‘Peter Follansbee’ Category

Picked up pieces 3.0*

January 22nd, 2013 by Rick McKee

…of The Riven Word while wondering what our beloved NE Patriots ever did to Bernard Pollard…

Run of the Mill

Lubing the wheel.

Plimoth Plantation is running a grist mill!

The Plimoth Grist Mill is a working mill reconstructed on the original 17th century site along Plymouth’s Town Brook.  The mill stones have been tuned and the various moving parts have been tweaked. Join us in welcoming the wonderful, talented, and intrepid Kim Van Wormer as she manages the mill and prepares to grind organic stone-ground corn meal and grits (samp) while interpreting the history and technology of an operational grist mill. Kim will be blogging about her grist and grind and we’ll post a link to her blog once it’s up and running. There are some intriguing stories which have already come out of this venture and this promises to be a fascinating experience. The Riven Word will keep you posted. Grind on, Kim–Harry Hornblower would be proud!

Nailed it!

Our own Mark Atchison has been published in the September issue of The Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association magazine. His article: “William Palmer–An English Nailmaker in New England” is richly detailed, researched, and illustrated. It’s a perfect representation of the seamless blending of traditional and experiential research we strive to achieve here. For information on how to join EAIA and read Mark’s article, visit their website: http://www.earlyamericanindustries.org/

New Guy

Mark and Matt working on a hammerhead.

And while we’re the subject of blacksmiths, The Riven Word welcomes new blacksmith apprentice Matthew “Mateo” Brault to the artisans. Matt comes to us from Bay End Farm where he’s been toiling organically for the last couple of years. Welcome aboard, Matt! We’d like to put in an order for 500 free-range, organic nails please…

The Saw Wright

This saw, sold by A.J. Wilkinson Hardware in Boston, resonated with Peter F.

Peter Follansbee brought around a special guest the other day: Matt Cianci, aka The Saw Wright. Matt is a true saw doctor who sharpens and repairs vintage saws. As Matt explained the provenance, value, and general condition the saw pictured above, Peter and I felt as though we were in an episode of Antiques Roadshow. Peter has had several of his own saws worked on by Matt. You can learn more about Matt and his great work by checking out his web site: http://www.thesawwright.com/

 

Thanks for making a house call, doctor!

A Dutch rick of wood?

Winter Scene at Yselmuiden by Hendrick Avercamp c.1613

Thanks to the keen observation of the fabulous Kelley Araujo, we may have found another image of a rick of firewood. Our posts on this method of storing and seasoning firewood brought us to many places, and maybe this is another log to throw on the fire. Behind the coal being unladen, after the Providence Bruins warming up on ice, there’s a circular mound between two buildings in the center of the blue circle. Could this be a wood rick? Is it associated with either of the two buildings? It looks proportionately plausible. Thanks Hendrick and Kelley!

Corrections

Back in September, we took a little stroll through some of the building history at Plimoth Plantation in Letting The Days Go By. In that post, we said that our cratchet-framed forge was the first large-scale building made in that style. We were wrong! Rob Tarule set me straight:

“…in ’84 or so we made the cowhouse behind Billington. Not only was it cratchet, but we made the roof on the ground and lifted it onto the cratchets one morning before opening with a bunch of hands. The exercise was based on an article in Vernacular Architecture by Freddie Charles, an architect who specialized in saving things like tithe barns.”


Thanks Rob. It’s always good to hear from you and we are looking forward to more collaboration with you.

 

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

 

*Dan Shaughnessy, longtime sportswriter for The Boston Globe, periodically writes a column full of random sports observations called, Picked Up Pieces. It’s a series of pithy vignettes which, taken as a whole, present a larger picture of the local sports and cultural scene. The title is taken from John Updike’s 1975 book of the same name. In that spirit, The Riven Word presents its own version of random moments and events which have occupied our figurative desktops recently.


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Posted in blacksmith, firewood, Peter Follansbee, tools | No Comments

Ash

October 2nd, 2012 by Rick McKee

fraxinus americana L.

From baseball bats to lacrosse sticks, from splint baskets to tool handles, wood from the ash tree has been a staple of woodworkers across the country. Sadly, it’s under attack from the Emerald Ash Borer and millions of trees have already been lost.

Characteristic half-moon exit holes:

Sapwood damage:

Here are a couple of links which speak further of the Emerald Ash Borer, its range, and controls:

http://www.emeraldashborer.info/identifyeab.cfm and http://www.emeraldashborer.info/

Locally, the borer’s damage hasn’t been acutely felt yet. Irina and Alexey from Salicicola have shot some great images of white ash, including the fine specimen below from Lenox, MA:

This truly has become an urgent matter–we may be witnessing the demise of a species–which makes using ash an almost philosophical quandary. Peter Follansbee, joiner here at The Plant, touched on this very subject in his recent post about ash, If it aint oak… Please have a look at Peter’s blog if you haven’t already. It’s an inspiration. The respectful use of this beautiful tree, being made into long-lasting chairs and baskets, is one way to honor it.

A local baseball bat-making business, The Barnstable Bat Company, has begun making bats out of yellow birch–who knew? Yellow birch compresses and hardens in the “sweet spot” of the bat through use.  Everyone is affected by the borer and those who have traditionally used ash are adapting. Perhaps the “crack of the bat” will mean a very different thing to the next generation.

The other morning, I came across Mark at our saw-pit. He’d just come out of the woods where he’d been planting native white oak acorns in various locations around our campus. We control what we can, and think about those who will follow us.

The coffee can held the acorns. The pointy-stick was used for a dibble.

Here is the video The Riven Word made of Peter Follansbee pounding a section of ash into basket splints. Even if you will never make a basket from white ash splints, you will appreciate Peter’s admiration for this incredible tree, and his deeply abiding respect for its wonderful qualities. If we are seeing the last days of  fraxinus americana L. , I cannot think of a better appreciation for this tree’s unique gifts to us.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

 

6 months later, co-worker Eva Lipton is still in our thoughts and prayers:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Team-EVA/223963567711425?fref=ts

There will be a gospel-choir fundraiser on Saturday, November 10th in Marshfield. Gospel in Marsh-Vegas??? It promises to be an amazing event to support Eva and her family. Click the link below for more information:

https://www.facebook.com/events/122152571266813/

 

 

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Posted in building materials, Peter Follansbee, riving, video | 11 Comments

mistakes**

September 17th, 2012 by Rick McKee

Cut where now?

As much as we like cheap handbag outlets, furry shoes shilled by a certain quarterback, and hearing that our “presentation has allowed great benefit (smiley face) and respective intriguing content”, the spam filters of The Riven Word have been working overtime lately and for that we are grateful.

Occasionally, though, we hold our noses and jump into the sea of $300 headphones and monkey-cannabis-airway-cures to double check if any legitimate correspondence has been being filtered out. There were two just this morning. Sorry about that.

If you’ve submitted comments to our blog and haven’t seen them, I’m afraid they’ve been hanging out on dimly-lit street-corners with cheap boots, jackets, and coach-handbags. We don’t police the spam-police holding tank very much and it’s likely that some comments have been lost.

If you feel your comments have been loitering with the wrong crowd, email us at: artisans@plimoth.org and we’ll notify the proper authorities. We love hearing from you!

In the meantime, if you’d like to subscribe for email notifications of The Riven Word, follow this link to enter your email address. We’ll do our best to extricate you from any over-zealous spam filtering.

Thanks!

 

**the above picture was not really a mistake but a controlled demolition of the old William Brewster House.

 

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And speaking of great discussion threads following a post, have you seen the recent post by Mr.Follansbee? It’s about his philosophy of working green wood by hand and it’s very much worth a look:  http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2012/09/13/thoughts-on-hand-tools-and-green-wood/

 

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Posted in Peter Follansbee, Uncategorized | No Comments

The Return of the Prodigal Sawyer

July 28th, 2012 by Rick McKee

What do you think of when you think of vacation? Sunny climes and fruity drinks? Hiking above the tree line? Lighting votives in an incense-infused space and listening to A LOVE SUPREME by John Coltrane until your vinyl melts? It’s all of it, good.

How about, pit-sawing?

The saw's gullets carried most of the dust down to the pit, to the chagrin of the pit-man.

As you’ve likely guessed, dear reader, the bubble in our spirit level is just a wee-bit off. And in that off-center spirit, we include many of Plimoth Plantation’s former artisans who just can’t get enough of the sweat and dust that is pit-sawing.

Why hit the gym when you can work your cardio AND make scantling for a timber-framed house at the same time?

Old friend Stuart Bolton and his lovely family were up for a visit from the DC-area and via several texts and calls, Stuart made absolutely clear his interest in jumping on the pit.Wait–you’re on vacation amidst some of the most sublime beaches on the east coast during the full flower of summer and you want to go do work in our stinky and dank saw pit? Sure, ok!

Stuart's flawless technique begins and ends with those blindingly white knee socks.

Sawyers work best when they share a similar mental and physical aptitude for the work–their pace, the saw’s angle, their relative height to one another, and a consistency of stroke. If the pit-man is an olympic distance runner and the tiller needs a smoke, they may be somewhat out-of-sync. If the tiller has T-Rex arms and cannot bring the majority of the saw’s teeth through the kerf leaving the pit-man without a full extension, it may lead to early-onset exhaustion

Stuart and Michael, however, proved a sawyers’ match made in heaven–or at least Devon.

Sawdust tastes exactly like it looks.

Oh sure, it was a little awkward in the beginning, getting the saw to start plumb in the end grain of the red oak, a few tentative starts and stops, awkward silences followed by talking over one another…is this going to work? Is there enough set in the saw? Does he even like me? Then, like a cascade of arpeggios coming out of the bell of Trane’s tenor, the work all at once clicked and the two made the saw sing with a long run.

Like traveling on winter roads, a little fishtailing is not unexpected. Turn into the skid!

As in any relationship, however, there are inevitable rough stretches. A small amount of steering was required to keep the saw on line. Stuart and Michael’s almost plumb approach to the work made it easier to twist and “throw” the saw back on course because there’s less steel to drag in the kerf.

We hew the log square before sawing.Plumb lines are scratched onto the grain at each end as reference.

So while Justin and I ran interference, driving the occasional wooden wedge in the kerf behind the saw and documenting the work for posterity, Stuart and Michael sawed on. And on. And while we forgot to count the actual number of strokes in their run, we did mark the start and end points and we kept time.

A nice olympian run. Pit-sawing as Olympic event? Vote?

Tale of the tape

Sawing an 8×10 & 1/4″ x 16′ red oak into one 7×8 beam and one 3×8 sill.

  • Stuart and Michael cut 160″ (13.3 linear feet) of 8″ thick oak in 50 minutes, real time.
  • That equals 25.6 square inches of cutting/minute.

“Real time” included moving the timber to another position over the pit as the kerf progressed as well as a small rest about halfway through the run.

From the pace of 25.6 square inches of sawing per minute over 50 minutes, we can extrapolate the real time sawing average over an 8 hour work day:

  • 12,288 square inches of sawing or 128 linear feet through 8″ stock of red oak

These are very rough estimates, to be sure. There are a host of variables to consider. From E.B. Jupp’s, An Historical Account of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters, (London, Pickering and Chatto, 1887), we have a 1655 record of sawyers’ wages (thank you Peter Follansbee):

“for oake by the hundred 2s 8d”

The record gives different wage rates for oak, elm, fir, and deale boards. These are a day’s wages and, presumably, the standard amount of material which 2 sawyers can process in that time. The question is, what is a “hundred”? Is it a measure of board feet (1 foot wide x1 foot long x 1 inch thick)? If this is true, then a sawyer in the period is expected to saw aprox. 34.5 square inches of material per minute, which is somewhat more than our rate.

How sketchy are these estimates? Very sketchy. The Riven Word stands ready to be corrected. And more delving is needed. Just what is “sawing by the hundred” anyway? Regardless, such sawing runs give us valuable insight–not to mention house parts–and, we hope, puts us in the same ballpark as our pit-sawing forefathers.

The characteristic split grain at the end of a kerf. Well done, gentlemen.

These pieces are going into the new Francis Cooke House frame. All in all, it has been a pleasant “vacation”. Outstanding work, Stuart and Michael. And thanks for your time, Mr.Bolton. So while some folks want an umbrella in their glass–others prefer sawdust in their mug.

Into the great wide open.

 

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

 

Editor’s note: This was the second day of sawing for Stuart and Michael. Two days earlier, The Riven Word caught a streamlined 8-minute run on video in real time.

Watch a pitsawing music video by The Dinghys!

Subscribe for notifications of new posts by clicking on the “Get The Riven Word in your inbox” link on the upper right hand corner of our blog.

Thank you for reading!

 

 

 

 

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Posted in building materials, oak, Peter Follansbee, pit-sawing, The Francis Cooke House, timber frame | 18 Comments

In Lieu of Socks, Ties, and Cologne…

June 5th, 2012 by Rick McKee

So this weekend, by happy chance did I rediscover a book I’d purchased several years ago, The Artisan of Ipswich–Craftsmanship and Community in Colonial New England by Robert Tarule. Rob is a scholar, teacher, artisan, and in many ways The Godfather of the Interpretive Artisans Department at Plimoth Plantation. We owe so much to Rob, who was–and continues to be–groundbreaking in his study and teaching of history, English traditions, and what it is to be a contemporary artisan practicing traditional methods.

The Artisan of Ipswich is a gem of a book, with a 17th century artisan’s life fleshed out using extrapolated town records and regional English origins. As a longtime traditional carpenter and joiner, Rob brings much of his own expertise and insight to bear. And though the topic would at first appear to be localized and trade-specific, Rob does a fantastic job of getting to the heart of the larger 17th century world-view so foreign to our own. Practitioners of traditional woodworking will appreciate the well-researched detail on everything from wood and timber management in England and New England, to the specifics of construction of a 17th century joined chest. The work and social dynamic of a joiner’s daily life in colonial New England has never been rendered quite like this before. It’s worth a read.

For information on purchasing The Artisan of Ipswich, here’s a link:

http://www.plimoth.com/books-media/artisan-of-ipswich.html

And speaking of Father’s Day gifts, Peter Follansbee and Jennie Alexander’s latest book, Make a Joint Stool From a Tree: An Introduction to 17th-century Joinery is also available through our museum’s online catalogue:

http://www.plimoth.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=follansbee

You know about Peter Follansbee: The excellence continues…

 

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

 

On our way back from laying out a log to hew, this little fellow crossed our path the other morning.

Perhaps he had been laying out on his own log...

 

Random Alex quote #31:

“I mean, we don’t KNOW that it’s not historically accurate to make a hole in a hard boiled egg and blow off the shell.”

 

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Posted in books, building materials, Peter Follansbee, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Giving pause…

April 1st, 2012 by Rick McKee

Thanksgiving is about 240 days away, but that doesn’t stop us from taking stock of the people and places that we are thankful for. Today is as good a day as any to be grateful. Why wait? The Riven Word would like to acknowledge some of the people and businesses who Plymouth-ROCK our world and who inspire us to do our best: (in no particular order)

Peter Follansbee


Simply put, there is no one on Earth who does it as well as Peter. But you probably already know this. Joiner, researcher, author, teacher, lecturer, photographer, bird enthusiast, dad-a-riffic, Catholic school grammarian, beard model, friend–what can’t he do? We here at The Riven Word are fortunate to interact with him on a daily basis. Those of you who have met Peter know he can come across as just a wee bit cantankerous. But come out to our museum and watch him interpret his trade to our museum guests–patient, entertaining, informative to young and old–it’s the way it should be done. Here’s a link to Peter’s blog if you haven’t already subscribed–  http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/author/pfollansbee/ It’s an understatement to say that our work (and this blog!) is much inspired by this Smith-Brotherin, ZZ Top-Posin, one-of-a-kind gem. But ere we heap on any further praise, The Riven Word would like the record to show that when Peter throws junk in half-ball, he is eminently hittable.

James D. Ripley–Pine Logs/Firewood

Verily sir, I knowe how to drive a stick.

When we need a delivery of timber from our favorite sawmill Gurney’s http://blogs.plimoth.org/rivenword/?p=622 we always call Jim. It’s a great relationship: We go pick out logs at Gurney’s and Paul keeps them at the yard until Jim can pick them up for us. If it’s not a full load, Jim will put on logs from his own yard to fill out the truck. Inevitably, after cherry picking the logs off the truck, Jim will kill the engine and we’ll chat some. It’s a little known fact that Jim would love to be a Pilgrim with us in the village.

Bogs, woods, and marshes

Skid's. We gathered birch for broom stock for Martha on this day.

What would we do without our local cranberry bogs, woods, and marshes? These places provide essential materials like small trees and thatch for us to build and maintain the pilgrim village. With place names like Tidmarsh and Skid’s, these are local treasures which we are incredibly appreciative of. Thank you to those who allow us to harvest in these special places. It’s amazing and rather special when a bundle of cattails or a maple sapling is turned into a teaching device.

Our co-workers

The new wetu on The Wampanoag Homesite.

What a great group of people we work with. You hear that constantly at Plimoth Plantation. Like any healthy organization, if the workers are happy, everybody’s happy–our guests included. No one works here for the money! And no workplace is perfect. But regardless of our department, we share an ideal when we arrive at work each day and it bridges us. Here’s a good opportunity to plug co-workers Kathleen and Carolyn’s blog, Pilgrim Seasonings, for an inside look at the colonial side of food:  http://blogs.plimoth.org/pilgrimseasonings/ And for shipboard updates, Peter, Keith, and Danny will keep you above the water on doings at Mayflower II:  http://blogs.plimoth.org/captns-blog/

Once an artisan always an artisan

Pret, Tom, Stuart, Shann, George, Paula, Hank, Leslie, Jack, Meg, Bryan, Ariel, Marcia, Michael B, Joel, Liz, Rob T, John S., Ted, Steve, Joe, Rick C, Peter Slevin, Marie and Davey–how many more? Your work, your efforts–your coffee mugs–are with us everyday. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

Plimoth Plantation

Who else would support the crazy notion that history can be a living, breathing, forward-moving thing? Harry Hornblower, founder of our museum, we do our best to carry on your innovative spirit, benevolence, and sleeves-rolled-up, WHY NOT? legacy. Happy 65th, PlimPlan.

Thanks all.

 

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

 

A terrible car accident has touched our museum family. Our thoughts, our hearts, and our prayers are with the four students and their families from Silver Lake High School.

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Posted in building materials, Peter Follansbee, The Francis Cooke House, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

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