Chaboo Artist- Joel Wakeman
Joel Wakeman is nearly done with his chaboo! He has built one from scratch, re-interpreting my design using salvaged materials.
Joel works a lot with hand tools and even mills his wood by hand without a jointer/planer. These are hand cut dovetails! Very impressive. I like how he makes the material appear lighter and thinner by tapering it out towards the edge.
Joel and I actually went to the same school, the Rhode Island School of Design. If I hadnt quit we would have been in the industrial design program together. Its interesting to see what I missed out on by leaving school and working instead. I asked him to come by my shop the other day and show me how to mill wood with only hand tools. I brought out an old chunk of mahogany i had laying around the shop and he taught my apprentice Lauren and I how to flatten the face and then true up a square edge by hand.
Even though I will continue to mill wood by machine for most applications it was nice to do it by hand to really feel the material. I got out my really nice Japanese handplane which cuts on the pull, not the push. It felt really smooth and controlled on the mahogany and made really nice shavings. So nice that Lauren took some home with her. She really enjoyed using the hand tools so I think ill teach her how to use a chisel safely next chance i get 
Thanks for the lessons Joel.
You can see Joel’s work on the website for his company, Integration Workshop. You will see that the images on his site are very well photographed. His wife is a very talented photographer and also has an unrelated talent for falling asleep while standing.
November 18th, 2008 06:53
[...] Joel Wakeman Chaboo [...]
November 18th, 2008 09:57
Hi Ken: I ran across this post on your friend Joel and your reference to your “project chaboo”, which in turn sent me web surfing for some minutes browsing both your sites to figure out what you were referring to. I never figured it out, but I was impressed with your work and that of Joel’s as well. Anyhow, just a hello.
November 18th, 2008 10:19
hi keith. project chaboo is a big collaborative project i am curating where artists from various backgrounds customize one of my designs. http://tomitadesigns.com/catalog-chabu.php
there is a category (to the right on the blog page) for project chaboo. if you click on it all related posts will appear. have a look!
eventually there will be a dedicated page to project chaboo
November 18th, 2008 10:21
I have an old rockwell planer. made in USA its super heavy duty. they dont build em like they used to!
November 18th, 2008 11:05
Thanks for the clarification. I saw the work and the artists, but didn’t understand the context. Now I do. Thanks! Very interesting.
December 7th, 2008 01:23
[...] shop last week. I should charge him for the material. On top of that one is the chaboo from a previous post which mysteriously went from green to black. Go [...]