Smidt says she loves the lathe however can be very keen on a small instrument known as a French curve scraper, which she used to sand the curves of the desk that was her bold first venture within the store. The piece, which Smidt calls her “noodle desk,” consists of a butcher block high that S-curves to the ground for help. It’s product of reclaimed maple from MIT’s basketball court docket renovation, which the store had salvaged. “It’s always such a pleasure to use the perfect hand tool,” she says. (Find a hyperlink to images and step-by-step directions for constructing the desk right here.)
BLONDEGEEK VIA INSTRUCTABLES
Although Smidt was an undergraduate at MIT, she didn’t uncover the Hobby Shop till she joined the school in September 2021 (after incomes her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley). “For that first year, the Hobby Shop was pretty instrumental in my maintaining sanity,” she says, noting that MIT had simply begun to loosen up its early covid restrictions. “I think I’ve now used just about every machine.”
Novices and specialists
More than a workspace, the Hobby Shop can be a neighborhood—one the place individuals from all corners of MIT can come collectively to share camaraderie in addition to ideas and methods. “I’ve met some of my favorite people from MIT at the Hobby Shop,” Smidt says.
Fischman even owes his marriage to the store. Thanks to a referral from a contact there, he wound up with a 25-year part-time gig instructing two night time courses in woodworking on the Boston Center for Adult Education—the place he met his spouse. “That was a connection the shop made possible,” he says.
Novices are all the time welcome, and the store’s employees—director Hayami Arakawa and technical teacher Coby Unger—are all the time keen to offer professional steerage. “It’s encouraged to ask questions,” Smidt says. Classes and workshops present extra formal coaching on advanced machines or in uncommon crafts, similar to steam-bending wooden.
Projects undertaken within the store run the gamut from easy reducing boards to wonderful furnishings. Fischman says the piece he’s most pleased with is a curved-edge walnut console desk with hand-planed, tapered octagonal legs. But not everybody makes furnishings. “We had a guy who came in to build a machine to put the caps on his yogurt containers,” Fischman says. “We’ve had harpsichords built in the shop, canoes built in the shop. It goes on and on.”
Smidt provides, “It’s really inspiring to see what other people are making.”
Now, practically 50 years after his bowl was spotlighted in Fine Woodworking, Fischman says he nonetheless finds pleasure on the Hobby Shop. “The shop is fun,” he says. “I think that’s an important aspect of it.”
Another, he says, is understanding that he has created items that can reside on. “I’m 76. I think about legacy a bit,” he says. “The woodworking gifts that I gave to people that they cherish now are part of my legacy.”