This weekend I am mighty pleased to be heading up to Port Townsend, Wa for a workshop at the Port Townsend School of Woodworking. The workshop is called By Hand and By Eye, and is led by Jim Tolpin. I love his books and especially his Gyspy Vardos, so this is a very appealing course. The content is centered around designing with ratios and proportion - not a ruler. This is one of the more compelling areas of woodworking for me; I love story sticks, dividers, compasses, sectors, calipers, and other methods of imposing a certain dimension on an item without using a ruler. I don't mind rulers, and have a little fascination with them as well, but this kind of geometry actually makes me excited.
If any of you will be there, let me know! I hope to return to this school for other classes, so it will be great to check it out in person. Also, if any of you have been there and have suggestions for lodging, restaurants, etc, do share!
Very jealous! I bought Jim Tolpin's last book and have enjoyed all of his. I like his style. And I too love the idea of ditching my ruler for most operation. I kid you not, the other night I downloaded some geometry worksheets and learned how to use a compass to construct a hexagon, find the midpoint of a line, and some other cool stuff. I was hoping it would come in handy in the workshop someday. And really, those geometry constructions are some of the only good memories I have from just about every math class I ever suffered through :0)
ReplyDeleteI'm with you there, geometry was great fun. The other math classes, less so. You might want to check out George Walker's blog, if you haven't seen it:
ReplyDeletehttp://georgewalkerdesign.wordpress.com/