The Barn on White Run

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulders: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God.  You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

And they said, “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary?”

And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.  And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. 

I pray for you to have a blessed Christmas with loved ones and that you are celebrating the Incarnation, through whom we can be reconciled with The Creator.

I am the delighted recipient of Mrs. Barn’s foodie-ism.  She loves cooking as much as I love puttering in the shop.  One of the benefits of this relationship is that I come down the hill for lunch and supper every day and there is a wholesome real-live meal awaiting me.  She makes all our butter, yoghurt (our breakfast of choice for many years) and ice cream from scratch, as she does with almost everything else we eat.  No wonder my matchmaking sister told me 45 years ago, “I’ve got just the girl for you!”

In recent years as an attempt to reduce our carb and white flour/wheat intake she has been making sourdough bread from einkorn she grinds herself.  Admittedly she parcels it out like I was a junkie, maybe a slice or two a week.  When we went lower-carb years ago I gave up sodas and fruit drinks cold turkey with no problem, Same for wheat pasta and other starches as she has found excellent alternatives (I actually prefer quinoa to rice and pureed cauliflower is almost equal to mashed potatoes).  But bread?  That was way tougher as I had been eating a whole loaf of grocery store bread every week and still love it.

She has compiled a recipe repertoire that I think she should turn into a cookbook (especially the wheat-free treats and sugar-free desserts, but she doesn’t think anybody would be interested.  Sigh.)

Anyway, this video made me think of all this.  I found it fascinating, she found it old news.

For the last several months I’ve been prevented from getting into a rhythm in the shop due to a host of wonderful family happenings, sometimes even going for weeks without darkening its doors.  When I do get into the shop I spend a lot of time cleaning, organizing, and tuning up the shop itself.  That really does not require really getting in the flow, I can just spend a few minutes here or there moving nd throwing away. In fact I’m trying to impose a better order and functionality of several shop spaces.

One of the unintended pleasures of the undertaking has been the rediscovery of items I did not even remember I had, at least until I put my hands and eyes on them.  Such is the case with this 3″ x 3″ print, taken with a tiny Kodak Instamatic pocket camera fifty years ago.  This piece was one of the “kits” delivered to the Schindler’s shop in the back of a Mercedes station wagon.  Taking pictures of my projects was simply not part of my operating system back then, but this tulipwood and rosewood marquetry secretaire bore a royal inventory stamped, probably from about 1700.  Along with the other “kits” I worked on around this time, including a pair of bureaus by Riesener, a switch was turned for me that has directed part of my life to this very day.

And I did not even remember this image until I found it while going through a box of ancient stuff.  Heck, I haven’t even thrown away all my papers from college.  My college career lasted from 1972 to 1985, so…

In a recent eight-day stretch here at Shangri-la we had more than a foot of snow, much earlier than normal for us in the Virginia (!) highlands.  My pal MikeM lives in upstate New Tork and we note that our weather is basically similar, just one day earlier or later depending on which way  the fronts are moving.  Tomorrow night I think the overnight low will be approaching zero.  That usually does not happen here until late January or early February.

Just for reference — the snow buildup on my shooting bench of 6″x8″ timbers.

It made me all the more thankful I have a mondo snow blower that can clear the driveway with three passes.  On the other hand, even though it is power-drive it still requires rasslin’ a 350-pound machine on slippery ground. It took about an hour to clear the driveway from the front gate up to the barn.  It took two days for my shoulders and hips to quit barking at me.

Last night as I was heading down the hill for supper I noticed this fascinating formation on the edge of the log barn roof.  I’ve never seen anything quite like this.

Definitely time to get back to processing next winter’s firewood.

Perhaps because I am lackadaisical about organizing my own living and working spaces I find presentations of exquisite spatial and functional organization to be compelling.  This video included ideas I will file away for that “whenever” time that I no longer have the barn space at my fingertips.

Recently Li’l T got a small rasp and has been going to town carrying it around the house with the rasp and a scrap workpiece from Dada’s latest project.  The time has come for Grandpa to think about lighting the torch to be passed to this little guy and his littler brother, Mighty M, who wants to be doing everything his big brother is doing.  Littlest brother Wondrous W is only a month old so he is behind the curve for now, as is their cousin Dynamic D who is nine months old.  Yeah, walking and talking are helpful in the process.

About 35 years ago I made a pair of half-scale but honest to goodness workbenches for my girls.  To that end I recently took Mama’s workbench to live in Dada’s little workshop in the garage for Li’l T amd Mighty M to sue to their hearts content.

This new epoch makes tools a part of the equation for every Christmas and birthday from this point on.  Whew.

The day began with smoothing the parquetry compositions, first with toothing planes, both manufactured and home-made, then followed by blocks of pumice.

The next step was to lay out a simple banding knotwork design for one corner as an exercise.

Excavating for the inlay came next, followed by cutting and fitting the elements of the design.

In the end everyone went home with examples of the techniques to apply to their upcoming projects.

If this technique interests you I hope you will join me for next year’s class on October 1-3, 2026.

It’s been a banner year for the Barn Clan, with grandson #3 born in February and grandson #4 born last Friday, giving us quite the inventory.  As the fates would have us all the grandsons live within five miles of each other, so Grandma Barn is always ready for a road trip.

Good thing Grandpa Barn has bins of tools ready for the new hands.

Opening up the panels glued up the night before is always a thrill for the students to see their work coming to fruition.

The next step is to trim the fields to make them good rectangles for the banding followed later by the borders.  A variety of veneer saws were at work, ranging from pricey French saws to inexpensive Japanese ones.  They all work.

The perimeter banding was applied and adhered with 192 gws glue, and the banding held in place with aluminum push pins that are surprisingly similar to those used by craftsmen 250 years ago.

Throughout the day and overnight, if a panel was not being worked it was placed in front of a box fan to drive off as much moisture as possible, to harden the glue under the parquetry.  That strategy was somewhat successful.

Thus endeth Day 2.

Last month, for the first time in many years, I was able to offer an Introduction to Parquetry class at Joshua Farnsworth’s Wood and Shop near Charlottesville VA.  We plan for me to offer the workshop again next year.

I had two exercises in mind for the students, all based on sawn veneer edge strips from boards.

The strips were then cut into identical 60-120-60-120 parallelogram “diamonds” or lozenges with a simple jig and a dovetail saw.

NB/ mea culpa – over the years I have attended and spoke at countless woodworking clubs and guilds, and invariably there is a show-n-tell session, and invariably they feature prominently some elaborate jig a member made to do this or that function.  (Yes I know I used “invariably” twice in one sentence.  That is a purposeful literary flourish.)  In the old days I would just roll my eyes and tell myself, “That’s not woodworking.”  Then we started the Roubo Transalation Project.  Turns out the world of the ebeniste’ was all about jigs and patterns.  To quote LBJ, “I reserve the right to be smarter than I used to be.”

Once the pile of lozenges got big enough, they laid out X and Y axes on a piece of paper to guide them then started assembling the composition by gluing down the lozenges to the paper with 135 gws hide glue.

Once the composition was large enough to cover the “field” of the substrate panel, in this case 1/2″ Baltic Birch plywood, the working face of the parquetry (ultimately the verso) was slathered with 192 gws hide glue, followed immediately by the face of the substrate panel.

Then the wo glued surfaces were brought together and clamped using another 1/2″ panel as the caul and a double layer of corrugated cardboard as a gasket.

Thus ended the first day.

Something you do not see every day, a gilded throne heading down the road.  Image courtesy of my son-in-law.  Just gotta wonder what the back story is.

A few months ago I posted about a large chunk of a maple tree that came down (about 18″ at the bottom), and my cutting it up.

After I was back home my son-in-law and Li’l T moved the bolts into an abandoned goatpen house I built 25 years ago.  It is a better structure than some of the church-camp cabins I stayed in as a yoot.  The wood will remain there until I decide what to do with it.

I expect it will mostly become turned bowls but my lathe needs a substantial upgrade for that to happen.

Over Labor Day Weekend I was once again a presenter/demonstrator at my friend TimD’s Historic Trades Fair in the central part of our county.  There were several dozen artisans there, including the leather/fur seamstress I shared a tent with, blacksmiths and sheet metal workers, premium woodworkers, gunsmiths, tailors and much more.  Tim thinks he will max out with about fifty demonstrators in the next couple years.

And there I was doing my thing, presenting myself as a congenial woodworker with a complete shop while working on a Gragg Elastic Chair and engaging with the many visitors who stopped to ask about it.

The setting is nothing short of spectacular and the weather was absolutely perfect.

Here’s a glimpse of a recent fortnight in Shangri-la.

As is often the case my brother and his wife come for a visit, now extended from one week to two weeks since they are now both retired.  I guess that is a commentary of sorts, with my siblings and I all retired including the baby.  We are fortunate in that all five of us get along famously and maintain a steady text thread keeping us up to date with each other.  The thread activity really ramped up when our Mom was in her final decline a few years ago and it never stopped.

Anyhow, you might remember the post a few months ago about trolling for firewood on the homestead, with a special emphasis on existing windfall waiting to be harvested.  Of particular interest this week was the cluster of storm damaged locust trees up at the top of the hill, with several large trees down and tossed about.  FYI locust is a highly prized firewood, very BTU dense with a hot burning temp and less ash than other woods.  When we got down to it, we realized that in addition to the already-dead trees there were at least a half dozen still-standing (but probably not for long) locusts that could/should come down.

So down they came.  It took some forethought as the trunks were intertwined and needed to come apart in a particular order.  My brother is really good at that work.  By the time we finished the week there were four heaping trucksful of sawn and split firewood to stack up at the barn.

At this point I am well into the firewood inventory for Winter 2026/2027, but I still have a lot of windfall to harvest.  By my guess it will be about ten truck loads, so all is good.  I will work on those truckloads in between other stuff over the winter.  It’s gonna be crazy with grandson #4 due probably next week.

I do not know the setup of the Blacksmith Bolt and Rivet fellow (he’s been getting virtually all of my wood screw business for quite some time) but this video of a “small” Japanese screw making operation tickled my fancy.

Recently my brother and his wife were visiting, and their routine included a long evening walk.  One of the walks was in the aftermath of an early evening rain, with this being the result.

Polishing, polishing, polishing.  Unfortunately we were so busy and occupied with our tasks I did not get many pictures.  Maybe next year I can be more attentive to that task.

I’ve not been to the world headquarters of Lost Art Press since forever (at this point our interactions are via email) but found interesting the video tour James Wright and daughter created on their recent visit.

The exercises proceed apace, building finishes and the skll set to accomplish them.

I fully expect to reprise this workshop at Joshua’s next summer, along with perhaps a couple other offerings.  Introduction to Parquetry is taking place the end of next week, so come on and join us.

The description of this year’s class is identical to previous year’s so I thought I’d just have a gallery of student activities day by day.

I expect I’ll teach this again next summer at Wood and Shop.