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In the Interim

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In the Interim, Volume 3, 1978-1979

TSC 3:1 (November, 1978)

I would like to make a corduroy sports jacket but I am frightened by sewing machines and clothing patterns. It isn't simply the swirling bobbin, dancing needle, and the flashing tensioner that give me pause. The confusing array of attachments that promise to button-hole or embroider also pub me off. But most of all, I suppose, my aversion to sewing machines is linked to the subconscious vision of permanently stitching my fingers into an overcast seam. And that horror is only compounded by the prospect of attempting to make sense out of a sports jacket pattern. In brief, the how-to-world of McCall's, Vogue, and Simplicity is a confusing maze whose terms are strange and whose procedures are intimidating. So, I shall continue to harbor visions of a cord jacket, while knowing that the probability of it ever becoming reality ranks with the reality of "the emperor's new clothes." Of course, I could pressure Helen to make the jacket, but she is too busy designing and building miniatures for TSC.

Given this tug of war between the jacket and my feelings about sewing machines, I can share some sense of kinship with those TSC readers whose desire to build miniatures is frustrated by their feelings about the tools and techniques of the craft. Our mailbag continues to turn up letters from erstwhile scale modelers who wish to build miniatures and may even have a set of power and hand tools, but who have never cut their first piece of wood for fear of cutting their finger as well. A significant number would like to have furniture patterns that handle and behave like dress patterns, ie.. just lay them over a sheet of wood and cut on the solid line. .But woodworking tools require a different set of skills, and fumlture patterns are geared to the characteristics of wood and metal and. thus. are necessarily different from clothing patterns.

So the tools remain in their boxes and the plans in the journal continue unused. Finally, the vision of making miniatures fades and, unfortunately, the TSC subscription is dropped. It is a now familiar pattern which we have learned to recognize after two years of building a readership.

Underlying the expressed fear of using the miniaturist's tools, I suspect, is the unwritten cultural dictim that "women sew and men build furniture." I am certain that my sports jacket is to some degree held ransom by my fear of being identified as a man who sews (as much as by the thought of stabbing my finger with a needle). But the thought nags at me; making the jacket might be fun! There might be the same satisfaction in finally achieving a straight seam as in turning a pair of duplicate spindles on the lathe. ("Where did you buy that gorgeious jacket?," my friends would ask; "I made it," I would reply in an off-hand fashion!)

Making miniatures is fun. But the "Walter Mitty," the dreamer, in all of us will never find that out. For the pleasure of the hobby is locked within the willingness to read a furniture pattern and measure a piece of wood. Then with heart in throat, you pick up a saw and make a cut, or you chuck the stock into a lathe for the first time and apply the chisel or file to the spinning workpiece. (Where did you buy that gorgeous miniature?," your friends would ask; "I made it," you would reply in an off hand fashion.)

.....Jim Dorsett

TSC 3:2 (February, 1979)

IN THE INTERIM.....

At some time during the cycle of the season. every individual and group has an appointed time for takng stock. Harvests end, business years are concluded. New Year resolutions are inscribed on tablets of irresolution. anniversaries are celebrated and in myriad ways we measure off and mark the intervals of life. One would suppose that the time for reminiscence and reckoning for The Scale Cabinetmaker would be in early fall, the anniversary of our first issue in 1976.Actually not; the time for weighing and retrospective is February and March; the time when, six months before an issue first appeared, we began to seriously explore the possibility of something called TSC. What should its focus be? Within the range of interests in the miniatures hobby, for whom would it be intended? Would there be a formula, a recipe that would determine the balance of content in every issue. ie., so many pages for furniture. for houses. for needlework, for tools. for electricity. etc.?

After three years the questions are still the same, and to some degree the issues of TSC which have appeared have formed in summary our tentative, but changing, answers. We decided at the outset that TSC would be for the scale modeling miniaturist. While collecting and modeling are not mutually exclusive categories, there is a difference between building and possessing a miniature to the extent that for the scale modeler building becomes an end rather than a means. But as a doer's publication we wished to explore more than the obvious mechanics of "gluing A to B" while at the same time presenting a number of A's and B's to be glued. With the name "Cabinetmaker" we characterized our primary focus but in retrospect that is somewhat misleading, for the hobby is much broader in its interests than furniture alone. So the joumal has been wider ranging than its name implies. We wanted the publication to have enough latitude for its content that it would not be shackled by a necessary format for every issue.

More than anything else we wanted TSC to be a joumal of ideas relating to miniature building rather than solely a how-to joumal. So in this issue while there is no lack of consuuction material in end tables. kits, houses. wiring. quilts and other do-it materials, Bill explores the application of a constant ratio to the sliding fence on a thickenessing planer; the Jedlickas delve into the uses of resistance in electrical circuits. Pete Westcott begins a series in which he achieves some uncommon interior effects with some common materials. and Helen digs into her knowledge of periods and styles to produce an oak Mission davenport/billiard table that is unusual and fun to build. Over the past year, we have incorporated more needlework content than some have desired as an expression ofTSC ssupport of Kathy's desire to give full, not partial, effort to the subject of miniature rugs. Visually, Bob Turner's hand has been increasingly evident in experimenting with ways of making the journal more attractive, visually interesting, and easily readable. So, if TSC in retrospect is still in the process of haltingly seeking better answers to its initial questions, we have the feeling that in two and a half years we have at least managed to avoid the commentary attributed to Tallulah Bankhead on a Maeterlinck play: "There is less there than meets the eye."

(Jim Dorsett)

VOLUME 3:3 (May 1979)

IN THE INTERIM...

A good friend, whose acquaintance spans a number of years stretching back to my Montana boyhood, was fond of saying (when the occasion called for it at the dinner table) “My gastronomic satiety admonishes me that I have reached that state of deglutition consistent with dietary integrity” instead of simply stating “No more helpings, please; I'm full”. It was a marvelous phrase, delivered with the gravity of a judgement from the bench: a phrase that cast a line into the full depth of the language in search of its terms. It was a memorable phrase except that no one could understand it. So, smiling as though every syllable had motivated the action, someone would pass him the potatoes and gravy.

There can be little doubt that I enjoy a well-turned phrase. But in TSC the phrases and words must convey meaning. So it is always disturbing to heart that the journal's content is too difficult for the beginner. In part, that criticism comes from those to whom the common terms of the cabinetmaker's shop are a mystery: butt, mortise, rabbet, chamfer, rip, scroll cut, tenon, dado, and many others. At one point we considered appending a short dictionary to each issue of TSC. While that might be nice, it wouldn't be very useful; these terms are really action words, each implying a procedure to be used rather than a static definition.

Therefore, beginning in this issue as a regular feature in the journal, we have launched “THE BEGINNER'S WORKBENCH”. This first “Workbench” article is typical of the type of material we have planned for future issues: articles that pause to explain the meaning of terms and to help the reader visualize the steps necessary to achieve a particular procedure. Sometimes, we will compose the article around the construction of a particular piece of furniture, as was done with a bookcase in this issue. But the central purpose of the article in this issue is not the construction of a bookcase, but rather the exploration of hand tool and power tool techniques which are part of the craft of scale cabinetry. How do you measure, mark and cut a sheet of material? What is a rabbet or a dado, what do they look like, where do you use them, and how do you go about cutting them? In this and future “Workbench” articles, TSC will focus on basic terms and techniques in the craft. But it will not be the type of cut-and-paste” information which will have to be discarded or left behind as the beginner moves to a more advanced level of work in the craft. We will assume that the term “beginner” refers to someone who is beginning to learn the craft of scale cabinetry, not someone who wishes to discover an easier alternative to that craft in the gluing together of bangles, baubles, blocks, and beads. That is an alternative we will leave to other publications.

But we do hope to avoid speaking in terms of “my gastronomic satiety” as well. I'm certain that you will continue to let us knw when we have missed ... or hit ... the mark. .....Jim Dorsett

VOLUME 3:4 (August, 1979)

IN THE INTERIM...

While the winters in Virginia are never quite so long and tedious as they were in Montana (where the two seasons of the year are said to be winter and August), by early April I am usually in agreement with Christopher Morley that “April prepares her green traffic light and the world thinks Go.” Cabin fever does that to you, and by April I tend to think Go.But unlike Robert Lewis Stevenson who said that he traveled for travel's sake and that the great affair was just to move, I seldom seem to synchronize the urge to Go with the ability to break away from TSC's deadlines whenever the spirit moves me. So we are more apt to sandwich trips to miniature shows and meetings in between publishing deadlines. After the February issue had been survived, it was an April trip to the Yankee Miniatures Show and some dealer training seminars in Connecticut that broke the travel drought. With the May issue in the mail, we managed to satisfy our wanderlust with a weekend at the N.A.M.E June meeting in Ashland, Virginia (taking Pete Westcott's Georgian room box for TSC along for company.

Throughout the summer we have quelled the urge to roam very far from the typewriter and workbench, although the Westcott room box (apparently a more seasoned traveler than we) kept right on going after the cover photo was shot in June. It is spending the summer in the new museum at Models and Miniatures in San Jose, California (1375 S. Bascom), where the Scalemasters are in the process of assembling displays of miniatures and model railroads. The partially completed museum contains materials from both amateur and professional modelers, including an extensive model train layout, a village area with room for 12 houses, and a paneled room box wall with space for as many as 24 miniature displays. This growing display, open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays this summer, is one that I would like to see. And I intend to.

For in September, after this issue of TSC has followed its successors out of our mail room, we intend to catch up with Pete's Georgian room in San Jose when we attend the NAME N-2 Houseparty on September 28-30th. That will be TSC's first jaunt to a west coast miniatures meeting, and we hope to meet many TSC readers and scale modelers while there. So come by the Dorsett Publications booth during the show .... to talk miniatures, scale modeling tools and techniques, and your ideas for TSC articles. The only thing we will sell at the show is the idea that nothing is quite so much fun as building miniatures. And that really isn't such a bad idea. Withanother winter approaching, and with odd/even days facing us all at the gas pump, scale modeling is a good reason for staying home .... until April.

.....Jim Dorsett

 

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