A LOOK INTO GARRETT HACK’S SHOP

Garrett will give us a look into three projects in his Vermont shop: a six drawer side table, an Edward Barnsley cabinet recently restored/repaired, and a curvy desk underway. 

The six drawer table is a bowed front variation of a much older piece. It has the challenges of building a strong case with the facade almost entirely drawers and only light stiles and rails, laminating curved drawer faces and then dovetailing the sides to them, fitting and fixing solid wood bottoms, working with highly challenging curly birch, and building in two secret drawers. 

Edward Barnsley was an important British furniture maker of the mid-20th century. His cabinet has many lessons: how symmetry can be powerful, the punch of repeating, varying and changing the scale of details, how our work ages from the stresses of wood movement, and how Barnsley built the cabinet strongly and efficiently using hand tool techniques.

If there is time Garrett will discuss his latest project, a complex curved desk with some very secret compartments and drawers. He’ll talk about the design, making full scale working drawings, patterns, and laminations.