Replies

1. 
   9619 | Jun 30, 2009 09:21pm | #1

   Chris,
   Excellent post. Very very interesting. Thanks for the thoughts and the photos.

   I enjoyed the article in the last FWW on the Ming table. It is highly refined in its style and in its construction techniques, and it is pretty old too :-). A very impressive piece and a testament to what the Chinese could do a long time ago, before they had access to Lie Nielsen planes.

   Have fun. Keep posting.
   Mel

   Measure your output in smiles per board foot. 

1. 
   chscholz | Jul 02, 2009 02:31am | #6

   Thanks Mel,
   I enjoyed the Ming style table, too. Was this the one where the poor editor got so much heat about an out of focus corner and the whole discussion went off on an unfortunately tangent?---
   Chris Scholz
   Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
   Galoot-Tools

   Edited 7/1/2009 7:31 pm by chscholz

1. 
   KiddervilleAcres | Jul 02, 2009 05:18am | #7

   Chris,

   Great stuff, keep it coming please.  It's not often we get a chance to see how folks in other countries do their woodworking thing.  Truly amazing what some folks can do with very little tooling.

   Thanks again,Bob @ Kidderville Acres

   A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!

2. 
   9619 | Jul 02, 2009 01:36pm | #9

   Chris,
   YOu asked "Was this the one where the poor editor got so much heat about an out of focus corner and the whole discussion went off on an unfortunately tangent?"I don't know. I didn't follow any discussions about the table. I just really appreciated the table, its elegant design and exquisite joinery. I have been spending less time on Knots lately, and more time doing woodwork. Have fun.
   MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot. 

2. 
   Eef | Jul 01, 2009 04:43am | #2

   chris,
   very interesting. don't happen to have a close-up shot of liu's tools do you?
   thanks for posting.
   eef

1. 
   chscholz | Jul 01, 2009 05:35am | #3

   Hi eef,<!----><!---->

   thanks for our interest. Yes I do have a few more pictures and closeups. Will post in due course. A bit on stock preparation in the next installment, hopefully by the end of this week.

   Chris

   <!----><!---->---

   Chris Scholz

   Dallas/Fort Worth, TX

   Galoot-Tools

3. 
   bones | Jul 01, 2009 07:34pm | #4

   Awsome post!  Do you have any larger pic's? Or others with more detail and some of his work.  Great opportunity.

   The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.' - Renaldus Magnus
   

1. 
   chscholz | Jul 02, 2009 02:28am | #5

   Hi Bones,

   Thanks for the compliments. Yes I have larger pictures. There is a fair amount of readers here who are on dialup so I try to keep the pictures to a reasonable size.

   Few more posts with more info (trying to keep the post reasonably short) after that I'll be happy to send you a set of larger photographs.

   With exception of the stool you can see in the background of some of the pictures, there is not a single piece of finished furniture in Liu Shifu's shop. But I have a few closeups of that stool.

   Chris Scholz

   Dallas/Fort Worth, TX

   Galoot-Tools

4. 
   jonnieboy | Jul 02, 2009 06:54am | #8

   Yes, please post more pictures!

   My brother is a woodworker and lives in China. Some of the problems and adventures he has even obtaining wood are both hilarious and sad. 

   --jonnieboy

1. 
   chscholz | Jul 03, 2009 11:31am | #12

   I for one sure would love to hear more about your brother's adventures.

   Please tell us more!---

   Chris Scholz

   Dallas/Fort Worth, TX

   Galoot-Tools

1. 
   jonnieboy | Jul 03, 2009 06:09pm | #14

   I'll try to get him to write a short account of one or two misadventures and I'll post them.

   In the meantime, thanks for your great post. This has been a good topic.

   --Jonnieboy

5. 
   Lataxe | Jul 02, 2009 07:26pm | #10

   Chris,

   Firstly, thank you for this very interesting post; of which there will hopefully be more....?

   Secondly, I wonder if you could say something about the context in which Liu Shifu works and sells his product?  For instance:

   What kind of items make up his range of work and who buys them? 

   Does Liu Shifu seek "fine" attributes to the things he makes or is he more concerned with durability, utility and the other kinds of attributes that used to be associated with traditional woodworking in the Western world? 

   Are there several types of woodworker and different (associated) kinds of products?  Is there the equivalents of "studio" furniture and the "designer-maker" we see emergent in the west?

   How is mass production of furniture impacting the Chinese craftsman?

   Is there a separate tool-making (and perhaps maintenance) craftsman tradition or are tools made or refined by Liu Shifu himself?

   What are the sources of timber and of what types/characteristics are they?

   ***

   A lot of questions, I know.  But it would be very interesting to get a bigger picture of how woodworking in China compares with that we all typically get involved with in the west.

1. 
   chscholz | Jul 03, 2009 01:57pm | #13

   Hi Lataxe,

   thank you very much.

   I wonder if you could say something about the context in which Liu Shifu works and sells his product? For instance, what kind of items make up his range of work and who buys them?

   Furniture for daily use. He was working on a cloth cabinet when we visited, this type of cabinet seems to be a large part of his products as indicated by the unfinished blanks he as all over his shop. I suppose built-in closets are a very American invention, the (almost all of the) rest of the world uses some form of cloth cabinet. But there was not a single piece of finished furniture in his shop (except the small stool that you see in some of the photographs) so it is hard to tell for sure. He might assemble the furniture on site (traditionally the carpenter and his apprentice(s) lived (as in worked, slept, dined, drank, smoked, etc.) in the house where the were working until the project was done. According to Ruitenbeek is was common that the contractor who hired the carpenter provided the wood and sometimes even the tools).

   His customers are probably normal folks within a motorcycle-taxi radius

   I have no doubt that if you show up with a photograph and basic dimensions of your favorite piece of furniture and a stash of wood he would quote you a price and get to work. In fact, during Bauhaus expats had Chinese carpenters build Bauhaus-style furniture using local hardwoods and Chinese joinery, highly priced collector's items today, made by a anonymous shifu in 1920's Shanghi.

   Does Liu Shifu seek "fine" attributes to the things he makes or is he more concerned with durability, utility and the other kinds of attributes that used to be associated with traditional woodworking in the Western world?

   It looks to me as if he is simply doing the work that he can sell into the local market without getting hung up in philosophical discourses about art vs. craft. You see tearout and knots in his work; I would call it utility, or vernacular; "fine", as we understand it, would certainly not be the right attribute.

   Are there several types of woodworker and different (associated) kinds of products? Is there the equivalents of "studio" furniture and the "designer-maker" we see emergent in the west?

   There are various factories around I have been told, but Liu Shifu is the only traditional Chinese woodworker I have had access to (and very possibly the only one left in that town). I met lot of folks who said they were woodworkers (which means the went at least through the apprenticeship and had a shop for some period of time). I don't believe there is a lot of specialization within the traditional woodworkers, except the obvious specializtion that comes with the local market conditions.

   In the large cities you can find high-end furniture. Nobody seems to care how this furniture is made, but there must be a lot of hand-craft involved. For example in Zhuhai we can see fancy stores that sell restored antiques (and certainly newly produced antiques). The ones I have seen seemed to employ a few anonymous woodworkers. Woodworkers do not "enjoy" the stardom that the woodworkers in the West enjoy. There is no sign on Li Shifu's store. Course you have the Hong-Kong and Shang Hai antiques furniture dealers. In Liu Shifu's "small" town you see oodles of "designer" hair saloons cloth stoors, shoe stores, etc. but I haven not seen any "designer" furniture store.

   How is mass production of furniture impacting the Chinese craftsman?

   Chinese craftsmenship is dying. There are pockets of revival of the traditional ways lately as manifested in various TV series of traditional crafts on CCTV, none of them was related to woodworking though and woodworkers do not have a good rep in China. The Chinese ideal is not craftemenship but academic excellence. Today the ideal is a postgraduate degree in engineering from a top 10 US University. Mass production certainly contributes to the decline/disappearance of craftsmenship but it certainly is not the only cause. I have no data to support any theories of the root cause of the decline of traditional craftemenship.

   Is there a separate tool-making (and perhaps maintenance) craftsman tradition or are tools made or refined by Liu Shifu himself?

   No, no tool craftsmen as far as I can tell. Today you can buy rough blanks and blades that need a lot of tuning. All tools are made by Li Shifu (ok, the saw blades and the plane/chisel irons are not strictly "made" by him but certainly modified and highly tuned to meet his needs). Molding blade iron was a straight iron that he profiled (took him a long time he said). If you are a woodworker, making a wooden plane should be the easiest thing in the world to do. Somewhere else I heard that planes are often made from wood left over from a project.

   What are the sources of timber and of what types/characteristics are they?

   I have no idea. Liu Shifu does not own a car, the whole logistics of buying stock would be a nightmare for us. Ruitenbeek describes the transport of precious wood from remote locations as a strong guy picking up a tree trunk and walking until he reaches a large enough river. This was "good" enough to all but extinct certain types of precious wood (notably zitan). Liu Shifu plans to use up his stash and then retire. Where he got his wood from I don't now. Could have been delivered he could have carried it via motorcycle taxi. One of the nice things about Chinese casework is that you do not need large or boards to make wide panels. They had a snow/ice storm come through last year (an extremely rare event), so if he would buy more stock I speculate that it would most likely come from local downed trees. Water power would be readily available (it may be hot but it is humid). I have no idea about location of sawmills either.

   ---

   Chris Scholz

   Dallas/Fort Worth, TX

   Galoot-Tools

6. 
   chaim | Jul 03, 2009 12:14am | #11

   Thank you for your post!

   Whenever I here the word "China" what comes to mind most readily is cheep and dangerous junk!

   Its easy to forget that China has also had a more prestigious past and  produced some of the worlds finest furniture.

   Chaim