The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been experimenting with creating things out of old cigar boxes. I’ve been using carving, pyrography and decoupage to transform these old wooden boxes into interesting works of art. The photo above shows a “good” result: a jewelry box for my daughter made from beautiful sapele wood with a nice thick top for carving. Unfortunately, on some other attempts I ran into problems. I’m glad the boxes are inexpensive, because a lot of them wind up on the scrap wood pile. Most of them are made to look exquisite in the cigar store, but a closer inspection shows their flaws. Here are some of the problems I have found working with recycled wooden cigar boxes. I hope you an learn from my experiences and save yourself some grief.

Severe Warping – Cigars demand a moisture rich environment. The wood for the box is probably newly cut and very moist. The air in the cigar store is kept humid. Then you bring the empty wooden box home to an atmosphere that is very dry by comparison. The result is severe warpage. See the photo below. Beautiful wood…nice box shape…but totally useless.

Laminated Wood and MDF – Some boxes are painted or stained. You sand of the finish only to find medium density fiberboard or cheap plywood. Bummer! The plywood is also a prime candidate for warping.
Label Removal – Otherwise known as a time-consuming exercise in screaming and cursing. Why is it that the nicest looking boxes have labels attached with glue that could be used to build steel bridges? Forget water as a solvent. Try paint thinner or mineral spirits. I even tried acetone. The label came off, and so did the finish. Because the labels are so hard to remove, you can easily scrape the surface if you are not careful. Labels on the inside of the cover are especially troublesome to remove. They are usually very colorful and foil coated. I tend to leave them on as reminder of the fact that the finished box was a cigar box at one time.
Cheap Hardware – Don’t expect the hinges and clasps to be top quality. In some cases, you might want to replace them with better hardware.
As a result of all this, I have become pickier at the cigar box bin. I now know what brands of cigar have the best boxes to work with. I still enjoy recycling these old ladies into beautiful maidens.

Winter time is fireplace time.

At Christmas time we had our first fire of the year in our fireplace. I gathered some old wood from outside and also a box of scrap wood from my workshop; the remnants of a variety of projects over the past few months. My 5 year old granddaughter was helping me throw the small scraps on to the roaring fire. Then I realized that she was keeping about every third piece because she liked the way they looked, especially the ruby stains in the box elder. Ah, a girl after my own heart.

Here's an old English poem about firewood:

Beech-wood fires burn bright and clear

If the logs are kept a year;

Store your beech for Christmastide

With new-cut holly laid beside;

Chestnut's only good, they say,

If for years 'tis stored away;

Birch and fir-wood burn too fast

Blaze too bright and do not last;

Flames from larch will shoot up high,

Dangerously the sparks will fly;

But ash-wood green and ash-wood brown

Are fit for a Queen with a golden crown.

Oaken logs, if dry and old,

Keep away the winter's cold;

Poplar gives a bitter smoke,

Fills your eyes and makes you choke;

Elm-wood burns like churchyard mould,

E'en the very flames are cold;

Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread -

So it is in Ireland said;

Apple-wood will scent the room,

Pear-wood smells like flowers in bloom;

But ash-wood wet and ash-wood dry

A King may warm his slippers by.

Anonymous

Do the dancing flames really symbolize dancing wood nymphs?

Keep the home fires burning brightly this winter.

I wish you all a happy and a peace-filled new year.

Herbie's Auction

I’ve always been fascinated by trees with names, but we’ll talk more about that some other time. Right now I want to focus on one specific tree by the name of “Herbie”. Herbie was a 217 year old elm tree, and held the official title of the biggest elm tree in New England. It towered 110 feet above Yarmouth, Maine. It was about 8 feet in diameter at the widest point. Herbie died from Dutch elm disease. The only reason Herbie lived as long as he did was because of the loving care of Yarmouth’s tree warden, Frank Knight, who cared for the tree for over 50 years. Frank is 102 years old himself. I’m not making this up folks. It’s a great story.

Herbie had to be cut down in February of 2010. That in itself was no simple task. We’re talking about over 40 tons of wood, and about 6,000 board feet of usable lumber.

If you read this blog, you know I believe there is something special about these old trees. You also must know that I believe that the spirit of the tree is, in some way, reincarnated in the beautiful and useful objects that are made from their wood. The good news is that even though Herbie the tree may be gone, he is still alive in his wood. When Herbie came down, Chris Becksvoort, a New Gloucester furniture maker found himself in charge of the wood distribution. He had the great idea of letting artisans and craftsmen use the wood from Herbie to create objects that could be auctioned off. The auction would raise money for the Arbor Fund of Falmouth to plant new trees. He got his idea from the Onetree Project in England where artisans did the same thing with a 170 year old oak tree that was dying and had to be cut down.

Over 80 artisans and artists participated creating over 300 objects for the auction. Objects included benches, tables, carvings, lamps, bowls, vases and an electric guitar. There was even a mobile made from paper from Herbie. The auction was held two weeks ago and netted $25,000 for the arbor fund. Click on the links to see an article on the auction and a video of a news report on the entire story.

This is the guitar made from Herbie wood by Andrew Olsen of AO Guitars.

These turned and carved vases were made by Jacques Veresy.

Reclaiming the wood from any old tree is a great idea but I think that using the wood from an important historical tree is very special. Apparantly The people at Historical Woods of America agree with me. Visit there website and find out more.

Have you ever crafted something out of wood from a special old tree?

Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts and Wood

Lately I have really been immersing myself in the flowing beauty and simplicity of Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts Movement that flourished in the early years of the 20th Century. The Art Nouveau style is exemplified by artistic geniuses such as Alphonse Mucha, Gustav Klimt, Louis Comfort Tiffany and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. During the same time period, other artisans such as Gustav Stickley, Elbert Hubbard, and Charles Rohlfs, and architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Greene & Greene contributed to what came to be known as the Arts and Crafts Movement. Both movements became interwoven and formed a new design style which was a deliberate departure from the overly ornate Victorian style that preceded it. Each artist, artisan and architect had his or her own style, yet each expressed a common belief in simplicity of form and a communion with nature. The art of this period took a critical look at the new age of machinery and mass production. As an alternative, it emphasized hand craftsmanship and locally skilled creative workers.

Personally, there is no other period of time which has produced so many pieces of art that can take my breath away. Walking through a Greene and Greene home gives me more pleasure than eating an ice cream sundae…and at zero calories. My wife and I had the opportunity to tour the Gamble House in Pasadena, CA, a beautiful city which is the “Mecca” of Arts and Crafts on the West Coast. The house was built in 1908 as the winter retreat for the son of the founder of Proctor & Gamble. It was designed by the upstart young architect brothers, Charles and Henry Greene, who had just been to the World Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, where they became influenced by Japanese architecture. The whole place is a symphony in wood. Mahogany, teak, maple, oak and cedar. Each room is a new treat. The joinery, the carving, the details! It’s an overdose of some of the best wood craftsmanship I have ever seen. If you are ever near Pasadena, a tour of this National Historic Landmark should be on you itinerary.

The above photo shows a detail of the carved cedar frieze in the living room of the Gamble House. The artist used the deep natural grain of the weathered cedar plank as part of the carving. This freize circles the entire living room. It was subtle yet overwhelming at the same time...if that's possible. I found myself staring at it with an open mouth.

If you’re stuck on the East Coast but still want some indulging Arts and Crafts desserts, I recommend the Gustav Stickley exhibit at the Newark Museum going on until Jan 2, 2011. I was especially impressed by the inlay work in some of the pieces. See Stickley chair on the left.







If that isn’t enough dessert for you, I suggest the special exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City called “The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs”. It ends Jan 23, 2011. See Rohlfs chair on the right.








Immerse yourself in the pleasures of Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau as I am doing, and let me know what you think.

Ah, the burn of a good cigar... box, that is.

I picture one of my early ancestors, thousands of years ago, forging a metal spear point out of bronze and laying the hot metal object down on a piece of wood. “Hey, would ya look at that!” he would say, as the hot metal spear point burned a design into the wood. Thus, the art of wood burning or pyrography was born.

As crude as that early experience might have been, my recent experiences have not been much better. I have taken up the art of pyrography, which means I have invested in a decent burner transformer unit, a few tips of assorted shapes and a tip holder pen. I’m just a beginner, and still in the experimentation stage, but I’m starting to really enjoy this new hobby.

I am very fortunate to have a cigar superstore about 5 miles from my house. They sell empty wooden cigar boxes for one dollar each, ten for $6.00. There are sitting in a huge crate right near the entrance to the store, which doesn’t seem to stay full very long. I’ve been stocking up on boxes for several months now. Some of these boxes are very well made out of solid exotic woods with beautifully crafted box joint corners. Why do I feel like I’ve just given away my secret? Oh well, there are lots of boxes to go around.


This new interest of mine combines art with recycling, which makes me feel good about the enterprise in general. I’m still not sure what I will be doing with the finished boxes, but Christmas is coming up and they might make good gifts.

Have you ever tried pyrography? Have you ever tried to turn old cigar boxes into new works of art?

The Shape of Spoons to Come

My family has a lot of left-handed people. I am not one of them, but my wife is and so are two of my four children. We once had a family celebration at a restaurant and out of 12 people, 8 were left-handed! This brings me to the subject of left-handed and right-handed spoons. I like carving wooden spoons. They are so utilitarian. You can be very creative and they make good gifts. Recently I have made several non-symmetric, ergonomic shaped spoons. I used cherry and maple “firewood” branches from my backyard. I have designed one shape for a right-handed person; and the other for a left-handed person. In the photo above, the top spoon is the righty; and the bottom spoon is the lefty. “Not so”, says my wife. She would prefer to use the one I designed for a righty, and she is left-handed. I showed her photos of similarly shaped spoons on the Internet. They are all labeled “left-handed” and they are shaped sort of like my design. To make matters worse, all the other lefties in my family agree with her. I guess it’s not right to label things…or people, for that matter.




What do you think? Which spoon shape would you prefer using? Perhaps you would rather use a straight, symmetrical, old-fashioned wooden spoon instead of one with a curvy shape.

One Awesome Walk in the Woods

"This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic."

Evangeline A Tale of Arcadie
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

My wife and I took a weekend trip to northwestern Pennsylvania, to attend a regional woodcarving show at the Sawmill Arts Center in Cook Forest State Park. The show was enjoyable, but the highlight of the trip was a hike through an amazing old growth forest of ancient white pine and hemlock trees aptly named: “the Forest Cathedral”. The big ones were over 36 inches wide and over 150 feet tall. Most of these giants were over 300 years old. The forest floor was covered with fallen tree trunks and, as Longfellow said, blanketed with moss and ferns. I took photos, but they just don’t do justice to the grandeur of the place.

The history of this forest is interesting. It seems a lumber baron by the name of Anthony Cook became very rich in the late 1800’s, by stripping most of the area of trees and floating the logs down to Pittsburgh. However, he never touched the old growth in the center of the property. In 1928, he became somewhat of a conservationist and deeded 7200 acres to PA which became the State Park. Fact: By 1920, two-thirds of the trees in Pennsylvania’s forests were gone as a result of the lumber industry.

I would recommend a trip to Cook Forest State Park to anyone. It might not be Muir Woods, but it’s one of the best old growth forests in the East and very accessible, by a short two mile hike. Looking straight up the trunk and seeing a 150 foot tall, 36 inch diameter pine tree swaying in the breeze, is a sight I won’t soon forget.