Kelley Bagby

I grew up around woodworking tools (see picture, age 4-5ish) but only recently started doing some of my own woodworking.

The Next Generation of Woodworkers

Dec 072010
 

I’ve read a few articles recently about how to get a new generation of woodworkers started, and the concern that our craft may not have the same longevity now that it had in the past. These days it seems like woodworking classes in schools are few and far between, price of entry to woodworking can be prohibitive, and frankly, there is less interest in woodworking nowadays for kids who have highly-stimulating video games they could be playing instead.

And yet, there are some ways that we can reverse this trend, and not only introduce kids to a new craft that could stay with them for the rest of their lives, but also create a good opportunity to learn and build something together.

Highland Woodworking now has a  Woodworking Toolkit for Kids, a great introductory tool kit. It has all the tools you will need to help the child in your life start woodworking, including a pair of safety glasses, a portable workbench vise that can be mounted on almost any table, a coping saw, a hand drill and drill bits, a pocket plane, a combination square, a small hammer, a bottle of wood glue, an assortment of sandpapers and rubberbands, and two instructional project books written specifically for kids.

I think the keys for getting the next generation interested in woodworking are:

1. Get them hooked early – the tools in this kit are appropriate for ages 7 and up.

2. Share this experience with them – these tools are strong enough for grown-ups to use too! But make sure you are letting the kids do the work so they feel their own sense of accomplishment.

3. Build something that they can see and show off every day. This sort of reinforcement will have them coming back to build more projects before you know it.

The tools in this kit are not the cheap plastic versions you often see in toolkits for kids. Instead these are quality tools that will last, and hold up well, even for a child who really takes a shine to the tools and uses them regularly. The books included in the kit will help to provide ideas for items to build as well as giving some instruction on how to use the tools.

The kit retails for $99, and although this isn’t an inexpensive gift, if you compare it to the cost of many other items that the child in your life has included on their gift list, it is much less than a video game system or a pony, and will most likely provide many more opportunities for you to enjoy the present together.

So if you are having trouble finding a good gift for the kids in your life this holiday season, look no further. The Woodworking Toolkit for Kids might be just the thing you are looking for!

Fundamentals of Woodworking with Sabiha Mujtaba, Day 2: Officially a Beginner Woodworker

Dec 062010
 

Before taking Fundamentals of Woodworking with Sabiha Mujtaba, I was a dabbler, a wannabe woodworker. I had a nice set of woodworking tools, but lacked the knowledge and skills to use them. And more than that, I lacked the confidence to say to myself “I want to build a new [insert woodworking project here]” and then go down to the shop and actually know how to proceed to build that project.

Your blogger, looking a little more like a woodworker now

I suppose I still don’t have all the steps down, but I got a lot closer this weekend. And the confidence I gained in Sabiha’s class is the big difference. If you find yourself wondering how you can take that next step towards feeling comfortable and capable working wood, I would suggest looking up a fundamentals class. If you live in or near Atlanta or are willing to travel, take Sabiha’s next fundamentals class in March! After this weekend’s class, I am not only more confident, but I’m inspired and fired up to get into the shop and build something else.

So what did we do on Sunday? Well, we finished what we started. At the end of the day on Saturday, we had glued up the walls of our boxes, so this morning our first order of business was unclamping the walls and basking in the pleasant surprise that everything stayed together. And then we sanded. And sanded and sanded and sanded. But you know what? Even though this is one of the parts of woodworking that I’m not so fond of, it was actually quite satisfying. We used ash for the bulk of our project, and the grain sands really nicely. You see the results of your efforts fairly quickly, and it drives you to make it even better. Plus, the boxes were small, so it’s not like we needed to sand for hours.

Kate is setting up the router table for the box tops

Kate, who superbly assisted Sabiha all weekend, cut the bottoms of our boxes and gave them to us to sand down a bit and fit into the rabbet edges at the bottom of our box walls. Then she helped us all do three passes on the router to shape the top of our box. At the same time, we were passing our box walls through the other router to create the holes for the dovetail inserts to fit into the corners of our boxes, strengthening the wall joints. And in addition to those two tasks, we were fitting the lip of the box with a small insert to close it up and give an exact fit, and cutting it down to size with a handsaw.

Did I mention it was a busy day?

After a late break for lunch, we came back and fitted the dovetail inserts into the joints, then glued it all up and clamped it together yet again. This time we didn’t have another overnight to let the glue dry, so as soon as a sufficient amount of time had passed (or we got impatient) we unclamped, sawed the inserts off as flush as we comfortably could, and then pulled out a chisel and worked on improving our chiseling skills.

Gluing the dovetail inserts into place

My own chiseling skills are limited to a bit of clumsy work pulling paint up from a floor and chipping a whole bunch of edges on ‘practice projects’. On each of our boxes we had two dovetail inserts in every corner to chisel down as flush to the boxes edge as possible, so I had a lot of real practice, with smart instructors standing beside me, to learn a few different techniques. By the end I still wasn’t that close to ‘good’, but I felt a lot less bumbling, and quite a bit less likely to injure myself.

Matt drilling the holes to screw in the bottom

David clamping his dovetail inserts

Denice fitting her dovetail inserts.

And finally, the piece de resistance: fitting the top in. We glued the front lip onto the lid, slid it in, clamped it all down one more time while we cleaned up the shop, and amazingly enough, when we unclamped them, we all had a working sliding-top box, with lots of new skills nestled inside.

The final step!

Besides a pretty cool looking box and a whole resume’s worth of new skills to build on, the other thing that I really gained from taking this class was an appreciation for my fellow beginner woodworkers. It was a great group of people, all very supportive of each other, and it made me feel closer to the woodworking community as a whole. The finished projects and the fun process of building them are definitely reasons to try woodworking yourself, but the good people who we get to work with in our craft are a great reason to keep doing it. Thanks to everyone in the class, to Sabiha and Kate, and to Highland Woodworking for hosting.

Complete. Except maybe a bit more sanding.

Fundamentals of Woodworking with Sabiha Mujtaba, Day 1: Every Woodworking Tool You Need to Know

Dec 042010
 

My quest to become a woodworker has been a slow process. I started with lofty dreams and memories of growing up on the floors of Highland Woodworking, but not actually using any of the tools. My next step was an overwhelming first exposure to a wood-related project. My account of building a planter stopped at the planning stages, (although the planter did get built, it just didn’t get written about yet…see my future post on woodworking and procrastination, tbd posting date) and since then I’ve been playing in the shop but not really producing anything of note.

Until now.

Figuring out grain direction

Sabiha Mujtaba offers a Fundamentals of Woodworking class a few times a year at Highland Woodworking, and this seemed like the best option for getting my feet wet in the woodworking world. So I signed up and headed to my first day of class this morning.

Sabiha and her assistant Kate combined have more than 50 years of woodworking experience. That is a lot of knowledge. And lucky us, the 10 students in the class, ranging from little-to-no woodworking experience (I include myself in that group) to folks who have done a project here and there but nothing consistent, get to drink in all of that knowledge. Or at least as much of it as Sabiha and Kate can pass on to us in two full days.

 

My project does not look like this...yet.

And when I say full, I mean FULL. Start at 9, finish at 5 (except we were actually there working until well past 5:30!) and it felt like we learned a little bit of everything. Sabiha started with an overview of safety – some general rules and some specific rules to abide by in any shop. Then we got a crash course in wood science (much of which would be relearned over the course of the morning), then we jumped right into it, getting the boards that would, by the end of the weekend, be transformed into a box with a sliding top.

The wood we were using was not milled, so we started on the jointer, where we flattened a face and an edge so they were smooth and we had a right angle. Then we moved onto the planer, where we flattened the other face. It sounds so quick when I just type it, but all of this was actually a fairly lengthy process. Still, I’m really glad to have learned how to do it – milling lumber was always even more mysterious to me than the rest of the woodworking craft, and now it seems completely doable.

While we were at lunch, Sabiha and Kate cut the other edge of our boards on the tablesaw, so when we got back we had 4 beautifully smooth and square sides on all of our boards, and they were ready for some routing.

Troy cutting a miter

After determining the ups and downs and ins and outs of how our box walls would fit together, we cut a rabbet and a dado with two router setups, then headed over to the miter saw to cut the ends of our boards so they can be glued together in 4 beautiful miter joints.

I should add that with each machine we used (and even some that we didn’t use!), Sabiha and Kate gave a very thorough rundown of the machine’s purpose, use, and the best body mechanics for using it. Even with a minor fear of using power tools, I approached each machine with total confidence after receiving Sabiha and Kate’s instruction, and I think everyone else in the class felt the same way.

 

David getting ready for glue-up

Finally, we squared up our boxes one more time, taped the edges, glued them up and clamped them together for an overnight dry. I’m very excited, if a little anxious, to see how the glue-up worked and if everything is still together when I take the clamps off tomorrow morning. Wish me luck.

Follow me to Day 2 of the class:

December Wood News hits the stands

Dec 022010
 

Hello Woodworkers,

The December edition of Wood News is out, and this month it is packed full of entertaining and informative woodworking articles for you to enjoy.

One of our themes for December seems to be how much you can accomplish in a small space. First we have another update from Dilo Fernandino, our Brazilian master wood craftsman friend who works in a 7’x6′ closet. And then our Show Us Your Shop column features Dan Chiappetta’s cozy 9’x12′ workshop in his Astoria, NY apartment. Hopefully seeing these two examples will inspire all of us to make the most of the space we do have to create some great new woodworking projects this winter. And speaking of woodworking ‘stuff’, we’ve got some great ‘stuff’ on display in the Show Us Your Stuff column: two rocking chairs and a beautiful buffet built by Steve Szilvagyi of Onekama, MI.

This month our Down to Earth Woodworker, Steven Johnson, concludes his fascinating article about the Future of Woodworking with some predictions and thoughts about how we can shape the future of our craft. He also tells a touching story of an old magnolia tree that has made him appreciate the wood he is working today.

All this plus another great workbench article from Richard Rank, an important safety tip from Laura Jack and many great gift ideas for the holidays make this month’s edition of Wood News a must-read. Check it out today!

Black Friday is upon us

Nov 262010
 

Now that you’ve finished taking inventory of your shop, you are fully aware of which tools you need to add to your collection, right? Well that is perfect timing, because Highland Woodworking is having a ridiculous Black Friday sale right now. Lots of great deals, including these and these, and many more. If you are in Atlanta, stop by and check out the store in person. If you aren’t, give a call and talk to the nice people who will be happy to take your order.

And if you don’t want to buy just yet, you can still start your wish list and then direct your friends and family to it!

Either way, we hope to hear from you soon!

Catching up with Charlie Kested:
Next up – the Gettysburg Address

Nov 122010
 

After the exceptional response to yesterday’s reprint of the article on Charlie Kested, we phoned Mr. Kested this morning to find out what he has been working on more recently.

He said the Gettysburg Address has been taking up most of his woodworking time in recent months: “I have all the words cut out and that’s the extent of it so far.” He plans to eventually finish that project in his shop garage, working with the same scroll saw he used to create the Declaration of Independence. Unfortunately he doesn’t have pictures of the Gettysburg address – he declared there was “nothing worth taking a picture of yet.”

We imagine that when it is complete, it will be yet another sight to behold. Kested said he keeps the Declaration in his house, and looks at it every day. Perhaps it inspires the Navy veteran as much as he inspires the rest of us.

The original article in this series first appeared on July 4, 2010 in The Leader-Herald, a newspaper in Gloversville, New York.

Readers: CLICK HERE if you are interested in scroll sawing

81-year-old Navy Veteran Charles Kested Carves the Entire Declaration of Independence

Nov 112010
 

Charles Kested is a U.S. Navy veteran and lifelong woodworker who overcame severe obstacles to complete an amazing woodworking project. A resident of of Johnstown, New York, he has spent the past 10 years using his scrollsaw to carve a full-size exact replica of America’s Declaration of Independence. We salute Charlie Kested for his exemplary character, courage and exacting woodworking skills.

CLICK HERE to read about Charlie and his project in more detail.