning environment. This program was very exciting, and I was so pleased to be able to check it out!

The website for the Alexandria Seaport Foundation is definitely worth having a look at:

http://www.alexandriaseaport.org/



For more great info and pics about the ASF, check out the Meyer Foundation Annual Report via this hyperlink: http://www.meyerfoundation.org/annual07/seaport#/images/annual/seaport/sp10.jpg

Visit to Covenant House's Artisan Woodshop, Washington DC.

It was a pleasure to visit the Artisan Woodshop program, run by Covenant House, while I was in Washington DC recently. This program is a job training initiative focusing on teaching woodworking skills to youth at risk including homeless young people.



Over a 4 month period, they learn not only a range of woodworking skills, but they also develop many of those employability skills employers require.
Learning just to be reliable and turn up for work is such a basic and critical attitudinal skill which the young participants acquire during their training.

Up to 8 young people participate in the program at any one time, and are currently making table and chair sets which are then given to needy families in their communities. The trainees are paid the minimum wage while they are engaged in the program.

In this picture Greg is chatting with Kevin, a program participant. It was a delight to hear Kevin speaking about how his view of furniture and timber has changed now that he understands how furniture is made and the effort which goes into making it. Like most woodworkers, he now finds himself picking up furniture to see how it is put together. That is a good sign! Thanks to Kevin - keep up the great work, mate, and I hope you find some work as a result of your enthusiasm and the training you've received!


Special thanks to Training Instructor Justin Couch, for generously giving his time to spend with Rosemary and myself.
It was great to hear from Justin about the background toe the program and the way the program has modified along the way. His manner with the young participants is clearly one of those ingredients which helps make the program work well. Justin and I are pictured here together.

The US economy has been hit hard by the repercussions of the global financial crisis, so finding employment for the trainees is a very tough challenge at the moment. I wish the staff at Covenant House and the Artisan Program and the young participants the best of luck as they respond to this challenge. Check out their blog at www.chdcartisans.blogspot.com for more info.

As a woodworking youthworker myself, it was inspiring and encouraging to learn about this fantasic program.

Visit to Washington DC Guild of Woodworkers

While in Washington DC recently, I was privileged to be able to visit the November meeting of the Washington Woodworkers Guild. Like the Fine Woodworking Association of Western Australia, where I am a member, the Washington group at the meeting was made up primarily of older blokes and just a few women. There were about 35 people present, and it was an honour to also be offered a 15 minute slot to speak about Woodworking in Western Australia.
I gave the Guild a few samples of WA native timbers I had brought with me especially for the occasion. The meeting also included some business, the sharing of tips and ideas for jigs, some input by a member with suggestions about safety in the home workshop, and the primary speaker - a sales representative from Felder who was speaking about the European style combination machines they have brought into the US market. This session generated some very interesting discussion amongst the meeting about riving knives, safety guards, the pros and cons of combination machines, and sliding tables on table saws. The Australian OH&S standards are very close to the European standards, whereas the USA does a bunch of stuff very differently, so it was fascinating to be there for the discussion. I have been reading a number of US woodworking magazines since the 1980s, so it was a delight to be there and to start to understand woodworking in this country.
Special thanks to President Stu & to John Machey and the members for welcoming me to the meeting. I am particularly thankful to Bill Walmsley for kindly giving a ride all the way home across the city!

In Celebration of My Wood Working Heritage

I am fortunate to have benefited from a significant woodworking heritage. Here is a brief look at it.

My great-grandfather, William Miller was a coachbuilder and wheelwright, and partner in the coachbuilding business Miller and Cleary in Wellington Street, Perth. The picture above shows the Miller and Cleary display in the 1910 Labour Day Parade. He is the one with his hands on his hips.

William's son, Frederick, was to become an engineer with the Post Master General's Office. Fred married Lucy Hall and they had 5 children over 22 years: Ray, Doug, Kit, Ken and Lyn.

The 3 boys, Ray, Doug and Ken all became Carpenter/Joiners, with Ray also becoming highly skilled in Boatbuilding. Douglas Graham Miller is my wonderful father.

Doug started his apprenticeship in 1945 at Povey's on Stirling Highway, Nedlands.

Doug around the time that he finished his apprenticeship. Probably around 1949-1950.

Doug and his mate Dennis Greeve started their cabinetmaking & joinery business in Claremont (later known as Swanbourne) in 1950. They and their wives Gwen and Tress, all partners in the business, would operate for 36 years before closing the partnership in 1986.

This advertisement was shown at the Windsor Theatre in Nedlands, around 1952. It shows the latest in modern kitchens at that time!

Over the years, Doug built a number of pipe organ consoles, wind chests, wooden pipes, fascias and other components for several Australian Organ Builders. This picture from 1980 shows Doug building the jarrah facade for the Perth Concert Hall Organ.

Dennis's brother Peter worked for the business for most of those 34 years, and over the time they trained around 11 apprentices. An incredible array and variety of high quality joinery, furniture, and cabinetwork was produced by Greeve & Miller over the years.

In 1988, Mum and Dad retired to Augusta WA, where my wife Rosemary and I and our family were living. We were running our business, Marginata Fine Furniture, in Augusta at that time. Doug was not really ready to retire, so he came and worked with me most days.

This picture shows me in 1988 making a reproduction jarrah lounge chair for a customer. This was when I started my "apprenticeship", as Dad worked with me most days over the next 4 years. I was so privileged to be working with him and learning from him over this period.

While a teenager, I was not that interested in being like my father - not an unusual thing during adolescence - however I did learn a lot as a child. I grew up surrounded by the sights, smells, sounds and talk of woodworking. Amazing what we learn by osmosis as children. I was always swinging a hammer and a saw, building tree cubbies and making things in Dad's workshop. I still have and use some of the tools I was given by him from age 9 onwards. While I went and did other things as a teenager, I soon found those acquired woodworking skills helpful for income generation in the years after I had left school.

Although we live 200 miles apart, Dad continues to be an incredible source of information for me, a great mentor and living treasure trove of skills, tips, experience, and traditional woodworking knowledge.

Congratulations to Doug, who turned 80 on 14 July 2009.

He continues to make mostly small things, like boxes and small tables.

This picture shows Mum & Dad, Doug and Gwen, at Dad's 80th birthday celebration.

In September 2009 they celebrated 55 years of marriage. I am fortunate to have such wonderful parents, and I owe my Mum and Dad so much for who I am...

The Wonders of Recycling.

Over the last few days I had the pleasure of running a program held at the Earthwise Community Association in Subiaco, focussing on the use of basic woodworking hand skills to create wooden products from timber which has been discarded on roadside cleanups.

Diverting discarded timber and wooden furniture from landfill.

Much of the timber resources I gathered up for the program by doing a kerbside crawl in a neighbouring suburb on the morning before. What a treasure trove! This included an old jarrah desk, made of nice wide boards. The current cost of the timber in this desk would be over $250. There it was waiting to go off into landfill. Crazy. We put much of it to good use. This picture shows some of the wonderful resource obtained from a quick drive around a local cleanup area in progress.

The program was sponsored by the Mindarie Regional Council, Western Australia's largest Waste Management Authority. The MRC manages the disposal of about 350,000 tonnes of waste generated each year by people living in its seven member Local Government Councils. These are the Cities of Joondalup, Perth, Stirling, Wanneroo, and the Towns of Cambridge, Victoria Park and Vincent.

The series of workshops run over 3 days were intended to help the participants understand how so much of this roadside discarded timber and furniture can be diverted from landfill and given new life as new pieces of furniture or as functional wooden items. This also involved the participants learning basic woodworking skills in order to know how to utilise some of this huge resource.

Utilising timber and wooden furniture from the kerbside cleanups will often involve the demolition and cleaning up of the timber first. So we started out with people learning how to use pincers, claw hammers and pinch bars to separate components and remove the nails.

Session 1 - Making a kitchen chopping board

The project for the first session was to make a kitchen chopping board. Some great wide pine boards were obtained from a large packing crate. More were obtained from some old bookshelves. There were some jarrah boards, ex 8"x1", which had previously been ridge pieces from a house. A discarded imported kichen benchtop provided a solid laminated timber from something like plantation oak. The 12 participants learned how to use panel saws on sawstools to cut their pieces to length first. Then it was on to how to use a hand plane to plane the faces, shoot the edges and then shoot the ends square. The arises were chamfered with block planes, a small amount of hand sanding followed, and then olive oil was applied to the finished chopping boards.

While some found muscles they hadn't used before, all were delighted to take their piece of grotty looking timber on a journey to new life as a functional kitchen implement which will last for generations. Along the way some basic woodworking skills and understandings of timber were gained. For many this was a new experience, and opened up new possibilities for the diverting of material which would have previously been heading for landfill.

Session 2: Making a book shelf/DVD rack.

Based on a plan from a 1946 woodworking text book, the project for the second session was the making of a small bookshelf, modified to also be a good size for use as a DVD rack. Wider boards were used to make the ends, and several people used jarrah obtained from that desk. The timber used for the horizontals I had previously machined from old 4"x2" jarrah and blackbutt rafters and flooring. Nice timber. The 10 participants learned how to the use a tenon saw, marking knife, marking gauge, sliding bevel and chisels to mark out and cut the tenons and mortises. While none of the bookshelves were actually completed by the end of the session, they were just about there. A couple of people borrowed some chisels just to finish off their mortises at home. It had involved the learning of many new skills, and some nice bookshelves will yet be completed.

Session 3: Making a wooden Spoon.

This session is always fun. The 6 participants used an array of timber to make their spoons. We recycled bits of a barbeque trolley, flooring offcuts, and a piece of 3"x2" wall stud for this project. The participants learned how to use gouges, scrapers, spokeshaves, coping saws and rasps to make their spoons. A bit of sanding and the application of olive oil completed the project. Each spoon was an individual expression of its maker, and were a fantastic collection of beautiful designs and functional pieces which will last for many many years - again from timber diverted from landfill!

At the start of Day 2, I had 28 planes to sharpen! I was very pleased it only took me 80 minutes!

The message behind the activities.

This program was a heap of fun, but had a serious message behind it. One of the key educational messages for the participants is this: It is time we were a lot less wasteful and more conscious of where all that kerbside cleanup material ends up.

Landfill is a growing problem for us all, and there is no need for us to throw out so much wonderful timber which can be utilised - and diverted from landfill - once we appreciate it's potential and have the basic skills to use it.

Session Four: Making New from Old.

The last session was a full day, a Saturday, and an opportunity for the participants to make whatever they wanted to. I arrived early to get organised, before the group arrived. While preparing for the day, I was knocking apart some discarded drawers to get the timber from the drawer sides and faces. I was thinking how good it was that the material (pine) was all dressed to a nice consistent size. So I knocked up an egg rack in half an hour. When the mob arrived, the egg rack provided some inspiration, and sure enough another egg rack was made from some drawer sides before the day was out. Some participants made jarrah spoons and kitchen spatulas from bits of barbeque trolley, or continued on working on their bookshelves. There was also a fantastic combination bench hook and shooting board made from an old aloes drawer front, and a jarrah photo frame made from timber I had previously machined from an old rafter. A small old ledged jarrah door was made into a table top with legs for the table made from a discarded pine Ikea bed frame. A wonderful piece of which the creators were very pleased!

All in all a very successful program, and a heap of fun! The smiles say it all. Peg's yummy soup kept us smiling too.

The message also came through clearly about some simple ways to utilise timber which was discarded and destined for land fill until it put to a range of other uses by the workshop participants.

Special thanks to Peg, George and the Earthwise mob for their friendly hospitality, and demonstrated committment to community and responsible living on this Planet.

Let's hope we get to offer more of these workshops...