You can listen to me talk about the Castleton Series in an interview at this link. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/angelsandwarriors/2013/05/09/time-travel-with-mike-dunbar
We have added an additional sack back class October 21.
The first book in my teenage adveture series The Hampton Summit has been launched. It is available either as a paperback or an eBook at http://www.amazon.com/Hampton-Summit-Castleton-1/dp/1482731622/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367022081&sr=1-1&keywords=the+hampton+summit
Most of you are aware of the reason I have been so long absent from the woodworking magazines and from this space. I have spent the last six years writing an eight-book fantasy/adventure series for young adults, called the Castleton Series. I completed the final book last June. This April 22 the first volume will be available; in the current jargon, it will launch. You can acquire either the eBook or bound edition from Amazon.com or other sellers. It is titled The Hampton Summit and is written under my name.
During these past six years I researched, I wrote, rewrote, polished and edited more than a half million words. I determined the subject matter and the posing for the artwork, and spent many hours with the artist. The project was a monumental task.
The Castleton Series is kid friendly. The main characters are admirable and likeable. They are loyal, courageous, and compassionate. They are smart, innovative, and resourceful. While the characters struggle with ethical problems and other circumstances that arise from the human condition, there is no sex, no drugs, and no foul language. Your sainted grandmother could read these books without offense. In fact, I bet she would enjoy them. Whatever you do, don’t tell any kids this, but I snuck in a lot of knowledge. While being entertained and challenged, young readers are going to be exposed to diverse subjects: history, math, science, geography, music, art, archeology, etc.
The first book, The Hampton Summit, introduces three 12-year old boys, Mike Castleton and his friends Patrick Weaver and Nick Pope. The boys are recruited to prevent a murder that never happened, although now, it may. The assassins are renegade time travelers. They return to the present, intent on killing a scientist to prevent him from sharing the most important discovery in history. Their crime will destroy the peaceful future and golden age that will result from that discovery. The boys are brought into the future to be trained for the mission. There, they are befriended by two girls, Allie Tymoshenko and her roommate, Jen Cann. Together, the five take on the job of stopping the would-be killers. Our feisty band is armed only with audacity and innovativeness.
In each succeeding book the characters age a year and advance a grade in school. The series parallels their growth. The danger and the complexity of their adventures are constant, as what can kill you at 12 will still kill you at 19. However, the characters’ responses and understanding of events reflect their increasing maturity. At 19, one can analyze and separate cause, result, and meaning in a more nuanced way that at 12. The characters’ growing maturity intensifies their struggles with ethics as they increasingly see the world in shades of gray, rather than the black and white of youth.
In each book the friendship between Mike and Allie deepens, until it develops into love. However, the pair is star crossed, in that Allie was born seven generations after Mike. They can only get together on time travel adventures. That results in a saga that takes the reader back to the dawn of human history and forward to the end of time.
The pair’s growing love and yearning to be together as much as possible permits me to explore time travel’s weirder possibilities. This weirdness prompted the series’ subtitle; Time travel messes with your mind, and with your love life. Think about these situations. If you go into the future it is possible to visit your own grave, to read your own obituary. You can hold the hand of a dying person who held your hand when you died. As a kid, you can meet your older self, without recognizing him/you. You will be at a disadvantage because the older self remembers the meeting and can toy with you. If you go back in time, you can work there ten years and return to the moment you left. You eat supper that evening with your family, who asks if you had a nice day. People who travel a lot often wake up unsure where they are. Time travelers wake up unsure where or when they are.
If you have the misfortune to fall in love with someone from the future, you face a terrible choice. You can never spend your lives together. You sacrifice marriage, a home, a family. You have to accept the occasional opportunity you and your lover have to be together in time. If you are a girl from the future and the boy you love will become famous in his time, you know much about his later life that you can never share. You can only watch events unfold, messing with your mind as it happens.
Time travel has limitations and must occur within an established frame work. Violate those limitations and the consequences are dire. These realities require a unique set of ethics and code of conduct. The right thing is not always as obvious as it is for those of us that stick to our own time. Dealing with the new right and wrong also messes with your mind.
I hope you will choose to read the Castleton series and perhaps turn young people in your family on to it. I plan to release all eight volumes this year so there will be no long waits between books. As you read The Hampton Summit pay close attention to detail. This book is the foundation for the rest of the saga. Nothing is accidental or frivolous. Everything I tell you is important and will play its part later on. In the first volume I establish the pattern for an elaborate fabric that will be woven through seven books and neatly wrapped up in the last one.
As I wrote the Castleton Series I became aware of something else I want to discuss with fellow woodworkers. The people who read my manuscripts for me often said, “It’s like reading a movie.” This caused me to ponder my writing style and point of view. I realized that I was writing novels the way I write woodworking articles and books. When conveying a woodworking technique to you, the ideal perspective would be to show the method through my eyes, so you see how the tool acts and the wood responds for the user. You miss all that if you are standing to my side watching. Unfortunately, in illustrating a woodworking article, that is where the photographer’s camera usually is located. So, if I am to effectively convey a technique to you, the woodworker, I have to use words to give you the experience of seeing through my eyes. That’s how I learned to write, using words to show the reader what I see.
Gradually during the past six years, I became aware that my perspective as a woodworking writer is similar to a 21st century technological development - the helmet cam. I recently watched helmet cam footage of a firefight in Afghanistan. It was completely different from any war movie, from any documentary you have seen about combat. In a movie or a documentary the director controls what you see and how the information is conveyed. The director has the ability to focus your attention on details he deems important. For example, he can throw the background or foreground out of focus, or change the lighting. He can provide additional orientation to the setting by splicing in scenes from others point of view, such as showing the enemy and its location as it fires. The viewer of helmet cam footage sees exactly what the soldier sees, nothing additional. You see the wall pass before you as the soldier ducks behind it. You hear enemy gun fire, but only see a distant tree line as the warrior scans it for the concealed Taliban. He doesn’t see the bad guys firing, and neither do you. You do see the face of the adjacent soldier as he hands ammunition to the helmet cam guy, but only because our guy turned his head. Through a helmet cam you get a better sense of the confusion of battle because you are deprived of information a director would include. The helmet cam never pulls back for a long shot, or elevates for an overhead view. Your experience is limited to what the helmet cams sees, but that view is the closest thing possible to the soldier’s experience. Until technology provides us a Star Trek holodeck, the helmet cam experience is the next best thing to reality.
The helmet cam is the new way of seeing. It wasn’t available when we were growing up. However, if you were born in the 21st century it is the way you are used to observing events. It is not going away, and the perspectives we grew up with are never coming back. In fact, the impetus in technology will be to intensify the experience. When I was a 19-year old cub reporter my editor taught me to begin an article with a summary lead. The purpose was to grab the reader’s attention right away by focusing him on the most important fact. An elderly pedestrian was severely injured yesterday afternoon in a hit and run accident while crossing Main Street at the intersection of Central Avenue. Today, kids don’t read newspapers. They don’t even watch the evening news. For them, the hit and run accident only becomes a reality when it is watched on Youtube. If the event was not recorded by a traffic cam so it can be viewed, for a 21st century kid, it did not occur. Today, young people encounter events through omnipresent helmet cams, traffic cams, dashboard cams, and critter cams that monitor our lives.
As I wrote the Castleton Series (presenting the action the way I write woodworking articles) I became aware that I was doing something different. I was showing the reader events like they were being seen through a helmet cam. If a character enters a room, a writer usually conveys that action. If instead, the narrator was wearing a helmet cam, the reader sees that the room has a window with – count them – six panes. To the right of the character is a round, wicker table with a bentwood chair pushed up to it. A thin, red book is on the table. If the character walks down a corridor wearing a helmet cam the reader will see the ceiling, the doors, what’s at the end of the corridor, how long it is. Just like watching our soldier’s experience in the fire fight, the helmet cam perspective in a novel allows the reader to share the character’s experience with a deeper sense of reality.
While I hardly think of myself as a literary writer, in the Castleton Series I tried something comparable to the efforts of notable authors. Here is an analogy. Along with contemporaries like Juan Gris and Georges Braque, the avant guarde painter Pablo Picasso developed Cubism in the early 20th century. You know these paintings, the distorted woman with a nose on the side of her face. Through Cubism, artists tried to show an object, a scene, or a person from multiple perspectives, but in a two-dimensional view; the canvas. Their success with Cubism influenced contemporary writers who attempted to do the same thing with words. Faulkner did it in As I Lay Dying; Hemingway did it in The Sun Also Rises; Woolf did it in To the Lighthouse. Gertrude Stein, Guillaume Apollinaire, Jean Cocteau, and others even wrote Cubist poetry. These writers wanted to provide their readers with a more reading intense experience by using Cubism to create different perspectives and points of view.
In a similar way, I used the skills I developed as a woodworking writer to attempt to give the reader a more intense experience of my story - the helmet cam experience. In my musings I have even wondered if words could stimulate the visual cortex. It’s probably not possible, but it’s an intriguing prospect for a writer to try to engage that part of the reader’s brain. Young people have grown up with the helmet cam and if my imaginings are possible, it will be most successful with them. So, it is my hope that presenting the events in a novel in the style I developed as a woodworking writer will work for young readers. Time will tell whether or not I succeeded. In the meanwhile, I have jokingly told my English major son that I have coined an impressive sounding name for my style of fiction writing, a term that will establish my bona fides with the espresso drinkers. I have dubbed it Cammism. To the extent it worked, I have woodworkers to thank.
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Sigh. Another one of the woodworking magazines has printed a picture of a chairmaker sitting at his shave horse. In doing so, they the magazine joined the long list of sources that continue to undermine the craft of chairmaking. How do we ever advance with such odds so stacked against us? A single misleading picture mailed to several hundred thousand readers has more negative impact than can be undone by 10 years of teaching classes.
When I run across a fellow practitioner of our craft I quietly assess the guy’s work and rank his abilities in my mind. The shave horse is one of the standards I rely on. For me it is a shibboleth. A shibboleth is something that separates two groups, and that one of those groups then uses to identify its members; sort of like a secret handshake. The shave horse divides chairmakers. The two groups are the guys that are serious and those who are quaint. Guess which group I belong to.
I do not use a shave horse. When asked why, I answer, “Why would I impose a pay cut on myself?” That is in effect the result of using this tool. It is so limiting that it slows down the chairmaker and costs him income. I prefer a vise. Using a vise I am standing, not sitting, and I am far more productive and efficient. I work far faster, using less energy.
Consider the two postures. Sitting at a shave horse you have the work secured immediately in front of you. The muscles available to operate the draw knife are predominantly in your shoulders. You are limited as to how you can use the tool. You can do very little slicing, which means you are also misusing your knife. Remember, the tip from the Staff Tip Sheet you received in sack back class? “A draw knife is a slicing tool, not a two handled hatchet.”
Using a vise, you are standing. You bring into play the muscle groups in your legs, butt, back, and shoulders. Leaning into the work and progressively shifting back on your ankles, your slice can be several feet long. That’s a major advantage when making a four to six foot long bow. Students have commented that when working I remind them of a ballet dancer or an aerobics instructor. (Either way, that’s a pretty good comparison for a guy that’s 65 years old.) Yes, using a vise the body’s motion is fluid, graceful, and almost effortless. Above all, it’s fast.
Suspended in air in front of me I can access about 300 degrees of the part’s circumference. I do minimal stopping to turn the piece. Students remember the myriad of more efficient grips I show them for using the knife. Those are possible because of my access to most of the part. I move my body and my grip, rather than the part.
That raises the question, with all its drawbacks, why would anyone use a shave horse? A lot of chair makers are into being quaint. I think it is a left over from the Hippies who got into woodworking in the 1970s. Sitting on a shave horse you look like you stepped out of a picturesque and bucolic past; or at least the commune. Editors don’t know better. They’re general woodworkers, with at most a passing knowledge of the various specialized crafts. Besides, a guy sitting at a shave horse does make a good picture; one that evokes a picturesque and bucolic past; or at least a 1970s commune. In other words, it’s a vicious circle. Chairmakers want to look quaint, the editors like quaint pictures. So many pictures of chairmakers sitting at a shave horse get published, our imaginations have been overwhelmed. In woodworkers’ minds the shave horse and chairmaking go together like a horse and carriage. (Wait a minute. That’s love and marriage.)
If you are an editor, please, please, please, stop publishing photos of guys on shave horse. If you are chairmaker that uses a shave horse; get off your butt and get to work.
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Many of you know I have spent all my free time these past five years writing an eight-volume series of young adult adventure novels. While preparing to publish the books, I have begun serializing them at mikedunbar.tumblr.com. Log on each week if you would like to read them. If you are on tumblr you can follow them. Note: the spelling of tumblr. It does not have an e. If you like the books, I would appreciate you telling others about them. They are directed at young adults 12 to 16 and if you have young readers in the family, tip them off. However, like a lot of books intended for a young audience, the books also appeal to people over 30.
I have another URL on tumblr where I now post my monthly essays and other chairana windsorchairs.tumblr.com.
While this isn’t exactly chairmaking, I still pretty proud of it. I think you’ll like it too. Great views of the coast and the Nubble Lighthouse in York, Maine.
A lot of you know the story of Mr. Green – actually both Mr. Greens. These are the nicknames we give the old bucks that made our green stuff for us. The green stuff is the gauges and devices we sell in the catalog that are made from green anodized aluminum. They hang on the ends of all the shop benches. Unfortunately, the first Mr. Green was quite old and caught the west bound train. The next Mr. Green was not much younger and in a matter of years, he got his ticket punched. The same fate was suffered recently by the guy that cast our bronze chairmaker hammer heads. There’s a pattern here and perhaps explains why we had so much trouble finding a third Mr. Green and a new brass founder. Life insurance companies won’t issue policies to our suppliers.
The new Mr. Green is fairly young and we hope he will be around for a long time. Our new brass founder seems to have a few years left in him. The new Mr. Green is steadily restocking us with things that have been out of stock for some time. He recently delivered the drill stops so many of you have desired. They are the same as the ones you used in class. However, they are green and a bit prettier. They come in a set of three — 5/8″, 9/16″, and 3/8″ — the sizes of the most common blind holes in chairs. The sets are $55.
This week we received a delivery of chairmaker hammer heads. Don has already mounted most of them on their handles. So, if you have been waiting for a chairmaker’s hammer, you can order those too.
Johnny Windsor and the Pommelator
Join young Johnny in his fight for justice against that arm and leg-splaying alien madman, the Pommelator! Travel to new worlds in his self-navigating compass plane, piloted by his short but tough companion Stump whose own people, the razor sharp Scorps, were tossed from the seat of power eons ago by the Spindle People, recruited with flair by the rakish General Meade, Pommelator’s right hand man. “We’re not takin’ this sittin’ down!” shouts Stump as he and young
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In every cloud is a silver lining. We are under the shadow of an economic cloud, but with less competition for premium white pine from builders, the stuff we get is often spectacular. Two days ago I was cutting the most recent load into seat blanks. My son is home from college and was helping me. I gushed repeatedly over the boards. Each one we uncovered in the pile was more beautiful than the last.
Three were so exceptional, I set them aside. I couldn’t bring myself to cut them. Maybe I will at some point, but first, I need to have another woodworker witness them. I told Michael I would wait for Don. I will show them to him before turning them into chair seats.
As we were sweeping up, my wife arrived. She asked why we had not cut up those three planks? I gave her the same explanation. I would wait for Don, as I needed another woodworker to see them. Her response, “When will you grow up?” I tell you this story, because as woodworkers, you understand.
Keep the secret between us. I may not cut those boards after all. I will stack them with the 17 inch wide 14 foot long piece of perfectly clear 1 3/4 inch thick white pine plank I set aside last year. I’ll sell those planks to someone else and let the responsibility for cutting them rest on his head. Right now, my hands are clean.
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I recently completed the eighth and final book in my teen fantasy adventure series. I’m reading through all eight, making minor adjustments. The purpose being to make them all hang together. I should be done by the end of the summer. Then, I have to decide what to do — find a publisher or self-publish. I’ll keep you posted.
March 26 we held the first class of the year. It was our chance to introduce our new Square Back class. Don and I had been preparing all winter as we worked out in our minds how to structure a class that is so different from anything else we teach. During this time we made the numerous bending forms and jigs for each work station. We made chairs ourselves to fine tune our process. We got excited.
All our preparation was worthwhile and the class was everything I had hoped. There were no major glitches, short of a propane burner that chose Monday morning to buy the farm. However, it turns out that we were able to do everything with one steam box.
Before every sack back class I tell the students that chairmaking is going to stand their woodworking experience on its head. Everything about chairmaking is different. Before this class, I told everyone Square back is going to stand your chairmaking experience on its head. It did. However, we had planned well and worked out enough safeguards that no one made any significant mistakes.
In fact, Square back is so different we had to delay the celebration that begins our school year. This was because the leg holes in the seat are blind. We always drill the first leg hole of the year and stop to celebrate the Drilling of the First Hole. We do this as soon as my bit passes through the seat and into the backboard. This year, we could not hold the ceremony until I drilled a hole for a stile. Those are the only through holes in the Square back side chair seat.
Square backs are a striking design. The class picture of all those arm and matching side chairs was impressive. By the way, this first class filled so fast I scheduled a second Square back class June 4. That class still has two spaces.
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There were no Royal Orders ceremonies in this class, as so many of the guys are already dukes. However, we cannot pass up a chance to party. So, last year when faced with the same circumstance, we decided to celebrate our first Canada Day. Canada Day is a floating holiday. It occurs in the Windsor Institute calendar on Wednesday of whatever week His Grace Lyndon Gallagher First Duke of Canada is present.
Last year, the lady at the market decorating the cake spelled Canada the way we in New England pronounce it Canida. As you can imagine, this gaff caused a lot of amusement. This year, when we recalled the woman that had misspelled Canada, a wag in the class said, “Everyone knows it’s spelled with a K. The result, this year the cake read “Happy Kanida Day.” I suspect this gag will take root and will become the holiday’s official name.
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Before the class His Grace Kurt Rothermel sent gifts for all the guys that would be present March 26. It was a T-shirt with the coat of arms of a Duke of Windsor. I can never pass up the chance to pull a few chains. So, Don and I wore our shirts the first day. I knew that seeing us in our shirts would get everyone frothing at the mouth and asking where they could get one. My tease went as planned. Once a furor had been raised over our shirts I had H.G. Kurt distribute them. Those shirts are now the hottest item in all of chairmaking. If you’re in the Royal Orders and want one; too bad. You should have signed up for the Square back class.
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We had one sack back class scheduled this summer – July 9. It has filled and we added another sack back July 23.
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The pace is quickening around here. Two things are causing our increase in activity. Spring is one of them. It is more pleasant to be outside. It was a mild winter, but the sun is now higher in the sky and it makes everything more cheerful. Second, we are only 10 days away from the first class of the year.
Evidence of that new pace arrived this morning. A truck load of prime red oaks logs were dropped off in out log area. Kevin is already scheduled to be here next Tuesday with Ol’ Bessie, his tractor with the four foot hydraulic log splitter. While he is here, he’ll take the air conditioning covers off, because we will soon need to run the units. After that, Don and I will begin the enormous task of cutting that wood into chair stock. That job will not be complete until May.
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Monday, Don will be back and he and I will finish the pair of Square backed chairs we are making. This opportunity to do some chairmaking together has been fun. We hone out skills and Don’s wife gets a pair of chairs she really likes. I got a kick out of showing him the joint I had developed for securing the arm to the stile. It is one of those neat tricks that gets the juices flowing.
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The group that will be here starting March 26 are the old regulars. I already decided I will poll them to find out how many Drilling of the First Hole ceremonies each has attended. This year is a bit different in that the Square backed chair has blind leg holes. We won’t conduct the ceremony until I drill the first stile hole.
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I know I haven’t been posting here. However, this winter I did complete book seven of the eight-book teen adventure series of I have been writing. I have also written the first two chapters of the final book, with plans to finish it before fall. I have been working on this series for four years and although I love it, I am looking forward to completing it and making it available.
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Good news for those of you who have been wanting a copy of Sandpaper Sharpening, the video I did years ago. I am having it transferred to DVD and expect it to be in stock next week.
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Here’s a first. Sir Ron Tatman is beyond a doubt the first Windsor chairmaker to sponsor a race car. I received this email from Sir Ron .
“Jill and I are one of the sponsors of this super late model race car. It is a long story which I will try to condense. I have always had an interest in dirt track stock car racing and attended many races when I was a teenager. The contractor who built our house and the addition of the sun room showed us a video of his daughter driving her race car. I was hooked and have enjoyed watching the races and helping as part of the pit crew.
Staci Warrington who drives the car has accomplished much in the process. She is the first female driver in Delaware to win a late model feature race. More importantly she has had the opportunity to attend Project Podium which in addition to a racing scholarship educates young female drivers in the business of racing and in how to better market racing and themselves. Staci attends Salisbury State University and along with a summer job which is related to her major stays quite busy. She is currently 3rd in points in a very competitive class.
These cars are powered by engines producing more than 750 horse power and complete a one half mile lap in 19 seconds or for an average speed of over 90 mph. Driving skill, set up, and strategy are an important part of the game.
Because I have two daughters of approximately the same age I have been even more connected to this project and take pride in the achievements of my daughters and their peers. I have witnessed a young racer improve her racing skills, confidence and her ability to professionally present herself. This combined with the achievements of our daughters has been a very fulfilling ride. Most people don’t realize how windsor chair making can lead to so much.”
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Our server had problems for several months with certain email addresses. As a result, large blocks of my monthly essays bounced back. Earthlink was a big problem. If you did not receive the essay about Gardner’s Big Chair, the Chairmaker’s Deed, or the Herzogstuhl, drop me an email and I will send them again. If you are on the list, you should have received the Romani Toy Chairmaker today.
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To receive my monthly eLetter of essays about chairs and chairmaking, that are in addition to this blog, join our mailing list by emailing me at mike@thewindsorinstitute.com Help us spread the word about this blog. Tell others.