Molly Bagby

Entries Wanted for our “Show Us Your” Monthly Columns

Apr 242013
 

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Previous submissions for the Show Us Your columns from L-R: Lance Chase, (Show Us Your Stuff), Gary Porter (Show Us Your Shop), Bill Cosentini (Show Us Your Wood Carving), Jim Marx (Show Us Your Woodturning)

ATTENTION WOODWORKERS! We are currently seeking submissions for our Show Us Your columns that appear in our monthly publications Wood News and The Highland Woodturner. We have four different columns dedicated to YOUR woodworking, 3 of which appear in Wood News, and 1 of which appears in The Highland Woodturner.

The four columns are:

1) Show Us Your Stuff: Whether it is a boat, chair, desk, or whathaveyou, show us what you are making!

2) Show Us Your Shop: Depending on your organization style, you will probably have a different shop layout from your neighbor next door. Show us pictures of your shop and its shop layout and tell us how its organization helps to benefit your woodworking.

3) Show Us Your Wood Carving: From the block of wood you start out with to the end result, we want to see your carving process.

4) Show Us Your Woodturning: From bowls to pens and everything in between, show us what you’ve been turning.

We invite you to EMAIL us photos (800×600 resolution) of your woodworking projects, shops, wood carvings, or woodturnings, along with captions and a brief history and description of your submission to woodnews@highlandwoodworking.com.  If we feature your submission in a future issue of Wood News or The Highland Woodturner, you will receive a $50 store credit and several mentions of your work or shop throughout our blog and social media outlets.

Follow Friday: Woodturner Diane Davison

Apr 192013
 
bookstand

Bookstand

Each month we feature several different woodworkers in both our Wood News Newsletter as well as The Highland Woodturner,  our monthly publication devoted to wood turning. In this month’s issue of The Highland Woodturner, we are featuring Diane Davison, a woodturner from North Olmstead, Ohio.

Diane comes from a long line of male woodworkers and was first exposed to woodturning after watching her uncle turn when she was younger. She began doing her own woodworking over 20 years ago when she wanted to build a desk and later became a self-taught woodturner.

Her woodworking tool collection began with a handheld scrolling jig saw and she later added  a table top scroll saw. Once she decided she wanted to learn turning, her husband bought her a lathe for Christmas and she has been turning ever since. For inspiration she often goes to the Lumberjocks Forum and finds pieces that interest her, which she then tries to duplicate.

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Basswood Canister with Banksia Pod Handle and Toothpick Holders

In addition to creating turned pieces, she also enjoys creating band saw boxes and intarsia, a form of wood inlaying, which you can see below in her aromatic cedar, cherry and poplar rose box.

Intarsia Rose Box

Intarsia Rose Box

You can view more of Diane’s pieces at her Lumberjock website HERE.

Follow Friday: Spotlight on Ramon Gibbs

Apr 122013
 

In our monthly newsletter, Wood News, we have several columns that feature different woodworker’s Workshop Setups, Wood Carvings, and Woodworking Projects. In April’s newsletter, we featured Ramon Gibbs in our Show Us Your Stuff column. We wanted to share a little more information about Ramon and his projects, specifically his methods for creating his amazing scaled furniture.

From his website, Ramon describes his artistic method in the following way: “Before each creation I sit in meditation and envision the emotion of only one personality, that of the recipient or perhaps a place.  I try to embrace that passion in an effort to take you to a place you have been longing to return, or enchanted by yearning fantasies.”

Ramon uses the passion that he describes in many of his pieces, some examples of which you can see below:

Jewelry Box Desk and Swivel Chair

Vanity

Baby Grand Piano

The Gatekeeper

Ramon has a specific method of creating the scale for his furniture. He creates it in 1/5 or 1/6 of the actual size by rounding up the actual dimensions of the piece he is reproducing and then dividing that number by 5 or 6 depending on the scale. He then mostly uses butt joints and glue versus more complicated joints and screws in order to put the pieces together.

If you are interested in seeing more of Ramon’s works you can visit his website HERE.

We’re on Pinterest, are you?

Apr 112013
 

Pinterest Pin It Button

With all of the new forms of social media coming out these days, it seems like there is always a new ‘next big thing’. Well in this case, we really do believe that Pinterest will be the ‘Next Big Thing’ for the woodworking community, as it does a great job highlighting the often amazingly detailed visuals of woodworking that can be hard to get across in a medium like Twitter or Facebook. With that in mind, we are proud to unveil the new Highland Woodworking Pinterest page!
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Our page features many different boards, including those dedicated to tools and products that can help you DIY, as well as boards that feature work(s) that have been submitted by our customers and readers.

Our current boards include:

Projects for the Kids: Whether it is one of our Woodman Concept Kits or one of our Red Toolbox Project Kits, we’ve got lots of ideas for the kids and the kids-at-heart to get started in woodworking.

Show Us Your Workshop: A popular column in our Wood News monthly newsletter, these pins will give you inspiration for your own workshop with different designs and organization techniques.

Tools to DIY: A collection of our favorite tools you can use to “Do-It-Yourself” and create your own woodworking project.

2013 Jig Design Contest: Occasionally, we have contests where readers and customers submit their own designs, and the most creative/useful win a Highland Woodworking Gift Certificate. Our most recent contest was our Shop Jig Design Contest, and this board includes details of every single submission!

Woodworkers You Might Know: From Roy Underhill to Chris Schwarz, these pins will give you some great links to interviews and project ideas from the best of the best.

DIY Project Ideas: We’ve got lots of ideas for you with our different Downloadable Plans, as well as other interesting and inspiring projects that you can create.

Show Us Your Carving: Another popular section in our monthly Wood News, here you will find different carvings by our customers and readers.

Show Us Your Stuff: Our most recent submission section, these pins will give you inspiration with projects made by our customers and readers, that vary from miniature furniture to John-Deere inspired chisel chests, and everything in between.

You can also use Pinterest to Pin your own ideas from various websites you may be browsing like Highland Woodworking. On our webpage, you will now see a small icon with a P (like the first image in this blog entry), which you can click and then pick the picture you want to pin from the webpage on to one of your own boards. This is a great tool for making wish-lists or a list of tools and methods you might need to create your project.

Let us know if you have any suggestions or ideas for Pinterest boards you would like to see, and feel free to visit and follow our Pinterest page by CLICKING HERE and get inspired!

Follow Friday: Spotlight on Bruce Herndon

Apr 052013
 

In our monthly newsletter, Wood News, we have several different columns that feature different woodworker’s Woodshop Designs, Wood Carvings, and Woodworking Projects. In April’s newsletter, we featured Bruce Herndon in our Show Us Your Shop column. We wanted to share a little more information about Bruce and his specialty shop.

Bruce’s shop specializes in crafting custom split bamboo fly rods for fly fishing. His rods are not just for use in the sport of fly fishing, but they can also be presented as works of art. At the moment he is working on about 9 different rods at the same time (which you can see an example of above).

Because of the construction process of the bamboo rods, his shop requires open and unobstructed space in order to have room for the different machinery as well as for the length of the rods that are being built.

Bruce built up his shop from a gutted detached two and one half garage after moving to a new house in Northeastern Washington state. The garage wasn’t in very good condition and was one to two inches lower in one corner, had two 110 wall outlets and was not insulated or finished in any way. To fix up the shop he did the following:

  • Corrected the lower corner by jacking it up and pouring a new slab of concrete.
  • Rewired the shop for both 110 volt and 220 volt and installed over 20 wall outlets along the walls and in the ceiling.
  • Removed one of the garage rollup doors and aded a beautiful stained glass window of a Rainbow Trout, which created by a local stained glass artist (see picture above)
  • Added both the shops dust collection and compressed air system, located outside inside an attached carport. The two dust collectors are both 110v and 220v.
  • Had 1/2 of the ceiling vaulted in order to better test-fit the bamboo fly rods.
  • Built a loft for special dry storage of the 12′ culms of bamboo. There is enough space for approximately 175 culms of bamboo.

The shop is heated with a pellet stove during the cold winter months that can be as cold as -20 degrees, and then cooled with an air conditioning system during the hot summer months that can reach to over 100 degrees.

If you are interested in seeing more of Bruce’s works you can visit his website HERE.

Spring/Summer Highland Woodworking Catalog now online with New Features!

Apr 042013
 

highland2013catalogOur newest Spring/Summer 2013 Highland Woodworking catalog is now published and is hitting mailboxes around the country. But if you don’t subscribe or haven’t gotten yours yet, you can easily access the full catalog on our website HERE.

Unlike our past online catalogs, the Summer 2013 catalog is now able to be viewed by iPad and iPhone users as well! Just go to the catalog website and the full catalog will appear on your screen. You can flip through the pages with the arrows, just as if you had it in your hands.

If you just love that feeling of being able to highlight or mark up your catalog, and haven’t signed up to receive the physical catalog by mail, you can do so HERE.

One-Day Sale on Zombie Apocalypse Bug-Out Bag

Apr 012013
 

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After the popularity of Terry Chapman’s May 2011 What’s in YOUR Zombie Apocalypse tool kit? blog entry, we have taken your suggestions and created The Highland Woodworking Zombie Apocalypse Bug-Out Bag. Forget the chainsaw, as today’s zombies have seen all of the movies and know how to counteract the ever-popular chainsaw method of destruction. In today’s zombie society, it’s all about the hand tools and battery-powered drills.

Your very own Zombie Apocalypse Bug-Out Bag will come with the following life-saving, zombie eliminating woodworking tools:

1) Crown 1″ Rolled Edge Skew Chisel-Make sure you have the longest handle you can get. This is for both for leverage over the tool rest and distance between you and the zombie.

2) Festool TI 15 Impact Drill/Driver Li 3.0Ah-These Festools have a really long lasting battery, which is critical, since you never know how long the apocalypse will last. Don’t waste your batteries.

3) Drill Mounted 2 1/8″ Forstner Bit-This one is a little too close to the zombie to suit me, but it will do the job.  Perhaps a cranial hit from the rear — oh wait, no brains, right?

4) Japanese Ikedame Ryoba Saw-Be sure you get this in the flesh eating teeth. Long handle and long blade works best.

5) Five Freud Thin Kerf Ultimate Cutoff Blades: 12″ x 96 Tooth, .091″ Kerf-It has 96 carbide teeth, it is thin enough to fly quickly and fly like the ultimate frisbee. Thin, fast, and deadly, wait they’re already dead!

6) Gransfors Bruks Nordic Battle Axe-this one speaks for itself, other than you really need a horned helmet to execute the blow.

7) Stick Fast CA Wood Finish Starter Kit-Spread a circle of this glue around your shop and it will be “the perfect glue for joining dissimilar materials.” You need to use the medium or thick viscosity glue since the thin will soak in too quickly to be effective and you need to have the activator close at hand so you can set the glue immediately. Otherwise they just stumble on through it.

8) Face Shield-Essential equipment for splatter control.

9) Gloves in a Bottle-No more sandpaper hands? How about no more zombie hands! Use this after you just decapitate a zombie and keep your hands feeling clean and smooth.

All of these tools for the small price of just $4,113.00, while supplies last*

As an added bonus, if you order your Bug-Out Bag within the next 24 hours, we will include 2 tickets for a tour of The Walking Dead set in Senoia, GA, just 35 miles from Highland Woodworking. Here you will have the opportunity to put your tools to the ultimate test!

We welcome any comments or questions if there are any added necessities or concerns that you can think of, as your safety and preparedness are our top goals!

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*Please note that while we strongly encourage the use of hand and power tools in case of a zombie attack, this package is not actually available. We hope you enjoyed our holiday amusement and please have a safe and fun April Fools Day.