Introduction of an alien

[Rolf Safferthal]

Seems to me, I´m the very latest newby to the forum! Additionally one from overseas!

Read several threads througout the last 2 weeks or so and it was pretty interesting. So I decided to join in.

Let me introduce myself:
53 years old male from Germany, married, no kids.
Electronics Engineer and currently Technical Mgr. of a companys Medical Intruments branch.
Woodworking started for me last year, triggered by books from David Day (England?). Short before we had moved to a new (35 years old) home that provides enough space for woodworking and there were several small projects to improve that home. You see, I´m still a beginner. Now I´m on the Workbench´s Book frm Lon Schleining. Want to create my own bench this year.

I like both, handtools and powertools and I like quality. Chisels from Kirschen (Double Cherry), planes from Stanley (I know, there are even better ones), power tools from Festool.

Other hobbies: Geology, my old Italian car (Lancia), steam powered railroad equipment, photography, travelling the Amercan southwest, good food. Crime Stories from Hammett or Chandler.

Think, thats enough for now. Hope I didn`t bore you!

Rolf

[Jeff Sudmeier]

Rolf,

Welcome to the Creek! We are glad to have you as a member! Be sure to post some pictures of your work, when you have time. It always amazes me the fast reaches of this forum. We have members from many many contries.

Once again, welcome! I hope you enjoy your stay!

[Frank Pellow]

Welcome to Saw Mill Creek Rolf. I have learned a lot here and I am sure that you will too.

And it is good to see additional members from Europe. I, for one, really value the different perpective that European members bring to this forum.

[Pete Harbin]

Welcome Rolf! You've found an excellent place to spend some online time. Next time you're planning a trip to the southwest let us know. There are quite a few of us out here.

Pete

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Welcome to the Creek Rolf! Neat place to trade information!

[Jim Becker]

Welcome, Rolf. Always a pleasure to have another community member...and if you're a woodworker, you're no alien!! ;)

[Dennis Peacock]

Welcome to SMC Rolf..!!!!! Germany hugh? I've been in your part of the world before and loved every minute of it. Took the Cog Train up the mountain to snow ski on the Zugspitze in Garmisch, Munich, and Frankfurt. Very pretty country.

Well, enough rambling on about my enjoyment of Germany. WELCOME ROLF!!!! :D

[Mark Riegsecker]

Welcome Rolf

I'm impressed already. You can write in English. All I can say is Dumculf (dumb) and su de tour ( shut the door) I know I didn't spell them correctly.:D
I'm only familiar because I helped my daughter in her German class at school. Obviously I didn't help enough. She went on as an exchange student in Dresden.

My family moved to America from Germany in about the year 1870 so she was just going back her roots. Great country that Germany.

So welcome to SMC your not among strangers:)


Mark

[Ron Jones near Indy]

Welcome to the Creek Rolf! You will get and give good information and meet good people.

[Cecil Arnold]

Welcome to the creek. Some of my fondest memories are from Germany circa 1960-62 in and around Kitzengen and Wurzburg. We returned to Kitzengen in 1990 and found the growth and people delightful and as friendly as I remembered. If you're ever around the Houston, Texas area be sure to get in touch.

[Rolf Safferthal]

Many thanks for the warm welcome!

Yes, I can write in English but be prepared for being patient with me! There are still enough language pitfalls to avoid. On the other hand - this is an additional opportunity not only to learn about woodworking. Foreign language experience will add up too.

As far as I see now, the woodworking community in the United States seems to be much larger than the German one, even if one takes differences in population in account. One reason might be that Americans are more accustomed to use wood - at least as a construction material for buildings.

How many percent of - for example - houses are more or less made of wood in the United States? In Germany you`ll find only few new wooden buildings, even if the number has increased over the years. Mostly, only prefabricated houses are more or less made from wood. Conventional houses only have a wooden truss, even if the beautiful frame buildings are part of our heritage.

In Germany furniture making is partly a lost art of the past. We can build cars! :rolleyes: I might not have the full picture, but it seems to me that there are only few people practising cabinet making. No Sam Maloofs or James Krenovs! Sometime you get the feeling, only aficinoados are keeping the craft alive. Might be a much too pessimistic view - I don´t know! But I see too much cheap furnituere glued together from paticle boards with plastic coated surface. You know about Ikea?

My project for the near future is a home made workbench build exactly to my needs. The double screw Veritas end vise is already ordered.

Rolf

[lou sansone]

welcome to the creek

I build 18th century american furniture for fun, and some of my most favorite "american" pieces are of German origin. Your country has a great heritage of excellent furniture design. best wishes with your bench.

click on this link to see the bench that I built and one from your country that I really like

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=18204

kind regards

lou

[Michael Ballent]

Welcome to SMC, lots of friendly people here willing to share their thoughts and knowledge of woodworking. I happen to live in Arizona in the Phoenix area so if you are ever in the area let me know. I would be happy to show you around. :D

[Larry Norton]

Hey, Rolf! I see we have a lot in common. I spent 3 years at Hahn Air Base from '66 to '69. I am also a railroad lover, I had a model railroad business for 6 years, and I had a 17 by 22 ft. H.O. scale model railroad in the basement of the old house with over 300 ft. of track.


I'm new here, also, so I'm sure we'll learn a lot together.

Larry

[John Hart]

Hello Rolf. Welcome to the Creek. Hey..this is great...You'd like to work on your English and I need a German translator!!! But the wood projects are much more important...They are a language all their own.

[Kelly C. Hanna]

Welcome Rolf! Good to have you on board.

[Bryan Nuss]

Hi from Canada, Rolf .... welcome to the Creek! I know you will find this forum to be a great source of information, where everyone can show their work (and sometimes their mistakes), allowing us all to learn more about our craft.

You mentioned you live south of Frankfurt. I visited that area about 5 years ago on business (also Munich, Babden-Baden and a couple other spots having organic waste/composting facilities). Its a beautiful area. We are looing forward to hearing more from you.

Regards,

[Alan Turner]

Guten TAg. Welcome to SMC.
As to your bench aspirations, I recommend you read The Workbench Book by Scott Landis. While the book you have is not a bad one, and the pictures of clever things abound, the Landis book is for me superior in terms of actually building a bench.

[Christian Aufreiter]

Welcome to SMC, Rolf. Nice to see another guy from Europe here. :)

Regards,

Christian

[Dan Forman]

Willkommen! I'm sure you will enjoy time spent here.

Dan

[Jason Tuinstra]

Rolf, glad to have you hear from such a great distance. Welcome aboard! And another Festool guy! Glad to have ya'.

[Kyle Stiefel]

Guten tag,

Glad you can come to pick up some tips as I have I. I spent the 4 out of the last 5 years around you neck of the woods or portion of this little earth in Baumholder and Wurzburg. I am partial to the northern Bavaria region.

Good day.

[Effie Lever]

Welcome Rolf, I’m sure you will enjoy it here just like we all do.

Can you post pictures of the Lancia? I did own a Beta years ago and I loved it.

Effie.

[Rolf Safferthal]

Hello!

Due to the fact that I was on (unplanned) travel for most of the last 2 weeks my answer to all your nice postings is late. I apologize that.

Yes, we live south of Frankfurt, but not as far as some of you might expect. It´s not in Bavaria, it is South Hessia, the so called Odenwald, a hilly area with lots of forests. We moved to that place 30 month ago and it increased quality of life much more than expected.

In the meantime I bought wood for a - compared to my level of skills - gigantic project, a workbench. Such a bench has to be made from European beech, if one lives here. Two reasons: It ist much cheaper than other hard wood and it ist more or less the traditional material. Got planks (is this the right term?) of cured beech 11 feet long, with different width between more tha 5 '' and 12'' and 2 '' thick. 330 kg ist the total weight, more than 700 lb. The cost: about $ 600. Wood is expensive in Germany.

Lets see how the project goes on. I´m a little bit nervous, but not that anxious.

Effie Lever asked for a picture of my Lancia. I´m pleased to show you a shot of the "Diva" as this special model is nicknamed in Germany.

It is a 1993 Lancia Thema with an 3,0 Liter aluminum V6 from Alfa Romeo ("il coure sportivo" as the Italians say). This version was fabricated only shightly more 7.700 times and maybe about 1.000 might have survived today. It´s not lack of quality, it´s a question of the enormous shop costs if you´re unable to service that car by your own. :rolleyes: Fortunately I can.

The car run for more than 391.000 km´s (that is 243.000 miles) until now and it´s still going strong! Never let me walk! :)

Greetings

Rolf

[Robert Mayer]

Welcome! Good to see people from other countries on here. We have a guy from japan here too. I would love to visit there someday and see the castles...

[Rolf Safferthal]

Welcome! Good to see people from other countries on here. We have a guy from japan here too. I would love to visit there someday and see the castles...

Hello Robert,

yes there are castles and manor houses too! We have one only two and a half miles as the crow flies but unfortunately we cannot see it from our home. The next one is five miles to the east. This one we can see. And there are additional 5 in a perimeter of maybe 12-15 miles.

It´s always a good idea to experience the differences between the two continents. But beware, we don`t have red rock and canyons, one of the reasons to visit the United States! ;)

Rolf

[Robert Mayer]

Hello Robert,

yes there are castles and manor houses too! We have one only two and a half miles as the crow flies but unfortunately we cannot see it from our home. The next one is five miles to the east. This one we can see. And there are additional 5 in a perimeter of maybe 12-15 miles.

It´s always a good idea to experience the differences between the two continents. But beware, we don`t have red rock and canyons, one of the reasons to visit the United States! ;)

Rolf

Have you visited the grand canyon?

http://www.grand.canyon.national-park.com/images/grac.jpg

[Von Bickley]

Rolf,
Welcome to the Creek... I know you will enjoy visiting with us.

I did 18 monthes in your beautiful country, in Rothwesten, just north of Kassels. That was a long time ago... Nov. 1968 - May 1970 :)

[Rolf Safferthal]

Have you visited the grand canyon?


Hello Robert,

did so several times. My wife and me, we love the southwestern desert areas on the Colorado Plateau. We visited the area several times since 1985.

Rolf

Some of our favorites below:

[Mark Singer]

welcome! glad your here....

[Jim Dunn]

Rolf,

Greetings and salutations. Glad to see this world wide community of wood workers comming together:).
Now if we could get some Frenchmen on here:rolleyes:.

Jim (from the midwest)

[Bob Noles]

Rolf,


So nice to have you with us. Sounds like you have a well rounded inventory of toys.

Look forward to sharing ideas with you.

[Chris Padilla]

We can build cars! :rolleyes:Rolf

Can you now?? ;)

Rolf,

A big hearty welcome from the Left Coast (California). I was just in Munich during Easter picking up a brand-new shiny FAST 545i and I feel like I could just live on the autobahn doing 250 km/hr!!! Well, out in the country...Munich is a traffic nightmare!:(

I'm originally from Colorado (Boulder area) so thanks for the pictures!

Again, welcome...great place to wade it...water's always good! :D

[Tom Hamilton]

Guten Tag:

My 1963 exchange program German is pretty rusty, so just a simple welcome to the Creek.

I spend a summer in Bad Hamburg, just north of Frankfurt, with a vacation trip south to Munchen and the surrounding area.

Very beautiful, great food, beer, and people. :D

Enjoy your dip in the Creek,

Tom Hamilton

[Gary Herrmann]

You'll find the folks here friendly and helpful.

[mike malone]

Willkommen Rolf!!
mike

[Rick de Roque]

Hello!

Due to the fact that I was on (unplanned) travel for most of the last 2 weeks my answer to all your nice postings is late. I apologize that.

Yes, we live south of Frankfurt, but not as far as some of you might expect. It´s not in Bavaria, it is South Hessia, the so called Odenwald, a hilly area with lots of forests. We moved to that place 30 month ago and it increased quality of life much more than expected.

In the meantime I bought wood for a - compared to my level of skills - gigantic project, a workbench. Such a bench has to be made from European beech, if one lives here. Two reasons: It ist much cheaper than other hard wood and it ist more or less the traditional material. Got planks (is this the right term?) of cured beech 11 feet long, with different width between more tha 5 '' and 12'' and 2 '' thick. 330 kg ist the total weight, more than 700 lb. The cost: about $ 600. Wood is expensive in Germany.

Lets see how the project goes on. I´m a little bit nervous, but not that anxious.

Effie Lever asked for a picture of my Lancia. I´m pleased to show you a shot of the "Diva" as this special model is nicknamed in Germany.

It is a 1993 Lancia Thema with an 3,0 Liter aluminum V6 from Alfa Romeo ("il coure sportivo" as the Italians say). This version was fabricated only shightly more 7.700 times and maybe about 1.000 might have survived today. It´s not lack of quality, it´s a question of the enormous shop costs if you´re unable to service that car by your own. :rolleyes: Fortunately I can.

The car run for more than 391.000 km´s (that is 243.000 miles) until now and it´s still going strong! Never let me walk! :)

Greetings

Rolf

My wife and I were in Frankfort this past march. We had a great time. The food was great. Got the car upto 115 miles an hour on the autobaun. Car could go faster but I just couldn't get myself to go faster. At 115 someone still went past me!!!!
Welcome to SC.
rick

[Rolf Safferthal]

Hello!

Yes we can build cars! :) But if it comes to quality and J.D. Powers, there are some differences. :cool: And mea culpa, I cannot serve with an Frenchman, but there is a woodworking Scotsman in the kinfolk. :D (no, there are no further scottish roots here!)

Yes I know, the Autobahn is an first class attraction for folks normally riding on US interstates. That reminds me of a police officer in Blanding, UT who had stopped us to warn of excessive danger on the road caused by Mule Deers. Then he asked for my drivers license, saw it was German and said to me "oh, you´re used to fly on the Autobahn!" with a wide grin! Nice guy! :D

May I have a question?
From Chris Padilla I learned that the west coast is the left coast (never heard that term before). Is the Atlantic coast the "right" coast and what ist the Gulf Coast? ;)

And now my first question on wood:

Lon Schleinings Book about workbenches gave me a bunch of ideas for my own bench project. He mentioned in his book "8/4 maple". I know what maple is, but what means 8/4? First guess, its a dimenson of wood. Is it a piece of 8 inch wide and a thickness of 4?

Rolf

[Kelly C. Hanna]

8/4 means it is 8 quarters of an inch thick (2") 4/4 means 1" thick and so on.

The Gulf coast is known as the third coast in some circles.

[Rolf Safferthal]

8/4 means it is 8 quarters of an inch thick (2") 4/4 means 1" thick and so on.

The Gulf coast is known as the third coast in some circles.

Hello Kelly,

thank you for the answers. Two inch thick is much more reasonable in the given context.

Rolf

[Chris Padilla]

Hello Kelly,

thank you for the answers. Two inch thick is much more reasonable in the given context.

Rolf

Rolf,

Yes, I agree, it is a bit strange but it all goes back to history and how they use to measure wood. These 'arcane' nomenclatures still hang around. Kelly got you the right answer but I'll generalize a bit more:

x/4" is all it means where x is some integer. You'll usually only hear this with hardwood and not with structural lumber--you hear 2x4, 2x6, 4x4, 6x6, 2x10, etc. describing those but even though they may have once upon a time a true dimension, they are no longer. The '2' part is now usually 1.5" and you can usually knock a 1/2" off the second number so that a 2x4 is really 1.5" x 3.5" (by whatever length) or even a 4x4 is 3.5" by 3.5". Even this is not consistent by my experience. I find the 1.5" dimension very consistent but the longer one can vary +/- 1/4" sometimes.

[Effie Lever]

Rolf,
Thanks for the pics., the Lancia and the American west. We also love the west and planning to move in that direction in a couple of years. For now we just go west for our vacations, actually going next week with the family to <ST1:p<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com /><st1:PlaceName w:st=Zion</st1:PlaceName> <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = " /><st1:PlaceName w:st="[/img]Zion</st1:PlaceName"><st1:PlaceType w:st=" /><st1:PlaceType w:st=" on?>National Park</st1:PlaceType></ST1:p. No woodworking but a lot of nature.<O:p</O:p

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[Jay Kilpatrick]

May I have a question?
From Chris Padilla I learned that the west coast is the left coast (never heard that term before). Is the Atlantic coast the "right" coast and what ist the Gulf Coast? ;)

Rolf

Ummm, I've heard it spoken of as "The Redneck Riviera" :D during a 1.5 year stay in the Ft. Walton Beach and Pensacola, Florida area.