Highland Staff

Woodworking Resolutions for 2017 – Terry Chapman

Dec 282016
 

Ah, good old resolutions! Who doesn’t make resolutions for the New Year — I suppose it is a symptom of the human condition, a little bit of hope springs eternal, at least for the first few weeks of the year. So here goes:

1. I’m going to learn something new this New Year. Last year I started to do a bit of leatherwork for the first time. I bought a few simple tools and half a steer hide and built a couple of stools and a Campaign Chair from “Campaign Furniture”. It is a very pleasant hobby and now I understand why people enjoy it.

2. I will continue to purchase more Lost Art Press books, except I do it for a bit of a different reason. I buy things to support the craftspeople and artists who produce the things I like and use. If nobody buys their stuff, they will go away and I will not be able to purchase the things I enjoy for my work. I want Lost Art Press and all the others in our passion, to continue doing what they do.

3. I still want to sweep and vacuum my shop. I resolved to do this several years ago, but it was one of those which fell to the wayside. A supposedly simple thing, but it will take a while to get it done, and I keep putting it off. Like three years now.

4. I want to add to my Festool collection. I love pictures of those walls of Festool boxes and those stacks of Festools taller than the craftsman. I’m up past waist high so far and I want to keep going.

5. I need another class this year. Classes motivate me and I love the way many of them send you home with a finished project. Plus, since I don’t take many vacations, I combine a vacation with a class. If you live in the Southeast US, John Campbell Folk School is a wonderful place with over 800 classes each year. Obviously too, Highland Woodworking has a wonderful list of classes with nationally known and local craftspeople teaching.

6. Recognizing the conflict with Number 1 above, I resolve to drop something. I have reached a point where I cannot be reasonably good at everything so it is time to narrow the focus a bit. How many 10,000 hour blocks to get good at something are left? If I had to say right now, I think it would be carving. I have done enough carving to last me for a long, long time. Been there, done that.

What resolutions do you have?

 

Woodworking Resolutions for 2017 – Norm Reid

Dec 272016
 

OK, so I over-pledged on the number of projects I would build in 2016. I mean, somehow I thought I’d be able to complete at least a Baker’s Dozen before the year was out. Well, things just didn’t work out as I planned. Why not, you may well ask? Frankly, a lot of things intervened, including ankle surgery that kept me out of the shop for the first quarter and bronchitis that laid me up for another month. Then there were three trips that took up another month. And finishing up my book, Choosing and Using Handplanes, took even more time. So at least I have some excuses.

What I did accomplish was significant, however. I made a major reorganization of my shop, creating a hand tool area and adding a drum sander and a better drill press. I made a good start on a Greene & Greene-inspired pantry shelf built with quartersawn sapele. I took Scott Meek’s weeklong handplane class and built three wooden handplanes. I made a set of kitchen knives using Ron Hock blades. I turned a lot of birdcage awl handles for my business, Shenandoah Tool Works, including the padauk awls sold exclusively at Highland Woodworking. And I began installation of a leg vise using Benchcrafted’s crisscross assembly and Lake Erie’s wooden screw. So, while I fell short of everything I’d hoped to accomplish, I still did fairly well.

While I know better than to load up my agenda with too many things this time, here is what I plan for 2017:

 Finish the Greene & Greene pantry shelf

 Finish installing the leg vise

 Make some more wooden planes

 Turn some bowls and hollow forms

 Build some natural edge tables

 Build a Queen Anne dressing table

 Make some small tables based on patterns in Nick Offerman’s Good Clean Fun

 Build a four-poster bed

Even with this shortened list, I think this is a bold agenda. I’ll need to be diligent if I’m to get through it, or most of it. But then, if I don’t have ambitious goals, where would be the challenge?

Norm Reid is a woodworker, writer, and woodworking instructor living in the Blue Ridge Mountains with his wife, a woodshop full of power and hand tools and four cats who think they are cabinetmaker’s assistants. He is the author of the forthcoming book Choosing and Using Handplanes. He can be contacted at nreid@fcc.net.

Pay It Forward This Holiday Season

Dec 092016
 

A few weeks ago we got an email from a customer who wanted to share his “Pay It Forward” story for the holidays, but wanted to remain anonymous. Here is his story about how he sold all of the tools in his shop to a military veteran for just $1:

It would be an honor to me for you to share my story of my experience (with this fine young man and my soldier friend) of talking for several hours with a returned soldier and then selling my woodworking shop’s tools, machinery, and all contents/everything to him for a dollar and a handshake.

If you don’t mind, please don’t share my name or contact information. I share my story with you to let everyone know that for me paying a little back to a young man who fought for me, and for all of us, was much better than the money I could have made by selling my shop’s contents to someone who wouldn’t have appreciated either this young man’s sacrifice and service or the tools themselves. I could have made a lot of needed cash selling everything I had (it was several truck loads, but it was worth much more to me to have made a new friend and to help a soldier whom I had never met, but will never forget.

My wife didn’t understand at first my decision to sell everything I had for so little because she knew how much time and money I had put into this shop. After she met him and got to know him, she understood my decision completely.

-Anonymous

Poll: Making Woodworking Gifts for the Holidays

Dec 052016
 

Holly, the receptionist at our office, hates it when I say, on the 25th of every month, “Only (335…180…90…30) shopping days til Christmas!” Unfortunately for Holly, having revealed that it gets to her, I make sure I never miss a month!

Woodworkers can get the same heebie-jeebies when we hear that Christmas is coming. How many of us have foolishly said, “Sure, I’ve got plenty of time, I can make that in time for Christmas.”

But, a nice project takes so much time. For example, I hope to make delivery  on the round cedar picnic table with curved benches that I started on Memorial Day.

2015.

“Hope” is the key word.
I absolutely love working with cedar, despite its lack of forgiveness. The ultimate beauty is worth the sacrifices and do-overs.

I absolutely love working with cedar, despite its lack of forgiveness. The ultimate beauty is worth the sacrifices and do-overs.

When our first grandchild arrived, I thought it would be great to make presents for her birthday and Christmas every year.

I have enough ideas. Indeed, I have a list as long as a full-grown python of things I’d like to make. Now we have four grandkids, and eight presents a year is absolutely impractical, especially when you consider it’s taken me a year and a half to finish the picnic set.

Instead, I make something for them when I can, and I try my best to make it beautiful and sturdy so they will want to hand it down to their descendants.

What about you? Do you make your own woodworking gifts for the holidays? If so, let us know what you make in the comments section.

Tips from Sticks in the Mud – December 2016 – Tip #2 – Warranty Filing

Dec 022016
 

Welcome to “Tips From Sticks-In-The-Mud Woodshop.” I am a hobbyist who loves woodworking and writing for those who also love the craft. I have found some ways to accomplish tasks in the workshop that might be helpful to you, and I enjoy hearing your own problem-solving ideas. Please share them in the COMMENTS section of each tip.  If, in the process, I can also make you laugh, I have achieved 100% of my goals.

No Southern-fried Southern boy wants to be called a Yankee, but we share the characteristics of shrewdness and thrift. Thus, each month I share a money-saving tip. It’s OK if you call me “cheap.”

In our home office I have a file labeled “Lifetime Warranty.” Believe it or not, you probably have a bunch of things with lifetime warranties. But, try collecting on the item’s failure without a receipt! Many companies who offer lifetime warranties are counting on consumers to fail to keep up with them.

A folder labeled “LIFETIME WARRANTY” holds valuable proof-of-purchase of items whose warranties never expire.

A folder labeled “LIFETIME WARRANTY” holds valuable proof-of-purchase of items whose warranties never expire.

For example, the treated-lumber boards on a fence at our office rotted. Most of the boards still had the familiar yellow tag on one end, which I thought would serve as “proof of purchase”and represent a valid claim to the lifetime guarantee. Not so. The company actually paid a lawyer to deny my claim in writing, referring to the clause in the guarantee that requires the original receipt. For what they paid that attorney they probably could have bought me the few boards I was asking to have replaced!

Get a load of the variety of items with never-ending warranties. Another advantage of this file is that it tickles the memory about what has an non-expiring warranty.

Get a load of the variety of items with never-ending warranties. Another advantage of this file is that it tickles the memory about what has a non-expiring warranty.

Craftsman lifetime warranties don’t require a receipt, under normal circumstances. However, I once took a 100-foot garden hose in for replacement. I’d had it nearly forever, but, lifetime is, well, lifetime. There would have been no problem, except that when this hose was made, the only place that said “Craftsman” was on the female end of the hose. You’re getting ahead of me, but, yes, that was where the defect was. The part that housed the female threads had been separated from the ferrule, and the only Craftsman insignia was on that part.

In spite of all the money I’ve spent with Sears and the Randolph generations before me who lived by the saying, “If Sears ain’t got it, we don’t need it,” they wouldn’t take my word that it was a Craftsman hose unless I had a receipt. Stubborn man that I am, I took my hose back to work and sulked.

Months went by.

One afternoon an assistant came into the clinic from her duty of raking leaves in the exercise yard. A dark, heavy, metallic object in hand, she said, “Dr. Randolph, is this anything important?”

“Only about $85 worth!” I replied. You guessed right again. It was the missing hose part, factory-engraved “Craftsman.”

The next day I was off to Sears, 100-foot hose in the back of the truck, female hose threads deep in my pocket. I had wire-brushed the tarnish from one facet so that “CRAFTSMAN” gleamed for everyone to see. I called the Sears personnel together who had doubted my veracity a few weeks before, produced the required proof, and was awarded my brand-new hose.

It’s different, though, from the previous 100-footer: every few inches along the hose it’s embossed “CRAFTSMAN.”

If the lawnmower ever chops this hose, there will be no problem collecting the Craftsman lifetime warranty, the print will be on every piece of hose!

If the lawnmower ever chops this hose, there will be no problem collecting the Craftsman lifetime warranty, the print will be on every piece of hose!

Some other time, remind me to tell you how I got lifetime-warranty batteries from J. C. Penny Automotive for nearly 25 years.

Yep, those receipts are worth keeping.

Jim Randolph is a veterinarian in Long Beach, Mississippi. His earlier careers as lawn mower, dairy farmer, automobile mechanic, microwave communications electronics instructor and journeyman carpenter all influence his approach to woodworking. His favorite projects are furniture built for his wife, Brenda, and for their children and grandchildren. His and Brenda’s home, nicknamed Sticks-In-The-Mud, is built on pilings (sticks) near the wetlands (mud) on a bayou off Jourdan River. His shop is in the lower level of their home.Questions and comments on woodworking may be written below in the comments section. Questions about pet care should be directed to his blog on pet care, www.MyPetsDoctor.com. We regret that, because of high volume, not all inquiries can be answered personally.

Tips from Sticks in the Mud – December 2016 – Tip #1 – Tool Instruction Manual Filing System

Dec 012016
 

Welcome to “Tips From Sticks-In-The-Mud Woodshop.” I am a hobbyist who loves woodworking and writing for those who also love the craft. I have found some ways to accomplish tasks in the workshop that might be helpful to you, and I enjoy hearing your own problem-solving ideas. Please share them in the COMMENTS section of each tip.  If, in the process, I can also make you laugh, I have achieved 100% of my goals.

No one will argue this point:  Steve Johnson, The Down-To-Earth Woodworker has a superior filing system for owners’ manuals and equipment paperwork. However, if you don’t have the space and/or energy (Steve drinks a LOT of coffee!), here is another shop organization filing system you can try.

You will notice that the file box sits on a VERY high shelf. I had a system just like this before Katrina went directly over our Mississippi Gulf Coast home. Actually, I still had a system like this after Katrina, too, but it was more than a little soggy. Hopefully, if we ever flood again, it will now be above the water.

You will notice that the file box sits on a VERY high shelf. I had a system just like this before Katrina went directly over our Mississippi Gulf Coast home. Actually, I still had a system like this after Katrina, too, but it was more than a little soggy. Hopefully, if we ever flood again, it will now be above the water.

I start with a Rubbermaid or Sterilite hanging file box, some Pendaflex hanging file folders and a Magic Marker or other bold-writing pen. I like a bold pen for the labels so they’re easy to see if you’re using the box in a part of the shop where the light isn’t so good. The Pendaflex system comes with top labels.

This is a Rubbermaid Simplifile Box Office, but I also have a Sterilite version, and like them both. Look for the utensil storage in the lid, it’s a handy place to put a pen, pencil and Magic Marker.

This is a Rubbermaid Simplifile Box Office, but I also have a Sterilite version, and like them both. Look for the utensil storage in the lid, it’s a handy place to put a pen, pencil and Magic Marker.

While there are many ways to organize the folders the important thing is to use a system that works the way your brain works, then be consistent.

Here’s an example: Bill Livolsi, head of the Maker’s Hustle Podcast, organizes his shop contents by “like things.” He puts tape and glue and labels all in the same box and labels it “Sticky.” Anything that’s sticky goes in that box. The point? There’s no use in copying my system if it won’t fire a synapse in your brain.

In my system one tool gets one folder. Folders are grouped together by brand. Thus, for Delta tools I have “Delta Air Filter,” “Delta Mortiser,” “Delta Radial Arm Saw” and “Delta Table Saw.” Behind that is the first exception. The DeWalt drill-driver and DeWalt planer share the same folder because their respective manuals are small.

What goes in the folders? I staple the original receipt to the very front of the owner’s manual. I put the date the tool entered service on the front, too. If there is a shipping list or invoice, that goes in. Separate warranty info? In it goes! Whatever paperwork is available gets saved. Sometimes I take the owner’s manual to the band saw and slice off the non-English languages. I can’t read them, and they just take up space I can’t spare. Just be sure to leave the binding so the book will stay intact.

There is a Miscellaneous folder. Some would put that folder in the front of the box because it’s not a brand, and there’s nothing wrong with that. For my brain, if alphabetical is good enough for “Bike” to “Stihl,” it’s good enough for Miscellaneous. Miscellaneous is for items with papers that don’t take up much space, like a tool that was purchased strapped to a card, and has no other documentation with it, especially if I have no other tools in that brand.

After I had a few Festools, the old box was nearly full; it made sense to give them their own box.

I got some Festool stickers at a Festool Connect show in New Orleans. Now, it’s easy to tell which filing box is which.

I got some Festool stickers at a Festool Road show in New Orleans. Now, it’s easy to tell which filing box is which.

You could use a full-size, 2- or 4-drawer standing metal or wooden filing cabinet. That wouldn’t work in my shop, though, because I can’t spare the floor space and it would be too hard to carry upstairs in the threat of another flood. Let us know about your system in the Comments section, below.

Jim Randolph is a veterinarian in Long Beach, Mississippi. His earlier careers as lawn mower, dairy farmer, automobile mechanic, microwave communications electronics instructor and journeyman carpenter all influence his approach to woodworking. His favorite projects are furniture built for his wife, Brenda, and for their children and grandchildren. His and Brenda’s home, nicknamed Sticks-In-The-Mud, is built on pilings (sticks) near the wetlands (mud) on a bayou off Jourdan River. His shop is in the lower level of their home.Questions and comments on woodworking may be written below in the comments section. Questions about pet care should be directed to his blog on pet care, www.MyPetsDoctor.com. We regret that, because of high volume, not all inquiries can be answered personally.

Woodworking Wish List 2016 – Lee Laird

Nov 282016
 

It’s hard to believe we are already coming back around to Christmas again, as 2016 has raced past us. I’ve come up with a few things for my wish list – likely things you may also enjoy having in your shop (or garage, or little closet…) Let me also wish each and everyone a safe and happy holiday season!

Ikedame Dozuki Saw – As many will already know, I was shown Japanese hand tools at a very early age, and I regularly use this type of saw.  This is a very fine saw, with a blade thickness of .012” and a kerf of .018”.  This saw is sharpened to excel at crosscutting wood, and will leave a beautiful surface. As with all saws, remember to let the weight of the saw do the work, and you will find it both fast cutting and easy to control. If you apply extra force, even with the stiffened back spine, you will likely fight against it diving off of the intended line.

Hock #80 Scraper Blade – 2-¾” HC – While there are other blades available for the #80 Scraper, and some work just fine, this Hock blade will hold its edge for much longer. I also tend to use this blade without a Scraper Body, and I’ve always preferred to use a thicker scraper blade when hand held. When I work with figured maple and Claro walnut, there are times when a super sharp scraper is called for, and most of the time I keep the burr to a minimum, if I apply one at all. If you need to convince yourself, take a freshly sharpened chisel, hold it vertical (cutting edge down, and the bevel facing yourself), and then lean the handle away from you by about 15-degrees. Hold the chisel down near the bevel, and with a light touch on the wood, move it away from yourself. You may find you need to angle the handle further away, or slightly less, but you should find it does a great job when working a very focused area. Whichever way you decide to use this blade, I’m sure you will be very satisfied.

Vesper Double Square Set – I have a few different squares, and some are quite nice, but there is something special about Vesper’s squares. I believe this has to do with the personal attention to a product, versus large companies with large staffs. Besides the quality and accuracy, the varying blade sizes and the shape of the head are all contributing factors. These provide the widest range of flexibility that I’ve seen, and when I make some of my hand-cut dovetails, the narrow blade is such a valuable tool, whether they are through dovetails or blind.

Lee Laird has enjoyed woodworking for over 30 years. He is retired from the U.S.P.S. and worked for Lie-Nielsen Toolworks as a show staff member, demonstrating tools and training customers. You can email him at LeeLairdWoodworking@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/LeeLairdWW