Berea Woodworking in America Road Trip Report #2

Well, my trip to Berea is starting to look like a hunt for celebrities. It wasn't intended to be like that. Still, since Roy Underhill was here, I took the opportunity to get a photo op. He was very gracious and patient. He is also a very entertaining speaker. Every seminar had some comic relief in it that generally involved a source of inappropriate beverages. In one, he had a giant wooden plane prop with a hidden compartment in it for hiding a liquor bottle. He was also very supportive of the other speakers on stage with him, helping them with camera work and tools and generally playing second fiddle even when he was the big celebrity. I appreciated his maturity in that regard.

He and Frank set up a demo of chopping mortises in which a glass panel was clamped to a board which allowed us to see every stroke of the chisel as it went into the wood. This was displayed overhead via a digital camera. It's interesting to note that Frank's method of chopping a mortise was very different from Adam Cherubini's, which I will explore in my next installment. Frank just started whacking a little inboard of the top of the line and worked his way down to near the bottom line. He didn't drive in deep, but made several passes. On each pass, he started and finished a little closer to the end line until he finished right on the line. He managed to lever out chips as he went and kept a relatively flat bottom. I've been starting in the middle and working my way to the ends. I seem to always get a big hump in the middle which I have to work to lever out.