Gary writes: I’ve tried to hold my tongue, but I cannot do it any longer. You are about to loose me as a subscriber to your blog and you should know why.
First there was Jeff Burk (Burks?), who put up those boring blogs I never could figure out. Thank goodness he left or you got rid of him because I didn’t get it. I learned nothing from it, except where my DELETE key is.
Now we have Suzanne the saucy indexer whose at the same thing. Her attempts to be funny – which landed in my email today, just aren’t. Sorry but its true. You should know.
This blog used to be great, and I learned so much about tools and woodworking. Now its just stupid jokes, photos of old furniture and sophmoric humor.
You should write more about dovetails and panel-raising, for example. I’m building a hope chest for my granddaughter and could use some tips on making panels. How about comparing all the sharpening systems? Or showing how to fix up old tools?
How you respond to this letter will decide if I am going to stay with Lost Arts Press or not.
I’m not trying to come off as mean, just a truth teller.
For the last three years I’ve done an informal “gift guide” for woodworkers over at my blog at Popular Woodworking Magazine. Unlike other gift guides, this one is not filled with high-price junk that a retailer paid me to promote.
I try to focus on smaller items that will make your life a little nicer in the shop. Stuff your kids can buy you without taking out a loan. Oh, and I own every one of these items and personally use them in my own shop.
The first entry is up now. Nine more to go. You’ll also find links there to the previous two gift guides.
While I was an editor at a woodworking magazine, I received a lot of questions about the projects we published. Here are two questions that were tricky to answer:
How much does that project weigh?
How much does that project cost to build?
These aren’t really questions that I ask myself as a builder unless I’m making something for NASA or a customer on a crazy tight budget. But readers deserve an answer better than, “I dunno.”
So here’s how to spitball both.
Weight There are lots of published statistics of the average weight of each species. Usually this is listed as the “weight per cubic foot” of that wood. Let’s take koa as an example. A cubic foot of koa is 38 lbs. If you divide that by 12, then you know the weight of one board foot of koa – 3.16 lbs.
Note that this an average weight at an average moisture content.
Here’s a list of species and their weights that I like to use.
Now you need to know how much board footage of wood is in the project. Luckily, there are lots of nice web-based board-footage calculators out there. You simply punch in the dimensions of each part and they spit out how much board footage is in there.
For example, a tabletop that is 3/4” x 26” x 96” is 17.33 board feet.
So if I build that tabletop out of koa, it will weigh 17.33 x 3.16 or 54.88 lbs.
Cost This is tricky, because every lumberyard is different. I can buy ash for $1/board foot. Perhaps you cannot. So I use WoodFinder to look up average prices. Type in the species and it will call up places that carry that species. One of the places I looked at tonight had koa at $36/board foot.
So I can use the board footage calculator to determine that 17.33 board feet of koa will cost me $623.88.
Joshua Klein during a visit to Jonathan Fisher’s Maine home.
Joshua Klein, a woodworker and conservator in Maine, is now accepting pre-publication orders for the first issue of Mortise & Tenon Magazine, which looks to be very interesting reading.
You might have heard of Klein through his blog, The Workbench Diary, or some of the stories I’ve written about his research of Jonathan Fisher (Klein is writing a book about Fisher for us, by the way).
In addition to his conservation work, a young family, taking apart a house for later reconstruction and writing a book for us, Klein has poured an enormous amount of energy into Mortise & Tenon Magazine to make sure it is a high-quality, well-made publication.
Take a look at the table of contents for the first issue here.
Then click on the “Pre-order Now” button. The first issue is just $24 – a bargain for such a labor of love. I ordered mine as soon as I got up this morning.
Whether you like old furniture, handwork or conservation, you’ll find a lot in the first issue to love.
Because I’m not teaching anytime in the near future (and because I quite enjoy eating), I have time to film three new DVDs with the crew at Popular Woodworking Magazine.
The first one, which we begin filming Monday morning, is the bookcase project from my upcoming book “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” It’s a contemporary bookcase built entirely by hand using nails, dados, rabbets, tongue-and-groove joinery and hide glue.
I spent a lot of time rethinking book storage when designing this piece. As a publisher, book collector and woodworker, I have a lot of things I like and dislike about book storage. I hate sagging shelves. And I think a lot of our choices when using adjustable shelves are ill-conceived.
This project is as much a treatise on bookshelves as a lesson in building something by hand.
The second project is on making chairs without chairmaking tools. It was inspired by the stick chair I built for “The Anarchist’s Design Book,” but I’ll be designing a new (but similar) chair for the DVD.
Many woodworkers are intimidated by chairmaking because of the angles, tools required and the tradition of using green wood. After building chairs for almost 12 years now for customers, I have developed methods for building chairs using cabinetmaking tools.
I don’t have a shavehorse, froe or many other traditional tools. And you can make a gorgeous chair without those tools if you use your noggin.
The third project is the my ambitious yet.
After many years of putting it off, I’ve decided to do a DVD on building “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” from start to finish on DVD. This project will probably eat up a month of time to do right – and I will do it right. During the last five years of building this chest over and over in classes, I’ve learned a few things about making it easier for beginners to build.
And because people actually seem interested in making this chest – which I love as much as my bench – I feel obligated to do this for all those who cannot afford to take a class and need a little help in getting started.
Those of you who know me personally know that I really dislike being on camera. I’d rather have a double colonoscopy. (What’s that? From both ends? Shudder.) But I’ll take a stiff drink in the morning and muddle my way through.
