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As historic buildings age, the need for skilled restorers and repairpeople increases. Oregon resident Amy Harrington McAuley has taken up such a task through her company, Oculus Fine Carpentry, in a mostly unplugged woodworking way.
From lighthouses to churches, the clients and projects vary greatly. She works mostly with hand tools, opting to grab the hand saw instead of powering the table saw.
Through the Oculus: Interview with a Traditional Sash Joiner
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Outstanding!!!
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Please visit my website
splintermaking.com
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Really enjoyed reading that and learning more about what was once a vital craft that is mostly overlooked today.
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Amy truly is a master, and she would quite disagree with me on that. All the more reason I was honored to interview this woodworker of humility and skill.
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Yes, a very fun look into a specialist's work!
Having spent several years working in LEED, an industry supported design and *new* construction process, I was pleased to see that preservation is possible and will hopefully replace the notion of destroy and build new.
Did anyone see the window framing sample?
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Amy's Facebook (linked in the bottom of the article) has even more examples of her window framing work, including some from that same project. She built her own sash planes (also pictured in the interview) to make the mouldings she needed.
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Hello Jordan;
Once again, a fine article! Keep'em coming!
I found her comments about making a living with handtools to be quite interesting, thanks for bringing that out. Usually we hear that from furniture makers who can charge for the time involved. What she does is more of production work, and all under bid contracts too! We all say that it takes more time to set up a power tool than it does to take a handtool off the wall that is already setup; but she lives in that world every day. If she couldn't do the work at a price competitive with machine work, she would not get the job........
Skip
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I went by the two flat my Grandparents lived in and Dad grew up in and got into a conversation with the woman who now owns it and lives in it. We had a great time sharing memories and stories. We looked at Grandpa Mack's handwritten notes on the original drawings, which included things like the ratio of lime and lead in the whitewash. Eventually she showed me the arched window frames in the basement. One had rotted and needed to be rebuilt. She could not find anyone to do it because no one knew how to run the curved stock through their moulding machines. She finally found someone who could do it by hand and everyone was happy.
