Ask most woodworkers to name the one thing they dislike about
furniture making, and there is a good chance they will answer
“finishing.” It seems to be the bane of woodworkers, and even those
who are good at it admit they see it as the least pleasant part of
the job. That’s not at all the way it is at The Workshop Of Charles Neil.
“I love
finishing,” Charles admitted. “People sometimes ask me why I do
woodworking and I answer, ‘so that I can finish it.’ A good finisher
can make a bad woodworker look good, but even a good woodworker
cannot make a bad finisher look good.”
As luck would have
it, Charles is both a good finisher and an outstanding woodworker
and furniture maker in a wide range of styles. While his love of
finishing may set him slightly apart from many of his
contemporaries, his view of how the woodworking world approaches
that task takes him even farther afield.
.tmp) “In my opinion,” Charles told me, “the
learning cycle in woodworking is backward. You should learn
finishing first. Finishing is not something you do after the piece
is built, but rather part and parcel of the building process. It is
too late to start finishing on a piece that is already completely
built. For that reason, even though I love finishing, I won’t do it
for others.
“When you design a piece,” he continued,
“you must also design the finish at the same time and take that into
account. If you approach it that way, you will learn to put a finish
on a raised panel before you put it in the frame, and if you are
going to attach a molding, you’ll learn to sand the molding and
everything behind it before you attach it.”
Neil’s background
and early job experience helps to explain both his affection for
finishing and for his latest endeavor, selling jigs. “I grew up in a
little town called Stuart’s Draft, Virginia,” Charles recounted,
“back up against the mountains. I lived with my mother, an aunt and
my grandmother on a farm. Until I was seven or eight, we did not
have indoor plumbing. We heated with wood cut on a sawbuck with a
crosscut saw. I never had store-bought bread or milk until I went to
school. We went to town once a month for staples, and it was a big
deal.
“We had a vocational school nearby where you could
spend part of your school day taking electives. I took woodshop at
the age of 13 and really enjoyed it. I discovered that I had a knack
for woodworking and it came easily to me. I continued taking shop
throughout school whenever I could, then went home and did more
woodworking in my spare time. As luck would have it, I had inherited
a set of tools from my grandfather.
“When I got into high
school, I took an auto body class, and found I really liked that as
well. Down the road from me was a guy who painted cars, and he
taught me to spray. I found spray guns instantly comfortable, and
finishing cars was my strength. After high school, I got a job as
finisher in an auto body shop and worked there for the next 18
years, building furniture at home in my spare time.
.tmp)
“By 1989, I was living in Charleston, South Carolina, and had just
finished a complete rebuild on a brand-new Mercedes. It had been in
a huge accident with only 19 miles on the odometer. The owner had
just pulled out of the dealer’s lot when he had a run-in with a dump
truck. I finished that car with a multi-layered lacquer buffed to a
fare-thee-well; a real custom show finish.
“I realized that
this was the pinnacle of my automotive art, and I guess that did
something to me. As soon as the car was done, I put down my tools,
turned in the keys, loaded up my truck and went home. To this day I
have never again done body work.
“I moved back to Virginia
to a little cabin on the mountain, set up a woodworking shop, and
started building things. Over the years, I’ve built in a wide range
of styles: Mackintosh, Hepplewhite, Shaker, Colonial, Federal and
even modern. I’ve made everything from dovetailed beehives to
coffins and just about everything in between. I started taking my
work out to local craft stores, and sure enough, people started
buying what I’d built. Almost immediately, people started asking for
custom pieces. These days, virtually all my work is
commission.”
With such a wide range of pieces and styles, I
wondered if he had any favorites. “My favorite thing to build
is beds,” Charles told me, “in part because I have built so many
that I have it down to a science, and in part because I like the
beauty and simplicity of the form. I can make a canopied pencil post
bed, admittedly a modern adaptation, in just a couple of days,
provided I have a lot of coffee.
.tmp) “Along the
way, I designed and developed a slick pair of jigs for cutting the
eight tapered sides to make a tapered octagon post. With these jigs,
you can do four posts in just a couple of hours. One thing you learn
growing up on a farm is being innovative. You don’t think about
buying things, but how to do what you need to do with whatever you
have. Consequently, I’ve invented a number of jigs, two of which are
patented, though four more are in the patent process.”
Then
came teaching. “I first started teaching about five years ago so
other local woodworkers would stop interrupting me during the day
asking me to show them how to do things. I set up some classes in my
own shop for about half a dozen at a time, and they filled right
away. Teaching was immediately satisfying. It is hard to describe
watching the joy of someone who made something important to himself
or herself for the first time.
“At that point, I had grown
into a larger shop with five or six employees. Things got way too
hectic, so I moved to a smaller shop, got rid of my employees, and
took a break from teaching for about three years just so I could
catch up on back orders. It is only in the past few months that I
have gotten caught up.
.tmp)
“Because I love the one-on-one contact of teaching, I decided a few
months ago to start again. Starting in September, I’ll be teaching
one-week classes in making a Virginia sugar chest, which I feel is
great for beginners because it has tapered legs, drawers, breadboard
end, lock, keyhole, applied molding and dovetails. For the first
time this year, I am also offering a finishing class, and I am
amazed how many people want to sign up for it.”
Out of
teaching came a newsletter, DVDs, and his latest venture, selling
jigs. “I also realized early on that it is much more efficient to
simply record what I do and put it on DVD,” Charles explained. “I simply run a camera
out in the shop and show things. The production values are simple,
but the information is top-notch. If you’re looking for a fancy
studio and polished actors, keep looking. However, just as all my
furniture is guaranteed for life, the DVDs are, too. If you feel you
did not get your money’s worth, send it back, and we will refund
your money and pay the shipping. It’s probably worth noting that we
have never gotten either a DVD or a piece of furniture back.
“Though I have used jigs all my working life, selling them
is brand-new to me. So far, only the Pro-Am EZ Taper Jig is being sold, and that came
about mostly because of a class on tapering. Nine of the ten people
in one class said they would not use the common taper jig sold by
many companies because they saw it as inherently unsafe. I came up
with my version, and they liked it. I used it on a DVD, and I
started getting phone calls from people asking to buy one.”
.tmp)
Along with more jigs, we can probably expect to see a lot more
teaching from Charles, judging by what he has to say on the subject.
“Lately,” he admitted, “building furniture has gotten to be less of
a joy and more of a labor. I realized that it is time for me to take
my 40 years of woodworking and finishing and share the information
with others.
“I teach basic and simple. I don’t get into
theory, history or chemistry. My goal in teaching is to remove the
complication from woodworking and finishing. Tell them the truth,
show them right, and keep it simple. Get it done, and get it done
right.”
Those are wise words from a man who clearly heeds
his own counsel. |