RSM Pursue Your Passion: Ringing in good times across the country

RSM’s Megan Reishus was one of nine employees to win the firm’s Pursue Your Passion program this year. As a result, Megan was awarded nine days of paid time off, along with $10,000 to pursue a personal goal. Megan’s goal? Continue to pursue her passion for playing handbells by purchasing equipment for her ensemble and going on a cross-country musical performance tour. Read Megan’s story:

Megan with the rest of the quartet about to leave Colorado
 Springs for their most extensive tour to date! 

What exactly goes into a cross-country musical performance tour? Planning, certainly, and no shortage of hard work. Willing hosts and eager audiences. Practice. Instruments, time... and passion. Passion for the music and the goal of sharing it with as many people as possible. And then once we’re on the road, what does a tour really entail? Set the stage, play a concert, meet audiences, pack everything back up, eat, sleep, wake up and drive to the next location, do it all again. Love every minute of it.

I play handbells. Like you might see playing during the offering at your church… except that the only similarity is probably the instrument itself. Handbells are traditionally a “church instrument,” but the quartet that I’m part of, Forté, is an elite ensemble with a national following and a reputation for excellence, intensity and innovation. Our motto and constant challenge to ourselves and our audiences is to “Rethink Possible,” in terms of the instrument’s potential. We play all genres of music, with concerts featuring techno, Celtic, pop, country, new age, original, classical, classic rock, Christmas, and Christian music – just to name just some of our selections’ genres. We are a Christian group, with our primary goal being to glorify God through the gifts and talents He’s given us, and we believe we can do that with any type of music when it’s presented well. So that’s what we strive to do.

It’s likely (but not actually verified with real data) that we hold the record for using the largest amount of equipment per ringer of any handbell ensemble. Our primary set is five octaves (61 bells) and we use three to four additional three-octave (37 bell) sets for each concert, for when we need duplicate bells of the same pitch for staging purposes. Each of these three-octave sets costs $10,600 (one of these sets was what my Pursue Your Passion prize funded), while the five-octave set costs $24,350. Beyond that, we use three sets of hand chimes (one five-octave set and two three-octave sets), mallets, percussion, and various racks and stands for our equipment. For four performers, that’s quite a lot. Now imagine packing the trailer every night after a concert!

The quartet taking a quick break at the gas station
before driving to their next stop on tour. 

This March, we presented our most extensive tour to date. We had a local “send-off” concert in Colorado Springs before heading east. We shared music with audiences in Manhattan, KS; St. Louis, MO; Lakeside Park, KY (right across the Ohio River from Cincinnati OH); Beckley, WV; Williamsburg, VA; Raleigh, NC; Lilburn (Atlanta), GA; Macon, GA; Nashville TN; Conway, AR; Norman, OK; and Dodge City, KS, before returning home to Colorado. We drove 4,000+ miles and performed 13 concerts in 14 days, it was exhausting – and it was wonderful. We can’t wait to do it again! Until we can, we continue to perform locally, including the “welcome home” portion of our tour that we put on in April.

The thing about this passion and the pursuit thereof is that it’s never “complete.” The nine PTO days RSM generously provided me through the firm’s Pursue Your Passion program covered most of my cross-country journey, but that only makes up a chapter of our collective story. The impact that the Pursue Your Passion contest has had and will continue to have on me and my group is profound – the bells that I was able to purchase will come with us as we continue to travel across the country and perform for new audiences. It means that when we’re coordinating the equipment needed for our next tour, we don’t need to borrow as many bells from local churches. The fact that I work for a firm that supports its employees’ passions in such a huge and tangible way is incredible. I want to sincerely thank the Pursue Your Passion selection committee for choosing me as a recipient this year.

If you’re interested in more information and/or want to follow Forté as we continue our pursuit of this shared passion – and maybe even catch a concert if/when we’re in your area – please check out our website. Our upcoming projects have us heading to Albuquerque, NM (June 2018); Lincoln, NE and Northfield, MN (March 2019); and many stops along the way from Colorado to Connecticut and back (June/July 2019). We hope you’ll join us!

RSM Pursue Your Passion: Have a Seat!

RSM’s Matt Dollard was one of nine employees to win the firm’s Pursue Your Passion program this year. As a result, Matt was awarded nine days of paid time off, along with $10,000 to pursue a personal goal. Matt’s dream? Work under the direction of a master craftsman to create a one-of-a-kind piece of furniture by hand. Read Matt’s story: 

Matt Dollard

I feel fortunate to work at a place with a program that encourages employees to pursue their passions outside of their everyday careers. My passion (or “healthy obsession”) is building hand-crafted furniture. The majority of my work to date could be considered cabinet-making – mainly a lot of right angles, which is relatively “easy” once you practice at it. I was ready to take on a new challenge and, with the support of RSM, decided to learn chair-building. Specifically, I wanted to construct a chair that had no right angles, with lines skewing and curving all over the place. With this challenge in mind and the firm’s support, I chose to take woodworking classes from one of the best chair makers in the country.

My near complete Continuous Arm Windsor

In March, I spent one week in North Carolina studying with Elia Bizzarri. I encourage you to look at Elia’s work; it’s of the highest quality and done by hand. There were three other students studying with me - all of them retired. Being the youngest participant and far from retirement, I felt lucky to be there. Were it not for RSM’s Pursue your Passion program, I too would have waited until I retired!

Elia Bizzarri demonstrating how to split
logs with steel wedges and a sledge
hammer to harvestchair spindles. 

The project was to construct a continuous arm Windsor chair. This chair design is several hundred years old and very much in use today, however, its contemporary examples are mass produced in different forms. There is a growing revival of hand tool craftsmen who have begun writing about and documenting their methods and taking on students. I’ve been inspired by these craftsmen and have coveted what they do.

We began with a red oak log, and a wide plank of pine for the seat, and transformed them into a finished chair.

Elia demonstrating how to use a
shaving horse and a draw knife
to rough out the chair spindles

We split the logs with steel wedges and sledge hammers into rough sections for chair spindles. We shaped them with hand tools on a shaving horse, basically a foot-operated vise that holds the work while you sit in it.

We then made the chair back by splitting it from a white oak log, as white oak bends nicely and is perfect for the chair back. We shaped it with similar methods as the spindles. Then we put the chair back in a steam box for over an hour at 220 degrees, bent it over a form, clamped it down, and placed it in a kiln to dry for a few days. 

The chair seat is made from Northern White Pine, a softer wood good for carving and shaping by hand. If you look, most wood chair seats you find today are a series of wood pieces laminated (glued) together. Original American Windsor chairs more often used a single section of pine for the seat. This requires a wide section of knot-free pine, which isn’t easy to find. Lucky for us, Elia has a connection that supplies him.

Bending a steamed chair bow (or
back) over a form to make the
distinctive continuous arm
chair back

The seat took several days and multiple steps to complete. After cutting the basic profile, we determined the leg and arm stump angles then bored holes by hand.  We then temporarily inserted the legs and used their resulting angles as a guide to take measurements to drill holes for the cross stretchers for the undercarriage. With that complete, we carved both the top, parts of the bottom and the sides of the seat to give it a curvy shape.  

We then began gluing and hammering wedges into the tops of the legs to firmly set the leg joints into the seat.

The next step was to drill holes in the seat deck for the spindles and begin orienting them in the chair by eye.  The spindles by nature weren’t totally straight. We followed the wood fibers, which makes the spindles strong but leads to some natural variability. The trick is to align them by turning them so they appear as straight as possible. This works surprisingly well. The eye naturally seeks symmetry and finds it even if the spindles are a little less than perfectly straight. The final steps involved sighting the angles, then drilling holes in the chair back, then inserting the spindles and arm stumps for a dry test fit. We aligned them, then gently tapped the chair back over the spindles, drove wedges into the tops and sawed them off.   

Carving the seat with an in shave

My completed chair, after shipping it home and spending about eight hours applying 8-9 coats of various finishes is pictured here.

I could not have taken a week off of work to study with a master chair builder and complete a project like this without the support of RSM. Getting time away and funding would have been a challenge with all the priorities in my life. I’m grateful for the opportunity and the time and resources that were provided to me by RSM’s Pursue your Passion program. I learned so much. Elia is a brilliant and humble instructor, and an entertaining storyteller while he teaches. 

Organizing the spindles in the most aesthetically pleasing way -
each spindle has natural variations due to following
the direction of wood fibers

Overall, the experience exceeded my expectations. I feel confident that I could adequately tackle this project on my own now. In fact, I enjoyed the project so much, and the firm has provided me with enough funding and time to circle back and take a second course where I’ll be constructing a comb-back Windsor rocking chair pictured here. Wish me luck!

Test fitting the bow on the spindles

To finish the chair I applied 4 coats of barn
red milk paint, two coats of black "wash coat,"
four coats of Tung oil and one coat of wax. The
next project I will tackle under Elia's
instruction in May 2018 - a back comb windsor
rocking chair.

Hand drilling the holes in the seat deck
to insert the spindles - using the bow
 as a reference point to determine
the proper angles