Gryphon C-40 Wet Bandsaw - Demo

Awhile ago, I posted a video review of the Gryphon C-40 wet bandsaw, but didn't really cut glass or curves.  I didn't have the right stock on hand to cut up for curves then posted it too quickly.  Mea culpa.

This video is the missing demos; we'll cut 8mm thick glass, porcelain tile, and natural travertine tile.  All stock will get a straight cut, soft curves, then more aggressive curves.  For the glass and porcelain tile, each cut is separate. On the large travertine tile, I made one long cut composed of the three segments.

Remember that I'm pretty new to this bandsaw and I could see how practice especially with a particular material would make for better tracking.

Gryphon C-40 Wet Bandsaw - Review

In the "No Comment #2" build video around timecode 39:40, I processed a large piece of Onyx I scored from a local granite shop's dumpster, I mean, showroom.  The first email I received after releasing the build video was "what's that wet bandsaw all about?"

The next build video in the "No Comment #2" series (Tim Burton Table) will cover all the Onyx work for the top cap.  Since that relies on this Gryphon wet bandsaw, I thought to review it first so I don't have to do that part in the build video.

This saw is popular among artisans since it is so well designed and fits well in a studio.  Cutting tile, stone slabs, rough stone, and glass is all very easy to do.  Its glass-cutting ability would make it a fantastic tool for stained glass work.  In my case, my interests were in being able to add stone accents to projects and possibly moving into some Pietra Dura, which is marquetry with stone.

The version I have is from Paul Schürch, who modifies them to have a beveling table on the deck for the bevel cuts needed to inlay stone or do Pietra Dura; he uses one for his work as well as for teaching Pietra Dura classes.  First chance I get, I'll take that class!  They are special order from his store; if you get the saw from another distributor, it won't come with that addition, which may or may not interest you.

Part 2 includes demos with thick glass, porcelain tile, and natural travertine tile.

WIA'12-Pasadena: Personal Tour with Paul Schürch

The week spent in Pasadena for WIA'12 included several side trips besides WIA itself.  When I think of the highlights of the week, WIA is actually pretty low on the list!  The number one highlight of the week was going to Paul Schürch's shop for a tour of his projects and shop in beautiful Santa Barbara.  As I eluded to before, I brought along two friends thinking we'd be there for maybe a couple hours.  Eight hours later, Paul and my friend Roger were both getting close to the doghouse with their wives otherwise it might have lasted even longer!

For me it was special to hang out with two creative minds I greatly admire; Paul being one, Roger being the other.  I got to know Paul earlier this year when I took a fantastic 5-day class in marquetry from him (read this post on the Paul Schürch class for more details!)

We started out just in the shop with general introductions and looking around.  Roger spotted some interesting work up on a back cabinet and the banter started.  "What was this for?" "Really? For what project?" "How do you know her?!" "When was that?"  After several minutes of this going back and forth, they realized they had bid against each other on a project.  Roger was a primary bidder while Paul was subbed by a bidding designer.

But that's when it got even more interesting as they exchanged details, difficulties, and solutions for their respective submissions.  Hopefully this introduction will get them collaborating in some way in the future (and I want to be the fly on the wall for those design sessions!)

For part of the afternoon, Paul took us up into a storage area above the shop where many of the projects you see on his site's gallery page are stored.  We got a personal tour of each item and all our questions answered.  I liked these projects before, but like them even more now that I got to see them up-close, see how smooth they operate, and the caliber of marquetry (which can be assumed with Paul).


We also got to see some of his projects in process.  No video of those, but they'll be impressive once you see them in his photo gallery.  I'm looking forward to seeing the ones using stone.  I'm hoping he'll someday do classes in pietra dura, or stone inlay.  There are lessons learned on dealing with stone in the dialog of the video; getting those in a class would be fantastic.

The video below was taken of that tour.  I'll apologize up front that we were very close quarters literally swapping places with each other to move around.  That said, there's camera motion I don't like.  I'm super sensitive to that and it doesn't bug me so hopefully it's okay with you.  Just focus on something far away whenever you hear me 'ooh' or 'ahh'.



Here's a link to the video for my email subscribers.

WIA'12-Pasadena: Decorative Arts at LACMA

The last entry showed you the Metropolis II exhibit at LACMA.  We actually went there to see woodworking and decorative arts, but Hot Wheels are hard to resist.

Today's clip is a compilation of many short clips taken in LACMA's decorative arts wing.  The place is huge!  While there is a lot of art that is nice to see, I didn't film it all.  Though I wish I took a clip of the big billiard balls... next trip!

The photos in this posting are actually frames from the video so they aren't as crisp as a camera shot; watch the video, though, to get swung around into places that are difficult to see unless you're a camera on the end of a long arm :)

Because the museum is so dimly lit, I had to digitally process each clip to get some light into the shadows then color correct because of the processing.  Because of that, you'll see more, but some colors may not be as true to reality as I'd like.

The last clip of the video is actually from the Getty museum; it is a table top in pietra dura, otherwise called stone inlay. Gorgeous colors.

If you are in the area, LACMA is a great place to spend a day.


Hopefully the captured frames from the clip have tempted you... click play below for the real deal :)



There'll be at least one more video from the trip; it'll be the private tour of Paul Schürch's shop and previous projects.  I'm leaving it to last because it's driving Andrew nuts to wait :)

For email subscribers, here's the video page.

A Day with Paul Schürch

I'm still in LA after WIA'12.  Today's plan was to go visit Paul Schürch at his studio in Santa Barbara for, oh, maybe a couple hours then chat over lunch.  I went with Chris Wong and Roger Savatteri, two pros I hang out with so I look like I know what I'm doing :)

We started out with a brief tour then started talking about what people are working on.  Paul and Roger are both very creative minds.  After a bit of discussion, it became clear that they both worked on a project bid against each other.  Being a fly on the wall to listen to the inside stories of the project was very interesting especially to hear two very creative designers exchange how they created what they did and exchange lessons learned.

After an excellent lunch together, back to the Schürch bat-cave for a look at his archive of finished projects.  I've seen most of them in books or on his site, but to see the spinning cabinet or game table up close was a treat along with answers to all the questions you could toss out.  There was even the veneered clothing on display alas without the lovely model.

Many of his works in progress were around the shop including one based on some pietra dure, which is marquetry using stone.  Imagine a stained glass panel made of stone... Some very interesting stuff coming out of Paul's shop this year.

We spent 8 hours together; what an amazing day!  I only expected to hang out for a couple hours.  Paul and Roger both may be in a bit of a dog-house... Good thing I brought some bottles of local Arizona wines to hand out as Get-Out-Of-Jail cards.  Hope it works :)

In other news, Roger decided to kindly give me his lathe, assuming I can get it in the car! No hard stops... Great timing so I can put it on the back patio as the weather is finally sub-100F. Hope I don't get a catch and launch a gouge into the neighbor's window...

I did take some video of Paul's completed projects as well as his shop.  I'll edit that this weekend after I get back home so you can peek at the work and description from the maker.  'Til then...

What I learned from Paul Schürch

Good grief, where to start?  That should give you a clue of the awesomeness of this class.

Paul Schürch came to Phoenix to teach a 5-day seminar on decorative veneering and marquetry.  For those of you who don't know who Paul is, he's a marquetarian who can do the classics, but excels at playing with the classics to make them come to life.  His break-through piece was the ribbon cabinet that caught the judges off guard by draping the ribbon throughout the piece instead of staying in the confines of the filetti.

The photo to the left is his spinning cabinet, one of three.  Click the photo to get to his gallery for it.  Nice stuff :)  He had this design rolling around his head for 7 years before committing it to a blueprint and ultimately build it.  Glad I'm not the only one with projects swimming around in my head forever.

The class started with getting familiar with the tools we'd use; the key being a veneer saw.  That's mine sitting on two of his booklets.  It's a common Two Cherries veneer saw.  While it seems perfectly obvious after the fact, the start of the class is correctly sharpening that saw.  World of difference.  The saw came in a kit of tools sold for the class along with all the boards and veneers we'd use.  Someone couldn't find their saw.  Paul said to look around for a saw with blue tape on it... because in every class, people put a bit of blue tape on their saw to mark it... guilty!

The first project was a marquetry panel based on one of several patterns he brought to class.  These are simple as far as marquetry projects go since the petals can have some cut drift or over-shading and still look pretty good.  This photo is of my panel; it has only had a minimal sanding and needs more before a shellac finish.  I'll be finishing it later along with my second panel described below.

While simple, the project takes you on a fast tour of everything needed for marquetry: 4-way bookmatch background, mitered filetti (the border), packet cutting all the part veneers at once, sand shading to express a light source, and all that is involved in assembly, gluing, repairing, sanding, and finishing.  By the way, 'fast' is appropriate: Paul keeps a very good pace; nobody gets left behind, but you won't find yourself yawning much either.  Very much appreciated.

Repairs are inevitable in any project, but with thin veneer or burls with voids, you have repairs to do as a natural course of work.  What made the seminar so much better was Paul's constant demonstration of how to fix problems in a number of ways.  He's a funny guy so the demo would usually go, "how are you going to repair that void?" "what void?" Whack! as the chisel comes flying down to put a monster hole in your project "that one?"  Best part? he'd immediately get down to showing you 2-3 ways to fix that hole then went ahead and fixed it in record time in front of you.  After the first panels came out of the vacuum press, we went back to find the repairs; though we knew where they were, they were next to impossible to find.  Any instructor who makes a point of showing repairs or how to fix a project when something goes wrong scores points with me; Paul went well beyond that.  I may be biased because I never received a surprise chisel whack, tear of my border, intentional removing of my glue as it went into the bag or any of the other surprises... or did I? hmm...

Though commercial raw veneers are just 1/42" thick, Paul's more than a little rough with it.  Previously, I always handled it gently, but once the stuff is properly flattened (day 1 topic), it's quite pliable and resilient to abuses.

Paul taught us packet cutting for creating the marquetry; in a nutshell, sandwich all the veneers properly aligned in a packet bound by paper chipboard and cut everything at once.  You aren't cutting individual pieces to be placed later, you are cutting both the void in the background and the part that fits it from stacked veneer.  Very fast.  Both of my projects were very comfortably cut with a single packet.  If you don't have many veneers in a single project, you can make duplicates by stacking multiple backgrounds and veneers for the parts and cut them at once.  Very useful for production work on, say, small gifts like I'd make or for semi-repeating marquetry borders Paul puts on tables.

Speaking of semi-repeating marquetry: Paul spent a great deal of time describing what the eye sees and what it ignores.  Keep these in mind and you can speed your work.  For example, a table with a complicated leaf-n-vine border was created as a number of different patterns, but some patterns were repeated on the table.  If you divide the table top into, say, 5 instead of 4, the eye has a difficult time locating or noticing the duplicate.  If you do it in 4ths, it seems the eye can catch the repetition.  Further, when cutting multiple of a pattern to repeat on the border of a table, Paul is able to sometimes place a leaf over the filetti (the border) or place it under by knifing in the piece of filetti that was cut from the packet.  Makes for an excellent way to reduce the cutting labor in a project without compromising the variety of the pattern.

Another interesting tidbit: at Marc Adams, Paul has a 36" diameter table with a radial match intentionally off center.  Even when telling students to find what is intentionally wrong with the table, most struggle awhile before noticing.  In this case, the radial match's center is off by 1.25".

Speaking of labor, I found it interesting that for Paul's average piece, the marquetry is only 5% the effort.


The second project was to be student designed.  Some class members grabbed sketchbooks for existing drawings or kid's coloring books.  All are good sources of simplified drawings that can be moved to marquetry easily.  I had a goofy idea in my head of trying to use the filetti as an element.  I drew up something... I can't draw!  At lunch, I drove up the street to work and asked the graphic designer to clean up the sketch.  Damn, took Evan all of 3 minutes to draw a perfect comic picture after I struggled for an hour and killed two erasers!  (thx, Evan!)

As you can see, I chose a bird for my subject :)  The numbers are part numbers for keeping them in order (I think I left most unnumbered as I later realized).  The copy framed in blue tape is the bottom of the packet; I used the copy of the drawing to place the veneer accurately.

This is the packet loaded with veneer, edges, background.  Pieces are blue taped in place.  By the way, you will go through an amazing amount of blue tape doing marquetry.  Same with gum tape (the white tape in the dual dispenser above the packet); gum tape is a white paper tape with hide glue adhesive that you wet with the dispenser (or lick it if you like that rustic BBQ taste :)

Topped the pile with another copy of the drawing attached to paper chipboard then hit the scroll saw.  The box to the right is just a partitioned parts box; I put numbered parts in each box.  Some numbered parts had tiny parts near them so I'd toss them in the same compartment (e.g., the shoe and ankle... kinda easy to tell apart).

I did this packet at night in my shop and cut it until 4:30am (didn't feel like it, but I'm a night owl!)  I wanted to do it on my own instead of in the class for a couple reasons: sink-or-swim and not so crowded. You think your projects can occupy all available horizontal space? Try marquetry! :)  ...and don't sneeze.

That saw is really nice.  An Excaliber 30" scroll saw.  Paul had mixed experience with Excaliber before, but the new design intrigued him so the store owner brought in the 30" for him to (literally) whack around and burn out blades to see how well put together they were.  I believe you'll be reading a full review later in FWW, but let's say I'm betting there's one in his shop now to replace his 21" scroll saw.  I grabbed the saw he abused; got it signed :)

So Paul's daily saw is (was?) a 21" scroll saw, but he has access to a 9' scroll saw.  Yes, 9 feet.  It is built as part of the shop that houses it with a spring on the ceiling beam and reciprocating unit under the table.  When you are packet cutting a large dining table, you effectively have the skin of the dining table in your packet (good grief, think of the blue tape...) Apparently some artisans in Italy he visits use an equally large scroll saw daily.  One brother maneuvers the packets while the other gives "driving directions" looking at the blade.  Can't imagine that.  I think if it was me, I'd use the webcam and flat-panel in my shop to put the blade on the screen and steer directly.

Back to the saw, many of us hadn't used a scroll saw before so we all have a cut-test to pass before we can cut our packets.  Consists of a lot of tight straight lines, 90º corners, then weaving curves all on a space the size of a postage stamp.  Takes some practice; my personal panel helped a lot with that as some angles were more acute or required swinging through the oblique angle to keep pressure off a small piece of keeper veneer.  What is interesting is that packet cutting works best with at least 4 layers in the packet; less than that and you'll get drift more easily.

Ah, yes, my panel... this is what it looked like before going into the vacuum bag to be veneered to a Medex panel.  It has some placeholder veneers.  The guy's eyes and 'gator's teeth will be routed out for mother of pearl inlay.  Once that's done, I'll route out the pupil of all the eyes ('gators', too) and fill them with black epoxy to get a nice glassy look.  I'll post details when they're done.  It'll end up on the shop wall :)  Some of the things to note in the picture are the change in grain direction to really enhance something; look at the guy's pants and you'll see the Poplar grain flowing with the leg through the knee.  I think if you didn't do that, something would look 'wrong', but not be immediately obvious.

The above picture was the glue side; the back is covered in gum tape to hold the pieces together during glue-up assembly and gluing.  This is the panel assembled.  The tape comes off easily enough with a sharpened scraper especially after soaking in water.

As fine luck would have it, Paul has an article "World-class marquetry made easy" in the April 2012 Fine Woodworking magazine (number 225).  I got him to sign mine; that modified picture of him? yeah, he looks like that right before plowing a chisel into your project :)

That article is a great whirlwind tour of doing a nice marquetry project.  It turns out that specific project is covered in great detail on his Marquetry DVD that comes with a 35-page booklet you can use in the shop rather than trying to use the DVD as a shop reference.  It's volume 2 with volume 1 being Decorative Veneering (also with a 46-page booklet).  The two make a great set.  They are well produced and I've watched them both at least twice already (had them long before the class).  They are easily among the best woodworking DVDs I have.  The tool/veneer kit we purchased for the class is also available on his site and is enough to do at least a couple panels like the ones shown in the DVD; it would be the second best way to learn this second only to taking his class.

Speaking of taking his class, if you get a chance, I highly recommend taking a seminar with Paul.  Rumor has it that he will be teaching for two days at WIA'12 in Pasadena.  If you are going, sign up early for this class.  It's a lot of fun.

By the way, we had a contest for best marquetry panels based on different criteria.  My 'bird' panel won the humorous category.  It was a grueling competition in that category... I was the only one :)  My prize was a copy of his Practical Furniture Design book along with a nice drawing set.  The book is a bit of a misnomer.  Sure it talks about design, creativity, and several project studies, but it also covers custom furniture orders, pricing, shipping, and designing with shipping in mind.  I'm not all through it yet, but so far, it looks like a very worthwhile read.

Thanks, Paul!  (and thanks to the Arizona Fine Woodworkers Association for bringing him here)

(Gave him a bottle of Arizona wine as a thank-you, from Cochise County; fortunately he looked happy because in his other hand is the 'void maker' chisel!)