Abbot John Klassen, O.S.B shares a reflection on the spirituality of woodworking.
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For the past 160 years, the forests of Saint John’s Abbey have provided our shop with its wood. What are we doing to ensure that these forests stay healthy and are able to provide this resource well into the future?
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Every tree has a history. We just happen to know more about the history of some trees than others. Take, for instance, the silver maple that we used for a table crafted in the shop this month.
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How many organ pipes does it take to fill a semi-trailer? By our calculations, roughly 2,687. That’s how many pipes rolled into Collegeville last month in a packed semi-trailer from Roy, Washington (home of Pasi Organ Builders). These are the pipes destined for the long-awaited Saint John’s pipe organ expansion.
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As a shop of experienced craftsmen, Abbey Woodworking is able take on a wide variety of projects: everything from chairs, to doors, to beds, to baseball bats. Yes, even baseball bats! We recently uncovered a newspaper article which features Br. Hubert Schneider O.S.B. and Abbey Woodworking’s time as a bat factory for Johnnie baseball. In this month’s post you will find the article from the Saint Cloud Daily Times, dated May 18, 1945. Enjoy!
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Over the past few months, the Woodshop has been slowly filling up. Not with the typical chairs or tables, but with organ pipes…enormous, wooden organ pipes! Ranging in length from 17 to 32 feet and weighing up to 850 pounds, these pipes will provide the foundational notes for the expanded organ in the Saint John’s Abbey and University Church.
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At Saint John’s, Woodworking and Carpentry are two independent departments working out of separate shops. While the woodworkers craft furniture for campus in the Woodshop, the carpenters typically work on-site constructing frames, pouring concrete, installing fixtures, and making any host of repairs. However, there is the occasional project that blurs the lines between woodworking and carpentry. The Music Wall was such a project.
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Trends may come and go, but people tend to hold on to good furniture. Whether it be for its fine craftsmanship, unique design or even sentimental value, you likely have furniture in your own home that you cherish above the rest…pieces that you hope to pass on someday. This fall, a former student stopped by our shop with such a piece of furniture.
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Design is always a factor in furniture making. So when people ask us, “How do you come up with a good design?” We often joke, “Prayer and fasting.” But to be honest, it comes most often through trial and error; trying new materials, testing ideas, making prototypes and believing in the statement, “I’ll know it, when I see it.”
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Early Abbots of Saint John’s may have been concerned about safety had they heard that students were laboring in the Abbey Woodworking Shop. Not to mention the potential influence that rowdy students might have on impressionable monks! Yet today we have a constant flow of students in and out of the shop between classes. These students are interested in trading in the rigors of the intellectual life for the opportunity to work with their hands…if only for a few hours at a time.
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While our blog typically focuses on the pieces being crafted at Abbey Woodworking, this month we take a pause to highlight the work being done at another Benedictine woodshop...it just so happens that this woodshop is halfway around the world.
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Take a close look at the Marcel Breuer designed buildings in Collegeville and you’ll see a reoccurring shape: hexagons. They are everywhere.
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For over 50 years, the chairs of the dormitories at Saint John’s have faced heavy use (and abuse at times.) As some were being replaced this summer, we were able to secure a good number of them to restore and put back into service.
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When Saint John’s Alumni stop by the Woodshop for a tour, they often want to know, “Do you still make furniture for the dorms?” To which we respond, “Yes we do.”
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