A picture from inside the Centre for Fine Woodworking, NZ.
Today was a good day. I was fortunate enough to pay a visit to the Centre for Fine Woodworking in Nelson, NZ. I had originally planned to take a short class at the school while on holiday, but time did not cooperate. Instead I just stopped in to have a look over the place. As I stepped into the benchroom it was a breath of fresh air. Benches, planes, timber, shavings, and workers of wood abound. (Note good day!) The Centre was started by David Haig and John Shaw, both pronounced woodworkers in New Zealand and have taught in the States as well. (Check out
http://www.centre-for-fine-woodworking.co.nz/ for further info.) My intent was to just have a short visit and head out, but I was invited to stay the whole day. To start off John invited me over to his bench, pulled out some native timbers and a Veritas Low Angle Smoother, and let me play. The species I was working were Matai and Totara, which took the iron remarkably well. I had this vision that New Zealand timbers would be dense and hard like the horror stories I have heard about Australian hardwoods. I was surprised to find that most NZ timber is quite soft. As I planned away in bliss John brought over a wooden Krenov style plane for me to test drive. Come to find out later that plane I was using was an ORIGINAL James Krenov plane. James gave it to John during a visit to NZ before John spent a year with James at the College of the Redwoods. I asked John and Dave a lot of questions throughout the day about woodworking and their backgrounds. David revealed he is mostly self taught, learning the "hard way". While talking with David in passing he muttered a paraphrased quote that I later found from Hunter Thompson. "No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master." - Hunter S. Thompson (1939) What David was trying to say really stuck with me. It showed me the importance of woodworking instruction and the need for me to sit under the tutelage of other woodworkers. Not that self teaching is inadequate but I think instruction can take some of the frustration out of learning a craft and it passes on generations of knowledge learned the "hard way". I think we can all learn from each other and not just rely on the counsel of our own.
An original James Krenov plane.
Some old Stanleys.
During our last trek in the Tablelands area of Kahurangi National Park Aimee and I spent two nights (Rained out) in the Asbestos Cottage. The Cottage was built Circa. 1900 and is a standing history of the area. Once inside the woodworking history of the cottage really showed it self. All of the timber in the entire building was all pit-sawn native timber. Pit-sawn meaning each board was ripped by hand out of a log, no saw mill here. Basically two carpenters would take a log and straddle it over a dug pit. One carpenter would jump in the pit and the other on top of the log and they would start to saw the log lengthwise with a large two man rip saw. As I looked around the cottage I was surrounded by what seemed to have taken thousands of man hours to make. That will make you appreciate s4s timber. 
Saw marks on floor boards.
Note the Log Dog used to hold the logs during the pit-sawing process.
