Featured Member: Ernie Conover

We talked with Ernie to hear more about his history within the furniture field.

Tell us a little about your­self — where you’re based and how you got started making furniture.

I grew up in a family of crafts­peo­ple; my mother was a weaver, spinner, knitter, and artist, while my father was a crack­er­jack machin­ist. I suppose I turned to wood­work­ing so as not to compete with my father’s metal­work­ing prowess. At that time, my dad and I were both dabbling in build­ing weaving devices and spin­ning wheels. The latter required a thread-cutting tool (called a thread box) to cut a thread on a dowel. A friend urged us to make our tools commer­cially, and Conover Wood­craft Special­ties, Inc. was the result. Besides thread boxes, we also made tools for Windsor Chair Makers that were only avail­able in the antique market. Our most ambi­tious product was a wood­work­ing lathe.
We started Conover Work­shops as an offshoot of the manu­fac­tur­ing busi­ness to train people to use our tools. My friend Mike Dunbar taught Windsor chair­mak­ing, and I taught wood­turn­ing and later joinery. In 1990, we sold Conover Wood­craft but kept Conover Work­shops, and I went to teach­ing full-time. My wife, Susan runs a paral­lel Fiber Program to my Wood Program.

What inspires your work? Who are some of your inspi­ra­tions for furniture making?

I became inter­ested in furni­ture making by repair­ing furni­ture that had passed through five gener­a­tions of my family. During the repair process, I marveled at the construc­tion’s simplic­ity and dura­bil­ity and real­ized that was why it had lasted so long. The repairs forced me to set up a wood­shop in my base­ment, and after repair­ing the furni­ture, I went on to make furni­ture. My first hand-cut dove­tails were in drawers for a dark­room. (I have been a photog­ra­pher and a dark­room denizen since boyhood.)
I am an auto­di­dact, and books were my primary teach­ers. Tage Fried Teaches Wood­work­ing (Still a great beginner’s text­book), Robert Wearing’s The Essen­tial Wood­worker (a must-read for every wood­worker and reprinted by Lost Arts Press), and Ernest Joyce’s The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Furni­ture Making are still go-to sources.
I count Rudy Osolnik, Steve Loar, and Leo Doyle as mentors. Rudy taught me to be a skilled wood­turner and was a fellow Found­ing Board member of The Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Wood­turn­ers, as was Leo. Steve taught me to draw, and I taught him to turn. Leo became a close friend and taught me about style, work methods, finish­ing, and painting.

What does being a member of The Furni­ture Society mean to you?

I joined the Furni­ture Society at the urging of Garry Knox Bennett. AAW, The Furni­ture Society, and The Society of Period Furni­ture Makers all bring together like-minded people. I never fail to learn some­thing or pick up a great idea at a meeting.

Tell us about your preferred way of connect­ing with clients and customers.

In the early days, we connected through trade shows and direct mail, and the school piggy­backed on our manu­fac­tur­ing business’s adver­tis­ing. We were early adopters of the inter­net, regis­ter­ing our web address in 1989. While trade shows and appear­ances still drive sales, our website and direct email are our primary sales channels.

Do you have a specific joinery tech­nique, favorite tool, or favorite wood that you like? Why? 

I am a huge fan of hand­planes! In the past, I used antique Stanley Bedrocks (not mfg. after 1943). I now use a 4½ and 5½ Veritas Customs, in conjunc­tion with their #62½ bevel-up and their 4½ bevel-up, with the blade ground to 38° to achieve York Pitch. This is comple­mented with 4 shoul­der rabbet planes: two are Veritas, and two are antique bull-nosed rabbets. I also have a rare antique Stanley #72 chamfer plane that I use frequently. In a cupboard, I have an arsenal of planes which can be seen in my FS port­fo­lio. I use two sets of Japan­ese chisels, which, like the Japan­ese, I drive with a 570-gram barrel hammer. Bring­ing up the rear is a wide assort­ment of Pfeil carving chisels and knives. Five back­saws (dove­tail, tenon, carcass) hang within easy reach. For wood­burn­ing, I use a Razer­tip Wood Burning System with an assort­ment of pyrog­ra­phy pens. Three grinders, a buffer, a Tormek, and a variety of stones/​diamond plates keep my tools sharp.

Because of my love of turning, I try to incor­po­rate turn­ings in my furni­ture — even if it is only a knob. My signa­ture is a contrast­ing dot in the center of my turned knobs; ebony, walnut, or ivory nut, depend­ing on the knobs’ mate­r­ial. In the last decade, I have started grad­u­at­ing the knobs 1/32” larger for each bank of drawers in cabi­nets and increas­ing the size of the dots propor­tion­ally. This corrects the viewer’s down­ward perspec­tive, much as entasis in a Greek column does. All in a day’s work for a cabi­net­maker with a woodturning problem.

Check out Ernie’s profile page and website