Scalefour Forum

The BBC4 'Slow TV' strand at this instant has a chap handcrafting a WIndsor chair in his shed. "Complex and time-consuming" they say.
As this could equally apply to, say, an etched kit, or a track formation, what would it take to get some of our work featured I wonder?

I have an etched kit I started in 1979 but have yet to finish.

That would make very, very slow tv.

Richard

FCA wrote:I have an etched kit I started in 1979 but have yet to finish.

That would make very, very slow tv.

Richard

In the absence of a "like button" may I just say like!!

I've got a couple I BOUGHT before 1979 - so does that make me the winner?

Mind you FCA doesn't say when he bought his - so maybe not!

Enigma wrote:I've got a couple I BOUGHT before 1979 - so does that make me the winner?

I notice that on the Mallard D16 kit and a Mallard LNWR rail-motor kit which I brought soon after when they fist became available, the etches for both are dated 1975. But having started looking through the unbuilt kit pile I can accros an George Allan Station Canopy kit (remember them?) which is dated 1972, and which I brought for a layout that I gave up on when I moved north in 1974.

But these aren't "slow" because you haven't actually started them. I've got a Wills CR Mackintosh 0-6-0T that I bought some time in the 70s and started then. I finished it a month ago.

Having just spent about ten days making a new lathe/jeweller's workbench for myself out of old floorboards, I thoroughly enjoyed watching an experienced craftsman making a chair in half that time!

I did, however, wonder at what point a description of 'handmade' would cease to be applicable. Several power tools came into play to make the chair's components and I envied the maker his bandsaw for cutting the seat (OK, I used a jigsaw to cut the rebate in the jeweller's bench worktop, but everything else had to be sawn by hand!)

"The right tool for the job halves the time it takes" - not sure where I first heard that (possibly from my uncle, an ex-Halton Apprentice), but I reckon it seriously understates the case. Unorganised bodgers like me who regularly use a hammer as an englischer Schraubenzieher probably end up taking eight or ten times as long, and even then it's (quite literally) hit or miss whether we get the desired result. My excuse for pressing on regardless is simply that I have to resist the temptation to become a mere tool collector, and actually get some modelling done sometime.

John Palmer wrote:I did, however, wonder at what point a description of 'handmade' would cease to be applicable

An interesting thought. Taking a wood based example and leaving aside the question of converting the tree into suitable sizes (and seasoning it) do you buy rough sawn timber and then plane it smooth and go from there or is it the cutting of the timber to size and then cutting all the joints by hand?

60 years ago, starting secondary school, I was lucky enough to have two hours of woodwork every week for five years. In the first year we were give rough sawn timber and were expected to plane it smooth. flat, parallel, and with the faces at right angles to each other with a wooden jack plane. We learnt how to make shavings and eventually how to achieve a piece of wood which met the requirements, then we started to make the project!

Starting at teacher training college in 1965 the first woodwork project also involved hand planing rough sawn timber to size but after that we were allowed to use machined timber but all joints were cut by hand

At home I have a traditional woodwork bench and a modest collection of hand tools, almost all of which I bought when I started college. Machines are limited to a bench drilling machine, 13mm capacity chuck, a portable hand held power saw and a portable electric drill. Although I have not made any "proper" furniture for many years I can do anything I want in the way of woodworking. I can turn out things quite quickly but part of that is because I have been doing it a long time.

Using machines does of course make things quicker and the outcome can be more accurate. It depends on what you want to achieve. The crafts person who wants to make a living from their craft needs to be able to do things quickly otherwise they will never earn enough because their product will be too expensive for all but the richest people to buy.

For anyone who is interested in contemporary hand crafted furniture get hold of a book called Cutting-edge Cabinetmaking by Robert Ingham. Published by the Guild of Master Craftsmen ISBN 978-186108-518-4. This shows a blend of machine and hand skills, including using engineering machines coupled with some brilliant design work.

Terry Bendall

I remember reading in Model Railroader a long time ago (20years?) of a chap who retired and decided to build himself a new house with a large railway room on top of it to house his collection of scratchbuilt ‘O’ scale locomotives and stock. He built the new railway, which was huge, in a big upper floor he put on the house. What amazed me was that he actually cut the timber from logs first! Truly building by hand from the bottom up!

A secondary point of amazement was where do these guys (mostly in the USA with huge railways) get that kind of time?

Philip