technē and poiēsis

Perhaps due to my recent visit to a plywood factory , I have been interested in plywood and its properties. I wanted to try bending legs for a chair, just to get a feel for the material and how it works. This being my first time bending plywood, I made some foolish mistakes. The first one was to cut the strips along the grain, which made them much harder to bend. I used 1/8 inch, which was the thinnest I could find, but it was still pretty tough. I soaked the strips in a bath for a few hours to loosen them up.  When they were wet, I clamped them in position and left them to dry out a bit. They took a long time to dry, though, because they were clamped together. After a day or so, I took them out, glued them, and clamped them back. The glue on the top of the leg was dry after a few hours, but the bottom, where it touched the base of the jig, was still sticky. I took the piece out of the jig and clamped it separately. But, here was another mistake: I was afraid the le...

I have recently bought myself a carving knife and I have been testing it on some walnut that a friend gave me. Due to my interest in the tactility of architecture - or maybe due to Vancouver's new bylaw banning doorknobs - I decided to try carving a door handle. After deciding on the basic outline I cut the shape with a jigsaw. I could really feel the fibres of the wood as I was carving. Pushing up from under them would cause it to splinter easily, and shearing them downwards took more force but was more controllable. Walnut oils really nicely, completely changing the character of the wood. I used olive oil because I didn't have any other kind. To fit the existing latch of the door I had chosen I used a dowel carved into a square rod. The part I had the most trouble with was the spring mechanism. I tried first with an elastic threaded through the centre rod: That did not have enough force to pull the handle back up, so I tried next with a clothespin spri...