Hello

You may be a little disappointed reading my bio, as
you will soon discover I am far from being an expert
as most of you are. Hence I will be an active
spectator rather than a renown actor on the list.
My name is Ludovic Angot, and I come from France. I
live   in Taiwan since 2 years and work here as an
electronic engineer for a USA company. I am 31 yrs
old, married and will be dad in 2 months (I can't deny
it is an experience!).
I worked on wood since I'm about 10, and my first
tools were a jigsaw and a drill, all electric. The
only hand woodworking tool I had access to were
drawknifes from my grandfather. It is only recently, 6
months ago, after I finally set-up to a fixed place,
that I start to be more and more interested in tools,
hand tools and woodworking.
How? Thanks to internet, and thanks to the skills
discribed by members of this forum, and online shops.
Wihtout this, I wouldn't know anything about what is a
good handplane, a performant saw... France has
wonderfull pieces of furniture, surely some skilled
craftmen, but you need to be an apprentice to learn
working wood the traditional way. Hand woodworking is
definitely not as much accessible as it seems to be in
the US. Am I wrong if I say that the traditional hand
tools are given a new life thanks to english speaking
people, a lot of them being american? Thank you, guys.

So it is only recently that I bought my first plane
from Lie-Nielsen, then another one, a PAX tenon saw (I
since then learnt about ADRIA, and all the range of
Japanese hand made saw), and a wonderfull olive wood
smooth plane from HNT gordon, some chisels... And I
started with the basics: truing a small board, thanks
to a DVD from David Charlseworth. I buy about a tool
or 2 per month, good tool I mean. And hand tools. I
won't go electric, except maybe for a small drill
press. Most of my tools come from the US, so you can
imagine the money I need to spend for the shipment...

To finish, few words about my host country: the
difficulty has been to find wood. People here are
definitely not DIYers, though few B&Q opened their
doors about a year or so ago. Last month, my wife and
I localized a reseller of high quality wood: zitan,
blackwood, ... I bought an 80$ sample of species in
various forms. I will continue to explore other source
for wood, I heard there is beech here. Otherwise I
have been given few pieces of camphor wood, quite
common here.

My current project is a bow saw, made out of zitan and
guava wood (yes the fruit, which wood is very very
hard). Hopefully in a near future I will post (if
possible?) a picture of my first hand made hand tool.

Thanks again to make the woodworking word so nice and
sympathic, and accessible.

Ludovic

Please excuse my bad typing skills and the typo in the Subject line.
Ludovic is having trouble with the LYRIS server and I posted his Bio for
him, mangling his name in the process.

Regards, Steve - excited about the increased international flavor of the
Porch with the presence of Ludovic and Hans on the same day.

-----Original Message----- From: Steve Reynolds 

My name is Ludovic Angot, and I come from France.

You might find some interesting tools from Australia, although I doubt
the shipping's much cheaper.

I've also seen Taiwanese wooden planes in the Lee Valley catalogue. 
They're not the same as Japanese or Western planes -- they're pushed,
I believe, but have a crossbar handle as well.  They've got to be made
somewhere in Taiwan; perhaps you could get factory seconds?

George Frank, one of the better known wood finishing experts and a
great writer, worked in France for a number of years.  There's a book
collecting his stories and articles that's out of print.  My favorite
described how he had to ammonia fume an entire bank full of oak
furniture and paneling -- the color was too light so they put bowls of
ammonia in the main room, sealed everything up, and kept checking
through the windows until the color was correct.

Finally, there's at least one good bilingual French/English
woodworking web site, including a shopmade grinding jig designed to
sharpen lathe tools:

http://www.jeanmichel.org/

Ken Meltsner

Aargh. Judging from the pictures and text (incorrectly remembered)
in the Lee Valley catalog, Taiwanese planes can be pushed or pulled,
and don't have the distinctive crossbar handle -- that's the Hong
Kong style.

Lee Valley lists the planes as "Hong Kong-style" or "Taiwan-style" --
I'd guess that means they may not be made in those areas. The HK plane
is cool since the through cross-bar handle is removable.

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.asp?page=50251&category=1,41182,4118-
7&abspage=1&ccurrency=2&SID=

Ken Meltsner

  What about my favorite FWW article of all time?
You know the little guy dressed in bare feet and a diaper, looking out 
the window, talking on the phone to his bookie, cigarette dangling from 
the bottom lip, loud raucus rock n roll blasting ..........
and sawing out extremely fancy cabriole chair legs straight from the 
rosewood log with a bowsaw and no pattern needed?
  Then proceeds to cut incredibly intricate joints that lock seamlessly 
together with no glue or other fasteners and last 1000 years??????????
  It was in Taiwan someplace.
 yours, Scott

********** Scott Grandstaff, Box 409, Happy Camp, CA 96039 ********* 
Tools:http://users.snowcrest.net/kitty/scott/scotts/tools/tools.html 
PageWorks:http://www.snowcrest.net/kitty/hpages/

Sounds reasonable to me... Considering that during the Ming Dynasty
(1368 – 1644) the "[...] quality and accuracy of joinery was so precise
that nails and glue were used only as supplements [... and that ...] the
artisans that produced the beautiful pieces of this time were far more
advanced than their European counterparts [...]" (Source: http://www.ea-
sterncurio.com/easten%20curio/Afurniture/Furniture%20Informations.htm or
google: "ming dynasty" wood joinery)

Also considering that the Chinese built up to 400ft long 180ft wide
ships with up to 9 masts in the 1420's

(Source:
http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/journey2001/greatship.html
http://www.vancouvermaritimemuseum.com/watery/treasure_fleet.htm
http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/journey2001/greatship.html or
google "admiral zheng")

Makes me wonder what kind of tools the old Chinese woodworkers
were using...

--- scott grandstaff  wrote:

>   What about my favorite FWW article of all time? You know the little
>   guy dressed in bare feet and a diaper, looking out the window,
>   talking on the phone to his bookie, cigarette dangling from the
>   bottom lip, loud raucus rock n roll blasting .......... and sawing
>   out extremely fancy cabriole chair legs straight from the rosewood
>   log with a bowsaw and no pattern needed? Then proceeds to cut
>   incredibly intricate joints that lock seamlessly together with no
>   glue or other fasteners and last 1000 years?????????? It was in
>   Taiwan someplace. yours, Scott
>
> ********** Scott Grandstaff, Box 409, Happy Camp, CA 96039 *********
>
Tools:http://users.snowcrest.net/kitty/scott/scotts/tools/tools.html
>
> PageWorks:http://www.snowcrest.net/kitty/hpages/
>
>
> Archive: http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle/archive/ To
> unsubscribe or change options, use the web interface:
>
>
http://galoots.law.cornell.edu:81/read/?forum=oldtools
>

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection
around http://mail.yahoo.com

Well, no way of replying direct to Ludovic, as I'd do if his email
address was given, and I *know* Steve won't be appreciating lots of
reponses saying 'welcome to the list' when we all know he's one of the
door posts here. (meaning - a fundamental and valued bit of the fabric)

So, publicly, Welcome Ludovic,

and as for
>France has wonderfull pieces of furniture, surely some skilled
>craftmen, but you need to be an apprentice to learn working wood the
>traditional way.

Credit where its due - the age of the craftsman reached a peak in France
when it was a monarchy. As now, people with way too much money can
afford to pay an itinerant craftsman to do nothing for years but learn
the skills and produce the absolutely finest items of craftsmanship - be
it furniture, art, or other stuff nowadays.


>Hand woodworking is definitely not as much accessible as it seems to be
>in the US. Am I wrong if I say that the traditional hand tools are
>given a new life thanks to english speaking people, a lot of them being
>american? Thank you, guys.

Here I think you may just not be looking in the right places. I've been
surprised by the amount of craftsmanship still at work, though it's well
hidden. As for the US of A being part of a revival, I think that that's
just that wealth thing again - so many people with wealth and not enough
to do to survive - like building a house and growing food. Taiwan has
lots of craftsmen producing carvings, and capable of doing the finest
work, if only someone will pay them to spend so much time on one piece
that a man and his family could starve before it was complete.

So lets hear more about the French tools that made fine furniture, and
the current tools and work in Taiwan - welcome aboard !

Richard Wilson Yorkshireman Galoot

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------

For information on Christian Salvesen visit our website at
www.salvesen.com.

The information contained in this e-mail is strictly confidential and
for the use of the addressee only; it may also be legally privileged and
/ or price sensitive. Notice is hereby given that any disclosure, use or
copying of the information by anyone other than the intended recipient
is prohibited and may be illegal. If you have received this message in
error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail.

Christian Salvesen has taken every reasonable precaution to ensure that
any attachment to this e-mail has been swept for viruses. However, we
cannot accept liability for any damage sustained as a result of software
viruses and would advise that you carry out your own virus checks before
opening any attachment.

Christian Salvesen is a trading name of the Christian Salvesen Group.
Christian Salvesen PLC (Company number SC7173) is the ultimate holding
company within the Christian Salvesen Group whose registered office is
at 16 Charlotte Square, Edinburgh EH2 4DF.

Welcome to the Porch, the hot cider is at this end.

Steve Noe, in Indianapolis
dandsnoe@m...
"Of course there's a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshmen bring a
little in; the seniors don't take much away,
so knowledge sort of accumulates..."
  -- Anonymous