(upbeat country music) - Today on The American Woodshop, it's a tale of four woodworkers.

I'm Scott Phillips.

- And I'm Barry Todd.

- And later today we'll see Eric Gorges of A Craftsman's Legacy and we'll go to Suzy's woodshop, her new barn.

So.

- Don't go away.

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(rock music) - There are a million different reasons to work with wood, work with your hands, why do you do it?

- A creative outlet, I just always had something to do to keep me busy and it wasn't until I retired that I found wood turning.

I just wish I'd found it so much earlier in life.

It's a great outlet, it's great therapy.

(chuckles) - Well I'll tell you what, the wood in this, that's stained maple and then it comes down to walnut, and the stem is turned gracefully and you stacked those pieces together and you're going to show us how to turn a base, but talk about your latest creation before we do that.

- This one I call the holey grail.

Not the Holy Grail you're thinking of, but H-O-L-E-Y.

This came from a mistake I made one day.

It was turned too thin, so-- - That's wood?

- Yeah it's wood.

This is poplar.

Somebody gives you a lemon, you make lemonade so that's what this is.

This is poplar, this is four pieces of walnut that were turned what they call inside out, that's why you can see a little hollow in there, and just walnut to show that it is wood after all.

- Okay, now light in the hand, and that's how you can tell if a turner really knows their stuff, it's light, it's graceful.

Then, you can flip the bowl upside down and it becomes a Shade of Tiffany as you call it.

- This is part of my series called Shades of Tiffany.

I tried something different, this is all maple, but I tried a little wood burning and a little coloring.

- It's beautiful.

- Thank you.

- Now the basics on this start with the base, pull that apart and we'll see how to do this.

- This is the base that you can put just about any form on top of, whether you want a candy dish or Shades of Tiffany, but that's two pieces of wood.

What I'm gonna do right now is turn the base from this piece, and then I'll turn the stem from another piece of walnut so it will then fit together like that and you can just do whatever you want to on the top of that.

- That's spectacular.

Now whatever you do, be sure to take off your rings.

Read, follow and understand the instructions that come with the tools and products you use in your woodshop.

When you turn, roll up your sleeves, no loose jewelry, long hair, and have face shields.

So let's get to it, Barry.

- All right.

Let's have fun.

- Okay.

(wood lathe whirs) You're using a roughing gouge, tell us the correct way to use that.

- [Barry] I like to use it going away from me most of the time with rather than holding it straight on, a little bit of an angle, a little pitched away from me.

- [Scott] Right, and that will give you a better cut.

- [Barry] Nice clean cut, fewer catches.

- [Scott] And you're getting it balanced right now, and he starts at a lower speed setting and once that comes into form, he can dial the speed up ever so slightly, and then he'll use other chisels to add the details to the base.

- Okay that's just about round.

So at this point, turn it off, double check it and yes it's round.

Now I wanna go with my other tools and do the shape that I want for the base.

- What tools do you use?

What's the first and then walk us through the paces on that?

- I'll use a gouge.

Could be a bowl gouge, could be a spindle gouge.

- Sure.

- It's just a favorite tool of mine.

- And watch how he presents the bevel to the wood to get the right cut.

- I wanna make this, this is going to be the bottom of the piece.

- Gotcha.

- So I'm gonna start taking off here.

(wood lathe whirs) (gouge scrapes) I'm walking the edge of the bevel along the surface of the wood and taking the wood off at the same time.

Getting it started to cut like that and roll, and just take it thinner.

You always wanna go down the grain rather than up into it, or you're gonna get tear-out.

(wood lathe whirs) (gouge scrapes) - Okay.

- Okay.

- That looks like a good form there, but you still have one more step and that's to remove a bit from the base.

- Correct, now I'm gonna stop at this point and I'm gonna recess the base a little bit, and to do that I will use a detail gouge.

I'll have to bring the tool rest around.

I'd just like a little bit of a rounded edge on this, a little bit of detail, and then on the bottom, I like to just take the point of the tool in just lightly and create a couple or three rings.

Those rings serve no purpose other than the fact of showing people that you're paying attention to detail, 'cause inevitably, somebody will pick up a piece and they wanna see the bottom.

- [Scott] So he turned the basic outside shape, like that, and now he reversed it and we have a four jaw chuck holding this piece, and describe the process now, Barry.

- What I'm gonna do now is clean up the top, just give it a little bit nicer profile, a little bit shorter than what it is, and then I'm gonna pull in the tail stock where I've mounted a three eighths inch Forstner bit and we're gonna drill a whole all the way through it.

- And that's so we can mount that with a screw chuck, we'll see that in a second.

Let's see some turning.

- All righty.

(wood lathe whirs) - And he's dialed up the speed just a hair.

(wood lathe whirs) (gouge scrapes) - [Barry] I'm gonna create a flat on top, actually slightly concave, just to make sure that the stem fits in properly and doesn't rock around.

The thing to remember with a Forstner bit is you go in so far and bring it back out to clear your chips.

- So he's got it turned and this is called a screw chuck that just mounts into the four jaw chuck, tell us why.

- Okay, what I'm gonna do is screw this onto the worm screw, and then I'm gonna clean up the bottom, make it look nice.

- Okay, we'll get that done.

And what gouge do you use for this?

- I will use a bowl gouge.

- Okay.

(wood lathe whirs) (gouge scrapes) - I'm using a parting tool, very simple, just take it straight in, and I'm creating the little extension that's going to stick down into the base.

I'm not measuring it right now, that'll come later on, but it just gives me an idea for a starting point for the rest of the stem.

- Okay.

And now it's time to profile the column, describe that process for us.

- [Barry] This is where you can have a lot of fun just free-styling and no great plan, it's just whatever comes into my head in terms of the shape.

I like to have a little bit wider at the base, create something a little bit different.

Oh maybe something like that.

That isn't very round.

Let me clean that up a little bit.

A little more graceful.

That'll fit.

- That'll do.

All right.

Now that's perfect.

Okay, we'll get this other end set up and then we use a razor saw with it turned off to trim it off.

Okay now with the lathe off, what are you doing?

- I'm going to cut it off with a razor saw, and there we go.

- Okay let's see the fit here.

Up and in.

Now that is a perfect fit, and how do the other pieces come together here?

- Very well.

- Okay.

- This piece, which would be either a bowl or in this case the shade for the lamp would fit on top like so, and then since you have the opening there, this'll be a lidded box.

The lid and a finial, and voila.

You have a lidded box.

- And boy, it's graceful, it's balanced, I absolutely love it.

Now what advice do you have for all woodworkers out there?

- Oh have fun and be safe.

- Okay, words of wisdom.

Now it's time to go visit another great woodworker, Eric Gorges, and he got his start in doing Voodoo Chopper, wonderful road trip, off to Detroit we go.

Thank you Barry.

- Thank you, Scott.

- Outstanding work.

(saw whirs) Now we're here with Eric Gorges of A Craftsman's Legacy, and Eric, so good to be in Voodoo Chopper here!

- How are you, man, how are you?

- Excellent, now this is heaven if you like motorcycles, and I do.

Right now, that's a cool cut with an amazing saw, what is this?

- This is a cold saw.

- Okay.

- Yep, so it cuts cold, runs a coolant on it.

The nice thing is, cool to the touch.

No heat, no sparks, no nothing.

- Okay so it doesn't damage the metal in any way.

What's the blade on this?

- It's just a carbide blade.

- Oh jeez, that's amazing.

Just about the time I thought I'd seen everything of tools, you come up with something new.

Now how's this fit in on your chopper here?

- Well I'm working on an exhaust system for this bike, and this is gonna slide on like this.

There's a bunch of burs on it.

- Okay, which we'll get filed down later on.

- Oh yeah.

- [Scott] Oh yeah, this is looking good.

- [Eric] So I'm just sorta getting ready to fit this up and mount this.

- Now do you do everything here in the shop?

- Yeah, I sure do.

- Oh man.

- [Eric] Yeah we make motorcycles, so we do-- - What a look on this.

- Frames and front ends and handle bars and fuel tanks and fenders and oil tanks and foot controls-- - [Scott] From start to finish, you do it all.

- The whole thing, yeah.

- Okay, so working with metal, I'm a woodworker.

- Yes sir.

- [Scott] Walk us through the paces, the first thing that you do when you are forming, say a fender, you gotta shape it or cut it in a bandsaw.

- Exactly.

- Okay.

So you take your time on a bandsaw, what speed is that saw running at usually?

- It's pretty slow, probably around 200, 240 with a metal cutting blade.

- Okay, and then once that's done, what's the next step on that?

- Well once I come up with my dimensions and I cut my blank out, then after that I score my center line on both sides and then I move over to the English wheel and I start putting compound shape into it.

- Got it.

- Right?

Which is radius going in both directions.

- Got it, and then a little bit of sanding, a lot of hand work on this.

Now let's see a couple other tips.

You have this hand scraper for woodworkers, let's go see that.

- For sure.

(saw whirs) - [Scott] Eric, what are you using and what are you doing here?

- [Eric] This is called an English wheel and this is what you use to introduce compound shape into metal.

This is one of the tools you can use.

So you're working the metal between two anvils.

- [Scott] Round anvils, at that.

- Yep.

- Okay.

- And you can see we're just putting a gradual little sweep in this, so it's stretching the metal in the middle here and just putting a nice little curve in there.

- [Scott] Beautiful.

I think we just want a little bit more.

- Gotcha.

- [Scott] And so there's a crown on one of the wheels and the other is flat?

- [Eric] Correct, the top wheel is dead flat and this bottom wheel has probably a six inch radius to it.

- [Scott] What's happening to the metal when you work this?

- So there's a pedal here, which you can control the height of this lower anvil in relation to the top wheel, and that's applying pressure to the metal, which is causing it to stretch.

Same as if you were swinging a hammer into it.

- Right.

- Right?

- Right.

- You have a strike zone of a hammer or a mallet.

This is the same idea, principle, it's just in a linear fashion.

- Gotcha.

- And it's nice and smooth.

- [Scott] Oh yeah.

You could get beautiful curves with this.

- [Eric] You can, yeah.

With the wheel and somebody that knows how to use a wheel, you could literally make anything.

You can make an entire car or motorcycle.

- [Scott] And you just switch out the bottom roller to get the different radii so that you can get any profile you want.

- That's correct.

- Gotcha.

- And I think that's nice.

Nice soft curve here.

- Yep.

- Nice crown that way.

So I'm gonna use a mill file, which a mill file is just a single cut file, so instead of having a crosshatch to it, it's only a single direction.

A mill file's probably one of my favorite files to use.

- Me too.

- It's incredible efficient and you can use it in multiple directions.

- And it gives you a great burr when you're sharpening a scraper.

- Gives you a great burr.

- So let's see this on the Gorges scraper.

- So I'm gonna draw it.

- Now this is from a piece of just processed steel.

You've seen those steps now and he's working that edge out so that we get a good burr, and that burr is like the knife of a plane when it goes to shave wood.

You'll get shavings off of wood with this.

There it's starting to sound good.

I just saw a metal curl come off of it, you're getting close.

Well let's go to your woodshop to try that bad boy out.

- Let's give it a shot.

- Yeah, feeling good.

Who needs wimpy scrapers?

I mean this is what you're looking for.

- (laughs) Look at that.

- Beautiful shavings off of this, and now we have all the profiles, it's got that nice little bend to it that's rolled in.

That's awesome.

I can't wait until those are available, but more importantly, your shop!

Tell us the story behind this, it's new.

- It is really new, yeah.

I moved here about a year ago now, and this barn was here, but I gutted it out, put in new headers, re-insulated everything, new electrical everything and-- - Plenty of good light in here - I dig it.

- LED lights, window lights.

You got your carving chisels all set up here, everything's organized, your layout and measuring, you're buying the good stuff and wow, I love your workbench and the quick release.

You're doing it right, Eric.

- I'm getting there.

I just finished this actually about a month ago, and it was real nice to have a proper workbench.

- Proper.

- You know?

'Cause up to that point, I had been doing everything on the end of my table saw.

- As so many people do.

Okay, well now let's take a look over here.

- Sure.

- So how many square feet is this space here?

- Maybe 600 total.

- Okay.

- Yeah it's not huge.

- No, but what you've done with the table saw by twisting it on the diagonal in a smaller space is plenty of in feed, plenty of out feed.

- Yep, I can get eight feet.

- That's all you need right there.

And so you've got it well organized, you got your good joiner, which so many people neglect.

You need a table saw, you need a good planer, you need a bandsaw, of course you have to have a great wood lathe 'cause that's the most fun you'll have in your shop, and good dust collection.

I love the way you're heating over there, describe that for us.

- Yeah that was the first thing I did actually when I started revamping this area was put a wood stove in.

I always loved the idea of woodworking and having a wood stove going, that smell of the burning fire and the heat that it puts off, it's just magical, man.

- It is the aroma of wood when you go into the shop in the morning that hooks you.

- Yeah that's awesome.

- It'll keep you all day.

Now hats off, what was your grandfather's name that was the cabinet maker that really got you hooked in woodworking?

- Henry.

- Henry.

- Henry Rumbecki.

- Rumbecki.

- Yep, and my dad was a very, very established hobbyist.

He had a full shop, so I grew up around tools.

I grew up using a table saw, I grew up using bandsaws.

- [Scott] How old were you when you started?

- Oh I was young, man.

Young, yeah.

- Now Eric, I can see a lot of great things in your future here in this woodshop, and where can people see more of this?

- Well you can definitely check us out online, A Craftsman's Legacy.

- All right, and on TVs everywhere.

There you have it.

Now back to Suzy's barn shop to see how that finished out this year.

My hat's off to you, man, keep it coming.

- Thank you sir.

- Thank you.

- Thank you so much.

(belt sander whirs) - All right!

Take a look at this beautiful table.

I'm the third woodworker of this show and I love live edge work.

This tree blew down on our American Woodshop property in a storm.

Live edge, you can't beat it.

Now the bark has come off of this and Suzy and I, the fourth woodworker that you're about to see, is gonna do the finishing in her barn.

We have a deal, I do all the sanding and prep work, she does finishing.

One of the handiest things going, other than that belt sander with good 60 grit abrasive on it, card scrapers.

You can work through the surface of material so fast, and I'll get this all sanded all the way through 220, and cleaned off and then we'll take it out to Suzy's finishing barn.

So back to work.

Whatever you do, be sure to wear a dust mask and use good dust collection!

And these are great, but keep the metal platen flat to the wood as you sand, and keep it moving.

(belt sander whirs) We're in Suzy's barn now and what's it feel like to have your own workshop?

- I love it, it's a great space, it really is.

- [Scott] And what finish are we using on this live edge?

- Arm-R-Seal 'cause it really creates a perfect topcoat, the perfect go-to finish.

Really soaks in there so nicely, it gives it a nice satin finish.

Do a good coat and-- - How'd I do on the sanding?

- You did great!

And I tacked it off afterwards to make sure there was none of that fine dust that can be on there and create any issues for us.

- Okay.

Well in her barn, there's lots of windows, and see right there, Suzy?

That's an area that has started to spalt, which is decay.

- I know, I love that.

It gives the wood character.

- Yes it does.

- Man, it's beautiful.

- Okay so we'll get this brushed out and in between coats, hit it with white nylon pads, buff it smooth, no sandpaper on this, no steel wool in between coats, and then the other thing is right here, these antique legs?

I'm just bring it back to life with the Arm-R-Seal topcoat.

I didn't sand this, I want the defects of 100 years of finish to be on there, but it needs a little bit of TLC.

And then these blocks are screwed onto the base of the slab, but in oversized holes so the wood slab top can expand and contract and it won't split out.

So we'll get this brushed out and then you'll get to see it when it's all done.

Now see these holes in the bottom of this old leg assembly?

They're huge, and I'm using screws half that size, putting the screw with a pilot hole in the bottom of the live edge top so that that allows the top to expand and contract, and that way it will never split out the top.

You saw him on the first show, come here Bear.

Come here, sit!

- Bear and Pippi!

- Come here, and Pippi, she said, "Don't leave me out, Dad!"

These are our two shop helpers.

Couldn't do our woodshop without 'em.

- That's right.

- Now I want you to look at something else.

Look at this leg assembly.

I mean, this cost me the princely sum of $20 at Goodwill!

Pippi likes it.

No chewing!

Okay and then on this live edge slab, Suzy, are you happy?

- Oh I love it!

I love the way the two pieces marry together and this live edge and then the beautiful spalting in the middle.

It's an awesome table.

Truly is.

- It really is.

- I love it.

- Nature has a story to tell and she's telling it in work like this.

- Well and this came from our property.

This tree fell down at the shop and that's cool, so.

- Well kinda blew down in the tornado, but that's another story.

Well that's it for season 27, thank you so much for being part of our lives and looking forward to season 28 with you and a lot of inspired things, and be sure to check us out online as well 'cause you can watch our shows there too.

So stay busy in your woodshop and build your dreams, just like we are, right?

- Right.

Lots of good projects to come next season at my new barn shop, yeah!

(laughs) - All right, well go have some fun.

See ya.

- See ya.

- [Announcer] Woodcraft, since 1928, providing traditional and modern woodworking tools and supplies to generations of craftsmen.

Woodcraft, helping you make wood work.

Pro tools for tool pros.

(intense music) RIKON tools.

Woodcraft magazine, projects, plans and web links designed to help you make wood work.

PS Wood, hope of Timber Wolf Swedish silicon steel bandsaw blades and super sharp scroll saw blades.

A bed to sleep on, a table to share meals, a house that feels like a home.

The Furniture Bank of Central Ohio, providing furniture to neighbors in need.

(rock music) - For more information on tips behind The American Woodshop and watch free episodes 24/7, check us out online and like us on Facebook.

(upbeat country music)