After some sixty-five years of woodworking and art, making everything from toys to tables, clocks to cradles, bookcases to beds, furniture to fixtures, carving to crafting and crating from oil and watercolor painting to decorative paving, I have left metal and glass sculpture for the last. My current project is to build a furnace so I can mold my own original-design bronze components for my grandfather clocks. Next I will use my kiln to fire and cast glass to incorporate into my dreams.
Through all these many years I have found an added pleasure in making rocking chairs. Rockers seem to satisfy my natural inclination to create. I recognize that in our day no one really comes up with anything new, nevertheless we can follow our own instincts while working with inherited form. I started using the generations-old joinery for my rockers, but I guess the many years I spent in aerospace rocket engineering alerted me to the inherent flaw in this type of joinery, with its short fiber and delicate ear. I have since incorporated the 'Maloof' method for this joinery, which is much stronger and less subject to grain failure. The same aesthetic silhouette is there while the capacity of the joint is improved and only a skilled woodworker would notice the slight visual difference. I guess some would call me a rocker scientist.
Although I am a self-taught woodworker, I haven't relied fully on my own experience. I also am an avid reader and continually research all the new and old articles I can find to improve on my skills. I am confident the methods used in my woodworking are the products of the best minds and experience from past generations of furniture masters. Why else would I offer a lifetime guarantee?
Even though I am past eighty my head is full of ideas for the future. As such, I am well past the age where I am forced to do custom work in general. However, if what you want is compatible with my present ambitions, I will consider the project.
I lived in the most productive part of the world for beautiful walnut woods such as Claro, Bastogne. I have spent a good deal of time and effort searching for the elusive, figure-grained wood. When I find it, I am motivated to create a new project incorporating nature's wonders, as best as I can, into something beautiful and useful for generations to come. Wood and people are very much alike. No one piece of wood or one person is identical to another, neither are they perfect. That is the beauty of it. Each blemish highlights their character. As the poet says “variety is the spice of life”. Perfection is what I strive for and have only gained a glimpse.
Kappel Fine WoodWorking
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