Modern Art

I love modern art.

More precisely, I love making modern art.

Even more precisely, I love making a mockery of modern art.

This weekend, I am in Portland, Oregon working the Portland Woodworking Show for Lee Valley Tools. Popular demos included sharpening, hand planes, and the new dovetail saws. I started out this morning playing with the 14-tpi rip dovetail saw, cutting straight lines parallel to and as close as possible to the previous cut, resulting in a comb-like end on the board. Over the day, other people came along and made more cuts in the end of the few small boards we had on hand.

Later on, I picked up the Low-Angle Smooth Plane and brought it over to a piece of 2″ thick basswood and started planing the edge. It seems that everybody these days likes to demo how fine of shavings can be produced with a hand plane. So I started there, making shavings that woud cling to me with static electricity. Then, half a rotation of the Norris adjuster at a time, I increased the depth, trying to see how thick of a shaving I could cut. I stopped when I reached 1/32″, measured with a pair of calipers. That, 2″ wide and about 18″ long, was a pretty hard cut to make.

At the end of the day when things had quieted down, I was looking at the short boards with comb-like ends. I got thinking that some of the shavings I had made with the plane would probably fit into the kerfs, so I fit a shaving between two “teeth”. Michelle came over and grabbed a second “comb” and fit it on the opposite end of the shaving. Then we added two more shavings, and voila!

I have, after much deliberation, decided that I don’t really have a suitable place to display such a magnificent work of art. Therefore, I am putting it up for sale. Based upon some very complicated pricing formulas, I have settled upon a price of $15,000.

Remember: it’s art.