This
article is reprinted from The Jerusalem Post and
is combined with some pictures of the work described
that have been sent to SAW Dust by Benny Band. Enjoy
this example of Scrolling from Around the World!
The Jerusalem Post
City Lights Section
by Gloria Deutsch
How to fill your time after retirement
is a problem which different people solve in different
ways. Benny Band, who was one of the first, if not the
first, English speaking immigrant to set up shop as a
handyman back in the early seventies has returned to one
of his early loves, the art of fretwork.
His
Ra'anana apartment is filled with the fruits of his
labors - St. Paul's Cathedral on the dining room table.
The Taj Mahal on the sideboard. Sadie Band, his wife of
forty years, encourages her husband's new found hobby
with enthusiasm. She doesn't complain about the dust,
she gives up part of her washing balcony as a drying
room for the pieces before they are assembled and
perhaps most important, she uses her computer skills
which she has passed onto Benny, to get him the
necessary patterns, information and contact with other
fretwork enthusiasts through the internet.
Even back in South Africa as a kid of
13, Benny was discovering the joys of fretwork.
Fretwork is a very old craft, around for
several hundred years, in which intricate cutting on
thin wood produces a delicate lacy pattern. Today it's
possible to work with electrically powered scroll saws,
but Benny crafts his pieces entirely by hand.
Working
eight or nine hours a day, it took him about two and a
half weeks to finish St. Paul's Cathedral. The intricacy
of the work is measured by the number of inner cuts and
in the case of St. Paul's it took 803 inner cuts and 290
pieces. It sounds a lot until you hear about the
piece his internet friend is working on: a frame with
the 23rd Psalm cut out around it and nearly 7000 cuts.
Benny and Sadie came to settle in Israel
in 1961. They returned briefly to South Africa in 1968
but by the time Yom Kippur War was over, they had come
back for good.
"We complain every day but never
leave," remarks Benny. He had been in the diamond
business and was also a professional musician and
talented drummer. But in 1974 there was no work in
diamonds after the war and someone asked Benny if he
would paint their apartment. After that he was
recommended to another customer and soon the work began
to flow in. He told Sadie he was going to set up as a
handyman and began advertising in the
Jerusalem Post.
"They didn't even have a
"Services" column at the Post in those
days," recalls Benny. "They started that
column for me. Israeli's didn't know what a handyman
was."
It is thanks to people like Benny who
took pride in the now expected norms of punctuality and
good service that Israeli standards have improved.
"The first job I did for an
Israeli, I asked for a broom to sweep up. they thought I
was crazy."
He started a carpentry shop in which he
was joined by his elder son and carried on with the
painting and decorating, welding, "whatever I could
do to make a living."
He believes he was the first to conceive
the self-assembly modular furniture which is so popular
today for do-it-yourselfers.
"We couldn't compete with the big
home chain stores today, but we started the trend."
So what does it take to be a fretwork
enthusiast? Judging by the models Benny proudly
displays, patience is clearly a prerequisite. But you
also need the right tools. They are all simple and all
available in Israel.
The first step is to get the pattern
which is to be transferred to the fine wood, usually
plywood. Patterns can be ordered from magazines like Hobbies,
based in England or through the internet. Originally
Benny would trace the pattern on the wood, but he then
discovered he could make photocopies and paste them on
giving a greater accuracy. The glue is specially mixed
so that when the piece is cut out, the pattern can be
easily removed. To save time, Benny cuts two identical
pieces together, the saw going through both of them at
the same time.
The fretsaw, which can be bought at DIY
stores like Ace or Home Center, consists of a handle
with a removable blade. The blade has to be very fine to
saw through the wood, once an initial hole has been made
with a drill. Then it's just a question of sawing until
the pattern is completed. The next step is to file down
the holes so there are no rough edges and Benny was
delighted to find unexpectedly a packet of needle files
in one of the local shops. Finally the pieces are
stained, sanded again and lacquered. The last stage is
the assembly and voila, Buckingham Palace in miniature
on the coffee table.
When I asked to see the workroom, Benny
and Sadie both laughed. In fact, Benny does all of his
cutting and sawing at the kitchen table. Since the flat
is spotless he clearly caries on his work tradition of
cleaning up after himself.
Although he doesn't pretend to be a
computer whiz-kid, Benny finds he can use the Internet
and e-mail quite adequately and is in constant contact
with other fretwork enthusiasts, particularly in the
United States. He discovered that one of his e-mail
friends was also a painter and a drummer until taking up
fretwork full-time.
"I can't sit around and be
idle," says Benny. Thanks to his hobby, he won't
have to.
