Chris is back from Australia, and already prepping for an upcoming class.
Comments are now closed (but Chris will be in the blog back end later to answer the chair questions and any I missed…either on purpose or by mistake.)
Got a woodworking question or a question about what’s cooking at Lost Art Press? It’s your lucky day –it’s time for Open Wire!
You have until 5 p.m. Eastern to pose your question in the comments section below, and we’ll respond – hopefully with a informed and useful answer…but no promises on that front. (And it’s possible your fellow readers will have answers, too – and perhaps you’ll have an answer for someone else!).
You’ll hear mostly from me during the day; Chris will chime in to answer the myriad chair questions, and comment on the tensile strength of wombat poop, after his class ends.
– Fitz
p.s. The final Open Wire date for 2025 is December 13.
Don’t dally! We’re offering free shipping on EVERYTHING only through the end of October. Want a set of five Lost Art Press shop pencils? Only $13 for those and they ship free. So does a $25 jar of Soft Wax 2.0. And a $20 signed copy of “Sharpen This.” And a $24 Lost Art Press ball cap. In other words, no matter how little (or how much) you purchase, we’ll ship it to you, free. But only through the end of this month.
Nick Offerman learned as a child to work with his hands, to respect tools and to fix things in his hometown of Minooka, Illinois. “Sometimes, they’d let me nail a shingle,” he joked during his book reading last Saturday at the Berry Center. (Or maybe he wasn’t joking – but I suspect he was allowed to do more than just swing a hammer.)
In his latest book, “Little Woodchucks,” written with former Offerman Woodshop manager Lee Buchanan, he expounds on the ethos of make, don’t buy, and shows how entertaining it is to get in the shop and build toys that can then be used to irritate family members (a “slapstick” and wood whistle, for example). Or a wooden kite than you can then go fly. Or a meat locker in which to share sausages, cheese and/or cauliflower with neighbors (also useful as a Little Free Library).
“Little Woodchucks” helps parents set up a safe and kid-friendly shop, then presents 12 projects in increasing order of difficulty to help build skills as kids (and their adult helpers) make these fun creations.
As befits a book ostensibly for children, “Little Woodchucks” is filled with colorful images and easy-to-follow instructions. At the start of each project is an image of the tools and supplies needed for each – along with a joke or two that will delight kids and adults alike. That humor pervades the text as well, with Offerman’s throughline of wry anti-capitalism in support of “build, don’t buy,” and sustainability. As our copy editor, Kara Gebhart Uhl, noted, the book speaks to children, but it doesn’t talk down to them, making it enjoyable for the whole family.
And that family connection, that community fun, is among the overriding lessons of “Little Woodchucks.” Offerman writes in his introduction:
It’s like making a pie with your parents – that pie is going to be better and fresher than anything you could ever get at one of those chain restaurants. You and your folks are going to know every ingredient that went into that pie. If you’re lucky, you might know the chicken that laid the eggs and the other chickens that produced the butter, and if you do, I’d very much like to meet your dairy chickens. You might know the farmer who grew the grain that got turned into the flour. Doesn’t that sound wonderful? Maybe you know another Woodchuck friend who grows the blueberries. That sounds like a wonderful community to me.
Sounds pretty good to me, too.
If you have kids in your life who could benefit from making sawdust and fun instead of staring at a screen, this book is for you. If you’re an adult who like to giggle, this book is for you. And if both apply, well, rush out now and pick up a copy.
“Little Woodchucks” by Nick Offerman with Lee Buchanan (Dutton), is available in bookstores now – likely including your local, independent bookstore.
Kelly Mehler (left) helping student Jim Ferrell during a class at his woodworking school. It’s no wonder that most of the pictures I can find of Kelly in our archive are of him helping others.
It is with grief that I report Kelly Mehler died early Sunday morning, Oct. 5, 2025. As you might know, he’d been fighting cancer for some time, but I heard from him recently when he told me he was feeling great and doing well, and working on a tool chest in his shop. So this was shocking news.
Many people knew Kelly through his eponymous school in Berea, Ky., and through his bestselling “The Table Saw Book,” magazine articles and woodworking classes and conferences.
Kelly was a great friend to Chris and me, and I think to just about everyone else who ever met him. Kelly was one of my earliest teachers, and later championed me when I started teaching. He was one of the first people to ask Chris to teach, years before (and Chris will have more to say later).
Kelly is one of the most generous and funny men I’ve ever had the honor of knowing; I’m so glad I was able to call him my friend, and so very sad that he is gone.
At the request of his family, we’re posting Kelly’s memorial service information below. All are welcome.
No matter how well you typically cut dovetails, sometimes the gods are simply not smiling upon you. I have days when I pick up my dovetail saw, make a few cuts and quickly realize that I should instead rough out lumber, clean out the offcut bin or do something else that doesn’t require precision. And I should drink less (or maybe more) coffee the next morning, then try again. But that isn’t always possible Sometimes, gaps happen.
They are not usually the end of the world, and I often simply ignore small ones. After all, time heals all wounds. Or fills them with dirt, anyway. And rarely have I seen such gappy joints, even from first-timers, that the project won’t stay together (glue is amazing stuff…and glue plus nails more amazing still!). Filling gaps is almost always an aesthetic, not structural, choice. But if I have to fix some gaps (or teach others how to fill gaps) below are a few ways I’ve been known to go about it.
Shims I’ll start with my least favorite, which is gluing in wedges/shims. If your pins and tails aren’t at least a little bit proud (that is, they stick out beyond the mating surface), gluing a shim into the gap is pretty much the best way I know to hide it. And it is always, in my opinion, the best way to hide a gaping maw.
I grab whatever offcuts I can from my stock and cut a handful of shims in various thicknesses, hoping that I’ll end up with at least one of a given size to perfectly fill my gap(s). And I do my best to make sure that my offcut matches the color of the project where the gap is gaping. It does no good to insert a sapwood shim into a heartwood gap – instead of hiding the gap, it will draw attention to the fix. Ditto on the grain. I try hard to select an offcut that exhibits the same grain, so that the fix won’t show.
I would like to pretend I purposely cut gaps, but that would be untrue. I was having a bad day at the bench…but in the middle of a class, there is no choice but to carry on!
Then paint both sides of the shim/wedge (your shape needs may vary) with glue, and gently tap it into the gap. I recommend a small hammer and gentle use thereof; these small piece can easily break. Make sure to let the glue fully dry before flushing to the surface with a flush-cut saw. If you don’t wait, the glue will get into your saw teeth, then it won’t cut! (The hide glue I use is easy to remove when I’m overeager – a little hot water and a scrub with a toothbrush will clean the teeth, then I wipe the blade with an oily rag. For PVA, hot vinegar and more vigorous scrubbing does the trick – but the smell will give you away.)
Note that my fingers are not on the bitey side of the blade. This is important. Flush-cut saws love blood.
Controlled Spelching My usual fix for small gaps is to plane the end grain in the direction of the gap, hoping it will break off enough to fill said gap. Sometimes, it even works! But, you have to have enough material proud of the surface so that you can catch it with the blade to break it. If your joints are already flush, it’s back to the shims above.
Here, you can see the edge of the tail is breaking off a bit (spelching) into the gap, but there wasn’t enough material to plane and break to fill this. For this one, it’s to the shims!
Contravening most planing instruction, here, you do want to plane off the edge, intentionally breaking the grain into the gap.
This is the pin I was planing in the picture above; you see how fibers on the side of the pin broke off to fill the small gap. When I plane the pin flush and clean up the surface, this will disappear under the finish.
Bishoping I do not know the etymology of the term, but “bishoping” is just a fancy word for “mushrooming.” Get the end grain wet with water and let it soak in for a few minutes, then use a ball peen hemmer to tap the fibers and mushroom them to fill a small gap. But again, you have to have enough of a proud joint that your taps don’t cause a dent below the surface of the side.
Here, I crossed my baseline most shamefully…not only with the saw, but when I was chopping out the baseline with a chisel. A little water and a few taps takes care of the baseline gap. Then I plane or flush-cut the joint flush. The overcuts? Well, for that, I’ll need time and dirt. (Or I can glue in a toothpick, but only if I’m going to paint the project.)
What about glue and sawdust? Or wood filler? Like the toothpick mentioned in the caption above, those works only if the project will be painted. Glue will never take a finish, and no matter what the marketing says, neither will wood filler. At least not any that I’ve found.
– Fitz
p.s. Most of the gaps I’ve shown above in closeup likely wouldn’t show enough in the finished work to be worth fussing over. But some people like to fuss. This is for them.
