If you registered for a 2020 class at LAP, then you know from your email that we recently made the difficult decision to cancel all remaining classes for 2020. And I appreciate the kind notes you’ve sent in return – many of you offered to donate your registration fee (which warmed the cockles of my semi-frozen heart) or ask if it could be applied to a new class in the future. And you’ve asked about classes in the future in general.
I’m responding to all questions (I hope!) at once, here.
First, thank you to those who generously offered to let us keep the fee. We greatly appreciate the offer, but we simply wouldn’t feel right doing that – so expect to see those refunds in your accounts soon.
And as far as applying that registration fee to future classes…I’m afraid simply haven’t the organizational skills to make that happen. So again,expect to see those refunds in your accounts soon.
I do, however, have organizational skills enough to make sure that when we do offer classes again, anyone who was signed up for a cancelled 2020 class gets a priority shot at a like class when we are able to invite folks back. So yes to that.
And finally, yes, we do plan to offer classes again – when it’s safe for everyone. As always, stay tuned to the blog; fingers crossed I’ll have good news on that front later this year.
During the last 30 years, I’ve heard hundreds of “I first encountered Fine Woodworking…” stories that have an impressive ending. The person becomes a lifetime woodworker or quits their job to build furniture. Or collects every issue since the magazine began publishing in 1975.
I’ll never forget my time, because it was just so random.
In 1991 I was a general assignment reporter for The Greenville News in South Carolina and had been invited to have a drink at the house of Jim DuPlessis, one of the business reporters. He lived in a tidy Craftsman bungalow on a leafy street, and on his coffee table was a copy of Fine Woodworking.
I grabbed it and started leafing through it. I honestly didn’t realize that magazines about woodworking and building furniture existed. I had graduated college the year before, and I was feeling drawn back into working with my hands after leaving Arkansas and our farm behind. But I didn’t know how to act on that desire.
I clutched the magazine (I’m almost certain it was the August 1991 issue) like a prize from the fair as Jim and a few other reporters wandered onto the front porch of his house to enjoy the air.
That’s when Jim’s dog started streaking toward the street, directly at a passing car. As a newspaper reporter you see a lot of horrible things, and you learn not to look away.
Jim’s dog ran right at the front tire of the car, like it was trying to put its head under the front tire.
When the car and dog collided it made the worst noise. I won’t even try to describe it. The car stopped. Jim screamed and ran out to the street while the rest of us just gaped.
I don’t know how, but the dog was unhurt. Completely fine. Jim hugged the dog like a teddy bear as he walked back to the porch. Everyone at the party spent the rest of the evening doting over the clueless thing, like it was a miracle sent from heaven.
I spent the rest of the evening reading Fine Woodworking.
This week marks another strange turn of events. And again, no animals were harmed. I now have my first article in Fine Woodworking, almost 30 years after first encountering the magazine. After leaving Popular Woodworking as an editor (1996-2011) and then as a contributor (in 2018), I had resisted getting in bed with another woodworking magazine. It felt like getting married to a new spouse on the way home from the funeral of my first.
But after getting to know the current crop of editors at Fine, I decided I was being stupid and to give it a chance.
My article is deep in issue 283, the August 2020 issue. It is about, surprise, workbenches. It was a bizarre experience being on the other side of the fence as a writer, not an editor. But the entire staff I’ve dealt with – Betsy Engel, Anissa Kapsales, Barry Dima, Tom McKenna and Ben Strano (who I will remind you that FWW “stole” from us) – were a delight to work with.
With any luck, I hope you’ll see more of my writing in Fine, if they’ll have it.
Editor’s note: In today’s chair chat we discuss a chair that is so beautiful it makes Chris write poetry. We are unsure about its heritage, but it could be from Wales. Or further east. As Chris was smoking his ham, we found that we love this chair to bits, despite its possibly fake tits. Oh, did I mention to beware the salty language? Sorry!
We ripped out our kitchen on March 1 and have spent the last 10 weeks waiting for a safe time (with procedures sanctioned by state health officials) to resume the work. This week the cabinets arrived, and so I recruited Megan Fitzpatrick to help me make the maple countertops.
I haven’t written about this project because it is deeply personal. I do almost all the cooking in our house, and my ideas about kitchens are not in line with the mainstream. Frankly, I suspect I am a little off base, and I didn’t have the stomach for the criticism.
But there is one funny exchange I’d like to mention.
Today Megan and I built the 11’ section of countertop that has to be installed in pieces for a variety of reasons. I’d surfaced and glued up the maple and had gone into total “machine production” mode, like when I worked at a door factory.
So after cutting the components to size, I got out the sanders to dress the panels. After 5 minutes of sanding, Megan stopped her buzzing machine.
“I think a handplane would be faster,” she said.
I laughed. She was completely correct. I grabbed my jack plane and dressed both faces of the two countertops in less than 30 minutes. After I planed the first countertop, Megan began sanding the countertop to a higher grit.
I walked over to her bench with a card scraper and began dressing the surface.
We put the sanders away and spent the rest of the day blasting Jason Isbell’s new album, “Reunions,” and getting the job done faster, with crisper results.
We’ve run out of copies of “The Anarchist’s Design Book: Expanded Edition.” We ordered enough to last us two years, but they lasted only four months. We ordered a new press run on April 17 and should have our stock replenished within the next two weeks.
Having books or tools out of stock makes us grumpy. And we have new systems now to help prevent this from happening with any book. So we’ve been busy this month and have six press runs in the work right now. That’s crazy. The most we’ve ever managed before is two.
Other Book News I am designing Nancy Hiller’s book, “Kitchen Think: A guide to design and construction, from refurbishing to renovation.” It’s a big book with many involved layouts. I can safely say I’ve never seen another kitchen book like it. But we would expect nothing less from Nancy. We are headed for an early summer release.
“Make a Chair From a Tree” by Jennie Alexander is inching closer to the finish line. Peter Follansbee finished his work on the book in April and now Megan Fitzpatrick is getting it ready for page design. I know we’ve had some fits and starts with this title, but we hope this will be out by the end of the year. Megan promises to write up a detailed blog entry on this book soon.
“Country Woodcraft: Then & Now” by Drew Langsner is being designed by the other Meghan. We’re also trying to get this book, which covers all aspects of green woodworking, out in 2020.
And there’s more.
Brendan Gaffney is about to finish his manuscript on James Krenov (we’re trying to get that book out before the 100th anniversary of his birth). And Kara Gebhart is working with an artist to complete illustrations for Monroe Robinson’s book “The Handcrafted Life of Dick Proenneke.”
So enough of this leisurely blogging. It’s back to the salt mines for me and the rest of the crew.
