WoodworkingONLINE.com

Sometimes (all the time?) one click leads to another, and another.

Yesterday, while researching the “…Best Woodnet Forum” post I found a link to Steve Cooley’s blog. A quick scroll down to the categories section on the blog led me to his posts on Woodworking. It turns out he’s a big fan of ShopNotes and recently built the lathe from Issue No. 73.

But, because of my interest in green woodworking, I was really drawn to this link on Steve’s blog to Gary Katz Online. Gary’s web page had some great pictures he took at the Hull-Oakes Sawmill. Gary goes On the Road and finds great places for virtual visits, like the Lummis Home and others.

You won’t believe the size of the logs they can mill at Hull-Oakes. Here’s a look at the huge band saw blade used to rip the logs to size. And the crosscut blade used to cut them to length. Pretty amazing.

Sometimes I spend more time following the links to home pages on the forums than I do reading the forums themselves. Rather than link to the forum thread itself, I’ve decided to provide direct links to some good examples below.

Home pages:

Wood grain background and more
Fisher Woodcraft

How much wood could a woodnaut naut, if a woodnaut, could naut, naut?
NJ Custom Woodworking

A nice, big home shop
Woodworking with APMonte

An even nicer, bigger home shop
Woodworks by Garry

Galoots:

A great hand plane resource
Woodworking at Rex Mill

Hundreds of links at this link
Index of Fossil-Friendly Woodworking Knowledge

In Business:

Custom designed and built furniture
Chisel and Bits

Uses Sam Maloof-style joinery for his rockers
JSR – School of Fine Woodworking

Blogs:

This guy has some great time-lapse video (if you’re into that sort of thing)
Some Junk We Like

Got a link you like? Send it to me.

I work pretty closely with my boss, Doug Hicks. We share an interest in woodworking and digital photography. Each of us spends a lot of weekends in the shop working on projects for our homes. Recently, Doug mentioned he was going to build an end table using bent laminate legs. I asked him where he’d found plans and he explained that he had drawn up his own.

Now, I know Doug, and although he’s built hundreds of great woodworking projects, I know he’s not too handy with computers. So I asked him if he’d used a CAD program to draw them. (And wondered to myself how he’d figured out how to use it.) That’s when he told me he had used a low-tech method to design the table — a sketch on a scrap of paper and some cardboard!

Over the next few weeks, Doug is going to send images of his work to me and explain to us all how he solved some of the problems in building the table as he goes along. You’ll have to excuse a few of the photos though. Doug hasn’t purchased a tripod yet for his camera, so a few of the images are a bit out of focus and skewed to the left or right. (Especially the ones where he shows his hands in the photo while he’s taking the picture.) I hope you learn a little and enjoy this first WoodworkingONLINE construction article.

– Joel

Read the rest of this article »

For all of you out-of-towners, I know this doesn’t leave a lot of extra time to make it to Des Moines, but if you live within let’s say a 200-mile radius of the Woodsmith Store, you might be interested in the following:

The store, located Hickman Road at 104th in Clive, is going to try something a little different this summer to help reduce this season’s excess inventory. They’re going to have an Inventory Reduction Tool and Garden Auction on Saturday, July 22nd. The sales starts promptly at 11:00am and will end at 2:00pm. Conducting the auction will be Daugherty Auction Services of Adel.

Pictures of several items up for auction are on the Daugherty Auction web page, of course many items aren’t shown. Some of the stuff woodworkers will find included in the auction are floor models of new woodworking tools, as well as books, woodworking plans, hardware and project kits. Even some store fixtures and a fork lift will be included.

Gardeners can expect to find some great items too. Pallet lots of trees, shrubs, perennials, and landscaping supplies will be on auction from the Garden Center.

This is a one-time only event to clear out inventory to make room for the new 2007 products. The auction will be held at the Woodsmith Store which is located on Hickman Road at 104th Street in Clive, Iowa, just east of Living History Farms. Take exit #125 off I35/80 and go east one mile.

Doug Hicks, executive editor at August Home Publishing, was asked this question recently at one of our woodworking seminars at the Woodsmith Store: If you could have just one tool on a deserted island (assuming it had electricity!), what would it be?

Doug’s answer was a band saw and he gave his reasons why in a seminar later that spring. Here are his reasons: Read the rest of this article »

I’ve added a new link to the tabs at the top of this page. It’s for WoodNet.net.

WoodNet is the internet side of the three great woodworking magazines published by August Home Publishing. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you should. It has links to PlansNOW, Tips & Techniques, Forums, and Tool Reviews. I also was amazed by the huge amount of interesting links they’ve tracked down on the Links page.

Chopping mortises by hand or drilling them on a drill press can be a labor intensive and time consuming process. A mortising attachment is a good alternative, but this guy wonders if using one causes additional stress to his drill press.

Mortising attachment for my drill press — any problems?

I’m a big fan of the Gallery forum at one of our competitors forum sites. I’d like to see WoodNet do the same. This guy has done a great job on building his first project using cabriole legs.

First Attempt at Cabriole Legs

Finally, this guy has found an effective way to market his new bowl-turning book.

It’s Here

No Ads — 100% Woodworking

Sort of.

Woodsmith does not include advertising in their magazine. And they’ve never accepted promotional considerations for using a certain product (like stain). But that doesn’t mean that an occasional reference to a product doesn’t make it into the magazine.

For example, in Issue No. 165 there’s a great looking 12-Drawer Storage Cabinet featured as the Designer Project. The cabinet has a very dark finish that gives it a unique, contemporary look. In the Sources section at the back of the issue, it lists the stain that they used, along with a toll free phone number and a web address for the manufacturer. And that’s it.

In explaining how the Woodsmith staff decided on the look for the cabinet, senior editor Vince Ancona told me that during the design meetings, “… we wanted an opaque finish, similar to paint, but we didn’t want to totally obscure the grain of the wood. Dark finishes are popular right now in many of the furniture catalogs.” (It’s very similar to the Espresso stain of this Pottery Barn console table.)

“So we asked senior designer, Kent Welsh to try a few different stain samples. I believe the stain he used is called “Java” from General Finishes. It’s a gel stain product.”

Also included in this issue of Woodsmith, which is now available on newsstands, you’ll find information about waterproof glues (including a new product called Bolder Bond), moisture meters, tenoning jigs, and outdoor finishes. The point is, even though Woodsmith doesn’t have advertising within the magazine, it is still a good source for information about new woodworking-related products.

Last week, Paul Sellers commented on whether or not there is still a demand for highly-crafted furniture items. He explained why he thinks there will always be a market for quality, custom-built furniture. According to Paul, people want furniture made with “… real wood and a quality that bespeaks the integrity of the men (who) make it.”

For some reason, a lot of woodworkers are only interested in completing a project as quickly as they possibly can. I know I was that way at one time. Then I’d jump right into the next project without taking any time to enjoy what I was doing. Read the rest of this article »