Nick Offerman's Blog, page 5

Tales of Whiskey music video

 

Nick’s latest edition of Tales of Whiskey for Lagavulin includes a music video about his favorite things.  Our wood shop is prominently featured but luckily not our secret Lagavulin stash (don’t check the bathroom).

See the full video here.

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Adam Scott’s Holiday Gift Guide

We’re so fancy!

Nick’s buddy Adam Scott has chosen the Ramblin’ Rump Stump to be featured in Adam Scott’s Holiday Gift Guide for Vanity Fair this year.

You can check out his selections here.

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Black Walnut Friday Sale – 15% Off selected store items

Black Walnut Friday has come a knockin’!

Get you druthers and your left overs in line and save on some handsome handmade crafts from our online store.

We want you to be able to add our quality hand-honed trinkets to your trawl at your leisure without compromising your holiday (and tryptophan) bliss so this sale will be happening all weekend, ending Monday, December 1st at midnight.

Just use the code ‘BlackWalnutFriday’ when checking out and get 15% off of selected items.  You can see what’s in the works here.

 

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The Offerman Rocket Lifts Off!

Introducing the Offerman Rocket for sale now in our online store.

Nick considers American white oak to be the most noble of woods. It’s simple beauty, strength, and ease to work with has made it a staple in construction, ship building and furniture making. Heck, the USS Constitution ‘Old Iron Sides’ herself was built with white oak. So it only seemed fitting to construct our ‘rocket’ from the same wood.

We wanted to make a hand crafted skateboard in the vintage style of the 1960’s cruiser models.  Something with a simple, sleek design that would accentuate the beauty of the oak.  We also wanted something damn fun to ride.  Don’t worry, even if you’re a ‘poser’ the board will look great hanging on a wall and people will think you’re legit. (Matty is a poser).

The board went through a few different designs and an hefty prototype session.  In the end we connected with Arbor Skateboards.  Max Myers and the team there outfitted us with their top of the line hardware.  Arbor Collective has a strong commitment to hand crafted items as well as being environmentally conscious.  Many, many thanks to them.

We are very excited to launch this new ride just in time for the holidays!  You can purchase your own here!

We have lift off!

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Rump-Stump Ballyhoo

Michele has been hard at work developing a brand new product for the OWS Store. We’re pleased to announce that it has just launched, and is affectionately known as the Ramblin’ Rump-Stump. It’s a collapsible camp chair that is lightweight, rugged, and a lean, mean reclining machine:

Note the incalculable grace and poise that one embodies upon Rump-Stump contact….

In light of this new addition to the inventory, we thought we’d furnish you all with some background ballyhoo on its origins, and our design/build process.

To the best of our knowledge, the original inventor of this particular chair is unknown (if you know who, do tell!). The most rudimentary form of the chair looks like this:

A two piece plank chair in it’s basic form.

Wherein the seat and backrest are separate pieces, but they wedge together and form a tension-joint of sorts when “under-rump”. The design emerges into more common usage during the American Civil War era. This image example shows the soldier on the right sitting on a chair that is very similar in design.

Colonel Sanders atop early Rump-Stump model (Civil War era)

By this stage, the chair has been rendered into a more lightweight form by diverting away from the solid-plank approach and into a design based on screws and slats. Around this time, Lord Baden Powell and his cohort of young outdoor enthusiasts adopted the design, and to this day it is often referred to as a Boy Scout Camp Chair.

Michele sourced a range of different drawings and began working on some mock-ups (for more info on mock-ups go here). The first step was to build something out of basic materials (cardboard and tape in this instance) to test the overall dimensions and angle of repose. Clamps sure do come in handy for this kinda stuff…

First Mockup of the Rump-Stump

Next steps involved building the basic form out of Poplar. Tests were conducted to gauge the possibility of deploying a hand woven Danish Cording approach to the seat. While this did indeed make for a rambunctious rump-slumping experience, it was very time consuming and would have made the chair (as a product) improbably expensive.

Rump-Stump prototype with Danish Corded seat.

While the flat approach to the design (above) occupies the least amount of space for storage and transportation, consensus was reached that adding some slight curves to the design would be a little easier on the eye, while only slightly minimizing it’s storage economy. The first rendition of a curvy Rump-Stump lies below.

Curved Rump-Stump (Prototype #1)

After testing out its dimensions we found that the recline-design was markedly improved, but some dimensions needed a little adjustment.  Subsequent steps involved:

Adjusting the curve to further improve the angle of recline.
Reducing the width.
Increasing the height of the back, while reducing the slat-count of the back by one.

By this stage Michele had what felt like a great design. Light and compact without compromising comfort and style. The last design modification involved applying a 10 degree cut to the edge of the slats to imply a little more movement and dynamism to the form.

Rump Stump model with 10 degree cuts applied to the slats.

The last decisions were what to build it from, and how to finish it. Michele wanted to work with an unfinished version that would age gracefully over the years. This ended up being the Pickled European Beech variation. The final decision on the Natural Variation was to combine several different woods for the slats to make the natural timbers sing in a chorus of color. The first contenders were Cedar, Redwood and Cypress, but after consultation with Nick it was agreed that these woods would not withstand the elements well enough. In the end, the selection of White Oak, Red Oak and Ash provided a beautiful range of hues while maintaining maximum durability and longevity for outdoor conditions.

This kind of chair is a really great project for the woodworking enthusiast. For those who are interested in building your own here are some plans for a boyscout version, and there is also a neat  instructional page on the fabulous Instructables site.

Finally, here is an animation of Michele demonstrating the ease of setup and portability.

 

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OWS Judges Instructables Wood Contest

We are honored to announce that the Offerman Woodshop will be the official judges of the 2014 Instructables Wood Contest.

We’ll be looking out for your best chunk or slab masterpiece.  Submit your projects here and win big!!

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MOVEMBER SALE!

Movember, the month when mere mortals try and emulate the follicular fortitude of the facial hair greats: Sam Elliott, Theodore Roosevelt, and our very own Mr. Nick Offerman.  This Movember, tame your burgeoning bristle with OWS’s mustache cultivating accoutrements, like the hand carved Mustache Comb or the Mustache Cultivation Kit, both 10% off throughout the week.  A percentage of the proceeds will be donated to the Movember Foundation for men’s health.

Sale runs November 4-November 11, 2014

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The Importance of the Mock-Up

One of the most important elements of designing an object, a building, a landscape (or anything for that matter) is the mock-up. A mock-up is a scaled (often times full scale) model of a design, fabricated out of inexpensive materials and used to evaluate design elements in question. It has so many purposes, but the mock-up is mainly used to work out details such as color, size, proportions, mechanism testing, etc; elements that need to be visualized in three dimensions. In the case of furniture, the mock-up allows you to see how the piece will relate to the designated space and to the humans that will use it. You’re also testing joinery, finishes, colors and most importantly STABILITY.

Michele is making a mock-up of a rocking chair she designed with a client.

The curve of the back slats were tested, as well as how many were needed for support.

Six proved to be too many slats!

The radius of the rocking rails were determined to ensure the perfect rocking speed, and different armrests were shaped to see what fit comfortably. This rocking chair  mock-up is now our favorite chair in the shop!

Josh built a full scale mock-up of a solid wood drafting table he designed for a client. It needs to break down and pack flat so he needed to figure out stability and assembly. He’s also testing the geometry of the piece and how it relates to someone who will be making architectural drawings.

Josh tried numerous configurations for the stretchers to stabilize the drafting table.

He found that adding triangles to the back was the best solution!

Josh also wanted to mock up the perfect angles and layout for the legs on a three legged stool. So he made a plywood top to test everything.

Looks great Josh!

Lee used SketchUp to draw a Dutch pull-out table for a client. This is usually the first step in the design process and a great way to show the client what to look forward to. Now if she could just learn to spell…

Before building the table, Lee mocks up a small scale model of the table so she can work out some design details like the shape of the legs, the curves on the table top and the mechanism for the leaf extensions. This here looks like a table for 6…

But its actually a table for 12!

Hot glue is used to assemble the model. It’s the best way to put together a mock-up of this scale, unless you wanna make tiiiiiny joinery!

Lee is looking under the table trying to see the joinery from a different perspective. Sorry Lee, even though you’re also tiny, you’ll never fit under that table…

We here at Offerman Woodshop make it our business to mock-up everything we design to guarantee each piece of furniture is completed to the highest standards. Thanks for reading!

 

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Join members of OWS at a lamp-making Workshop !

Offerman Woodshop’s very own Michele Diener and Jane Parrot will be teaching hand tools and electrical wiring in this lamp making workshop run by our illustrious friends at Off The Saw. Students will receive a rough cut lamp base, and they will use hand tools and machines to cut channels for the wiring. They will then learn to wire the lamp, attach the electrical cord and mount the light bulb.

This class is suitable for both children and adults. So get on down to downtown LA and foster some craftsmanship in the next generation!

Click here to book yourself a place in the Workshop.

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Labor Day Special This Weekend!

In honor of Labor Day, we will be giving away a free signed copy of Nick’s book–Paddle Your Own Canoe (now in paperback) –with any store order over $100.  Now somebody please grab a broom.

 

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