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The Putney General Store Fires - A death in the family

Yesterday morning I got the news that the Putney General Store had burned down - again.

The Putney General Store (PGS) is literally in the center of Putney at the intersections of the two main roads: Route 5/Main St and Kimball Hill.  It has been a general store since 1796 and was the longest continually operating general store in the state of Vermont until May 3, 2008 when a fire destroyed the roof and attic of the building and left the two main floors extensively damaged.  The first fire was a huge shock to everyone in town and when the owners of the PGS said they could not afford to rebuild it the Putney Historical Society decided to buy the property and rebuild it, raising the funds through donations and grants. The response to this from the townspeople of Putney and various State agencies was very enthusiastic and as of November 1, 2009 a new roof slate roof had been built and the interior had been gutted and restored to the point where the reopening of the PGS was slated for May of 2010.  I know everyone in my family was really looking forward to the PGS reopening and I'm sure just about everyone else in Putney was too.

And then my son called from Burlington, VT yesterday morning to tell me he'd just heard from a friend that the PGS had burned to the ground. "What?!"  I was in shock.  I couldn't believe it.  While on the phone with my son, my wife called from work saying she had just heard the news.  I was heading out to buy lumber yesterday and drove by the PGS which is now just a pile of charred timbers in a cellar hole.  It is hard to look at and I haven't been able to bring myself to take a picture of it.  It really feels like a death in the family.

I can't imagine what all the people who have worked so hard on rebuilding it are going through.  All that hard work destroyed in minutes.  The initial indications are that the second fire was intentional set which I find unfathomable.  Who would do such a thing and why?  And what happens now?

Selling out? A review of Snapit.

I must officially be a blogger now because I received my first "request for product review" email this week.  It was requesting me to write a review on my blog about a product called Snapit .   I'd never heard of it but the email said I would be given a free product license if I reviewed it.  I'd heard of this practice recently on the news because I guess some people think bloggers should have to disclose they are receiving something in return for their reviews. 

I went to the Snapit website to see what Snapit does.   It turns out Snapit is a tool for easily making screeen captures - a picture of what's on your computer screen.  This is something I rarely need to do but when I do I google "windows screen capture"  and remind myself how it's done: get what you want on your screen and press ALT+Print Screen.  This makes a copy of what's on your screen. Go to the program you need the image in and paste it. What could be easier than that?  It seemed to me that Snapit would be a waste of money no matter what the price (currently $17.99). 

I figured I'd give it a try anyway.  I had just recently needed to do some screen captures and found that I had to open the captures with my image editing program, crop them and then resave them.  I was getting the whole computer screen in the capture when all I really wanted was a section of it.  Again, not too difficult to do but if Snapit could make that easier than maybe it would be worth $17.99 . 

Snapit has a trail version that's available online and can be used for 14 days.  I downloaded (just over 1 mb) and installed it in less that 3 minutes including reading the license agreement (which was amazingly short).
Once installed a small camera icon shows up in the system tray:

Right click on the camera and choose properties and you can set what folder you want screeen captures saved into and have Snapit assign names automatically.  If you don't do this the screen capture will be copied to windows clip board and can be pasted when needed.  You can also set what key to press for a screen capture.  The default is Print Screen.  I set up Snapit to save to a folder I called "Snapit screen captures" and to name them capture1.jpg, capture2.jpg, etc. (You can also save as gif, tiff, png and bmp files.)

You can take captures two ways: press "printscreen" or click on the camera icon.  Clicking the camera icon saves the entire screen (using the auto-save setting) or the active window (without auto-save).  Using the "print screen" button changes the cursor to a cross.  Use the cross to select the area you want to capture and if you're using auto-save you're done! The file is automatically saved for use whenever you need it.  No need to paste then crop than save again. Now that is easy.  If you need to use screen captures on a regular basis then Snapit will definitely make your life a lot easier.  Download it and try it for yourself. (Note that Snapit is currently only available for use with Wwindows 95/98/ME/NT/XP/2000/2003/Vista)

Now can I have my free license?

Tractor seat stools

Today's photos show part of the process of making my tractor seat stool seats. These stools have deeply carved seats that are inspired by the old cast iron tractor seats that, despited being made from a very hard material, were comfortable enough to sit in all day long.

This photo shows a stool seat blank with the holes for the legs drilled in it. On top of the seat is a board with a crescent shape traced on it. This crescent shaped piece will be glued to the back of the seat blank to add thickness. The wood for the seat blank and the crescent were all cut from the same board so that grain and color match perfectly.

This photo show the crescent being glued to the seat blank.

After the glue is dry the outside shape of the seat is cut.

Next the contours of the seat are carved out with a custom made machine that duplicates the contours of a pattern onto the seat blank. There is a tremendous amount of sanding necessary with a variety of sanders starting with very course sandpaper (36 grit) and working up to very fine sandpaper (220 grit) to get this seat ready for assembling into a stool but the basic shape is there.

I make my tractor seat stools in a wide variety of woods and several heights. It is most often used at kitchen counters or breakfast bars but I do make an 18" high stool which can be used wherever a standard height chair is needed.


Richard Bissell
Putney, Vermont

See all of my handmade furniture at Bissellwoodworking.com

Designing furniture with 3D CAD

I have been drawing furniture with 2 dimensional CAD (Computer Aided Design) programs for many years and have always found 3D programs (where you draw the piece and rotate it to view it from any angle) intriguing. However, only in the last few years have I found any of the 3D programs affordable, easy to use and powerful enough to accomplish what I think they should be able to do.


I now use two 3D CAD programs. The easiest to use is Sketchup which was bought by Google a couple of years ago. Sketchup has a free version available (Google Sketchup) which is really quite amazing and easy to use. They is also a Pro version which currently costs about $500 and has some added features. One feature of Sketchup I found lacking was the ability to "stretch" things easily. For example, if you draw a raised panel door and then want to make it larger or smaller. With Sketchup I could scale it to make it larger or smaller but that would also make the door frame members larger or smaller in both dimensions. There was no way of making the panel larger or smaller and the frame members longer or shorter without also making them wider. I found this disappointing and started looking around for other 3D programs that could do this properly. (I should note that I believe Sketchup Pro now has the ability to do this.)



I had read about another CAD program Alibre Design at some point (perhaps even before finding Sketchup) and had download a free version of it but had found it too difficult to learn. Alibre design is quite different from any other CAD program I've used. It seems that most CAD programs I've seen are primarily intended for architects and builders. Alibre is designed more for engineers designing products. Parts of a product are built individually and then are assembled which is the same way furniture is built. Subassemblies (such as a frame and panel door) can have dimensions assigned base on the overall width and height of the door. For example:


Door width = 12"
Door height= 22"
stile width = 2"
top rail width = 2"
bottom rail width = 2.5"
panel width = door width - 2 x stile width + 1"
Panel height = door height - bottom rail width - top rail width + 1"


Once these dimension are defined all you have to do is change the door width and height and the assembled door size changes. This is the same math you do in your head when working from a simple drawing in the shop. For something like a bed design all dimensions can be defined as a function of the matress width and length. When you want to change the bed from queen size to king size just change the mattress width dimension from 60" to 75" and all appropriate dimensions change in the entire drawing. The number and spacing of spindles can be defined as a function of the width and more spindles added as needed. This type of dimensioning is referred to as parametric. Alibre can also generate cut lists for all the parts of an assembly.



Of course learning a program like this takes time but the results are worth it. Basically you can build the entire piece on the computer, figuring out all the joinery issues before you go into the shop and cut a single board. From a customers perspective they can view the finished piece from all angles in the wood of their choice and know exactly what they will be getting. For complicated pieces this is a very valuable tool.



Here's a rendering (done with Alibre Render) of a sleigh bed design I have been working on:






Here is an exploded view rendering of the same bed:

Walking to Work

I am fortunate enough to be able to walk to work everyday. My house is about a quarter of a mile from my shop and I have the choice of walking on the road or through the woods and fields. I generally only take the road if I have to go to the mail box (rural delivery route) or if there's to much snow on the ground. I really enjoy the walk through the fields and woods. Below are a few photos I've taken recently along the way.

Mushrooms in the hollow of a tree. This large old maple tree in the court yard just outside my shop.

These next photos are of a tree that is about 50 yards to one side of the path I take through the woods. I noticed the fresh white broken off tree truck from the path and went to investigate. I assumed that this pine tree had been weakened by woodpeckers going after insects in the secction of the trunk that broke off.

What I found was something I'd never seen before and didn't realy know what to make of it. There was no evidence of any rot or weakness in the trunk and the standing portion of the trunk looked like it had been twisted. Even more odd was the fact that a sction fo the trunk about 11-15 feet long looked like it had been literally blown apart. The were 6 or 7 long pieces of this section laying on the ground radially around the standing truck. One of these sections was jambed into the ground. You can see it in the photo below angling out of the ground.

What I eventually concluded was that this tree had been struck by lightening. We had a powerful thunderstorm a few days ago which included a ligtening strike that sounded like it was very close by. This photo is powerful evidence for the rule: Never stand under a tree during an electrical storm!

Harvest Table continued

Today's photos show the assembled harvest table rule joint in 3 different positions - leaf down, leaf half way up and leaf up. Proper routing of the joint and positioning of the hinges is necessary so that the finished joint is perfectly tight when the leaf is up but does not bind as the leaf is raised and lowered. Notice that as the leaf is lowered the leaf begins to move away from the edge of the table and when it is down there is good clearance between the leaf and the table edge.

Table leaf down. Good clearance between leaf and table edge:







Table leaf half way up. Clearance between leaf and table edge is decreasing:

Table leaf up. The closed joint is tight: