Popular Woodworking Editors' Blog

Just a quick reminder: We're looking for excellent "End Grain" submissions, and the deadline is July 31, 2010. The writer of the best 550-word (or so) story will win a complete collection of signed hardcover Woodworking Magazine books, get published and earn $250. Plus, we'll buy all the other entries we like, too. Click here to read more about the contest. Manuscripts should be e-mailed to megan.fitzpatrick@fwmedia.com.

— Megan Fitzpatrick

Wednesday, July 28, 2010 4:24:48 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1] 

eBay brought a world of items to our computers for us to purchase. Craigslist, like eBay, has millions of items listed for sale, but the items are closer to home – actually within your home area. Now there’s a more specialized web site growing across the States – Diggerslist.com.

Diggerslist.com is a national home improvements classified site setup to keep items from the landfills and to connect people that have unwanted construction and building materials with those that desire those items. According to the U.S. EPA, building-related construction and demolition debris totals approximately 160 million tons per year, accounting for nearly 26 percent of total non-industrial waste generation in the U.S. (Click here to read more statistics.)

Diggerslist.com is in its infancy. The site is live in 31 major cities at this time, but the intention is to bring the materials-matching site to 224 more areas over the next year. (There's a place on the site to suggest additional areas.)

Why is this site a topic for a woodworking magazine blog? After the site was brought to my attention, I began digging. (The moniker makes sense, right?). I found a couple listings that fit nicely with woodworking. The photo above is a bundle of wood that is listed in the Chicago market. That's walnut, and the size of the boards is enough to grab your attention. The price on the walnut is $1, or the best offer – not sure I would shoot a low-ball figure at this lumber. And there are also tools being posted. I found an "in the box" Hitachi random orbit sander in New York city for $55 – $50 if you paid cash.

On the downside, I did notice a few vendors listing goods that were not necessarily in any one area. A number of power tools showed up in multiple cities with the idea they could be shipped. The poster used the same photo in each city. So beware – as you are on anything Internet related – but give the new site a search. You may pick up a bargain and keep a few things out of the landfills.

— Glen D. Huey

For information on how to evaluate tools and maintain them after you've made a purchase, a quick trip to Tool School is just what you need, click here.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010 8:53:01 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2] 

Last week WGBH released a trailer for "Rough Cut – Woodworking with Tommy Mac," the newest woodworking show coming from Boston’s PBS network. Links to the trailer were posted on so many sites that it had to look like a ping-pong ball in cyberspace. The show is big news in woodworking circles.

Of course, most everyone has watched the trailer and is fully up to date with everything Tommy Mac (if you haven’t caught the trailer, click here), but there are a couple things about Tommy and his shop and show that you might not know – things we read about in the online edition of the Canton Citizen, the local newspaper in the town where Tommy has his shop.

For starters, much of the new show is being filmed in Tommy’s shop. You might think that’s a good idea due to his familiarity with the tools and the shop layout, but there is one problem he and the crew have to deal with. Tommy’s shop is not air-conditioned and if you’ve been watching the weather news lately, you know about the hot, humid days they have been having back East.

Some of the guests that visit the show are from Canton, too – including Tommy’s sidekick for three shows, Al D’Attanasio, a long-time woodworker. And here’s a cool twist, Tommy’s sixth-grade shop teacher shows up in an episode. The real story is that his teacher is part of the Canton Veterans Honor Guard and is on hand to properly demonstrate how to fold an American flag to fit into the flag box built during the show. Nice touch.

For more information about Tommy MacDonald, details about the show and his hometown of Canton, MA, click here to read the Canton Citizen article.

— Glen D. Huey

Tuesday, July 27, 2010 9:45:27 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0] 

Photo courtesy of Kathy Keatley Garvey, UC Davis Department of Entomology

The American ash tree is under attack from the emerald ash borer, the American chestnut has been all but wiped out by chestnut blight and the American elm is succumbing in large numbers to Dutch elm disease. Now, the Eastern black walnut (Juglans nigra) is under attack from “Thousand Cankers Disease.”

This fungus (an undescribed exotic species of Geosmithia) hitchhikes on a tiny bark beetle called the walnut twig beetle (Pityophthorus juglandis), which by itself does relatively little damage, according to experts quoted in a number of online articles.  But the virulent fungus that it carries can kill a specimen in as little as three years.

The tiny beetle (it’s smaller than a grain of rice) bores into living walnut trees and creates tunnels beneath the bark, thus wounding the tree and providing an opportunity for the fungus to invade.  The aggressive fungus quickly spreads in large cankers that girdle twigs and limbs, causing the tree’s crown to die back

For now, Thousand Cankers seems limited to seven western states: Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and pockets of California. (The walnut twig beetle is native to Arizona, California, New Mexico and Mexico.) While entomologists are researching methods to combat the disease, right now the only defense is to limit the geographic area and keep it from spreading. That means no transportation of walnut from the infested site. Cut logs can, according to a press release from Linda McMulkin at Colorado State University, harbor the fungus and the beetle for up to three years. McMulkin urges those with infested trees to cut down the diseased trees and keep the wood on the property.

I have queries in to several experts right now to find out the ramifications for woodworkers. I’m interested in knowing – as I’m sure are you – if this affected wood can be used. Here are the questions I want answered:

• Once the beetles have tunneled into it and the canker sets in, does the wood maintain enough structural integrity to be used? (If so, I can see it being used as a dark alternative to wormy and/or spalted maple.

• If air-dried, the pathogens presumably would remain viable in the walnut for up to three years – so is milling the wood a health threat to the woodworkers?

• If it can be safely worked, might a finish kill or sufficiently contain the beetle and fungus, thereby rendering safe the transport of a finished project?

• Can the affected wood can be safely kiln dried, and does that process kill off the pathogens and lessen any health threats from airborne fungus released in the milling process?

If you have other questions, please post a comment; I hope to soon get answers (and if you’re a plant pathologist/biologist/entomologist/cross-taxonomic fungi expert, please give me call!).

— Megan Fitzpatrick

Tuesday, July 27, 2010 9:08:27 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [8] 

See that pile of logs (sandwiched amongst the others piles o' stuff)? That's my new bench. It's in the same state that it was on June 7 when I first blogged about the upcoming build. Come hell, high water, or a dissertation that needs to be written, I must finish the bench build by Sept. 30. That's the day we load it and a bevy of other benches into a truck to haul them across the river to the Northern Kentucky Convention Center for Woodworking in America 2010 (Oct. 1-3).

So I have a fast-approaching deadline for the conference – but if you haven't yet registered, you have an even more pressing deadline. The Early Bird Registration Rate expires on August 2 – and there are only a handful of available spots remaining. Sign up by August 2 to a) ensure you get in to the conference and b) save $40 doing it.  

This year's conference features 44 different classes taught by world-class instructors – with lots of opportunity for you to get dusty, sweaty and skilled. If you've yet to register, you'll notice that when you do so, many of the classes will be noted as "sold out." That is for our planning purposes only – you are not beholden to the schedule for which you register, so as fire codes allow, we'll be letting in every registered person who wants to attend a regular session (the extra-curricular activities are, however, closed). In other words, to avoid a crowd, it would be best to try to arrange your schedule based on the sessions that are still "open," but know that you can still attend other sessions if you wish (again, assuming 300 people don't show up for a session scheduled in a 250-capacity room).

You can read more about the conference, and find a list of sessions and instructors (not to mention the unparalleled marketplace), at woodworkinginamerica.com.
 
As far as my bench, well, I'll be blogging about it as I go, but here's a brief update:

The design has changed a bit since my earlier post. I'd planned to make the top from a solid slab of 5"-thick cedar that I'd ordered from Bark House.  When the slab arrived in our shop, Chris and I decided it would be criminal to saw off the lovely waney edges and fill interesting voids with epoxy. Instead, we've put that slab aside (you can see it in the bottom of our wood rack in the picture above) for a future table build that will highlight the cedar's natural beauty rather than cut it and cover it up. But, there's plenty of pine in the log pile to make a benchtop, so that's the new plan.

Chris is out next week filming with Roy Underhill for "The Woodwright's Shop" and teaching at Roy's school (you can read more about that on his blog). If I can get a SketchUp plan done and approved before he leaves, I hope to start milling next week.

— Megan Fitzpatrick
 

Monday, July 26, 2010 4:12:02 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [4] 

The easiest projects to make are those you’ve built once before. Most woodworkers only tackle furniture projects once in a lifetime and then move on to something else. So the next best thing is to build something mentally, visualizing how the pieces and parts fit together. Google SketchUp makes this mental process extremely close to the real thing, except for unloading lumber and sanding. We’ve been fans of SketchUp since we began using it a few years ago because it makes the process of planning quick and painless. It gets us out to the shop in less time, and when we start to build for real we’re armed with as much information as we want about how the project (and all the parts) fits together. It gives us the confidence that comes from experience, and we catch mistakes we might have made in the past that waste time and material.

Being the resident CAD jockey here at Popular Woodworking Magazine, I began experimenting with SketchUp to see what the buzz we kept hearing was about. I struggled for a month or two until the light bulb went off over my head and I caught on to what a powerful design tool this program is. I shared what I learned with the rest of the staff, and within a year we stopped using anything but SketchUp for our project planning and design. It has saved us untold time and money, but more important, it has made us better and more efficient woodworkers.

A lot of our readers have joined us. We put plans for new projects that appear in the magazine online in the form of SketchUp models in our 3D Warehouse Collection, and many of those models were made by enthusiastic and helpful readers. It's a great tool to understand how something goes together.

About a year and a half ago, I began organizing what I had learned about using SketchUp into an aid for teaching it. I noticed that the things I struggled with while learning SketchUp were common among our staff members, readers I corresponded with and students in classes I taught. SketchUp is a relatively simple program, but learning it isn’t that simple. It’s different from other graphics and design programs and it’s easy to get sidetracked and frustrated if you don’t get a firm grip on basic concepts at the start, or if you practice the hard way of doing things. This bucket of knowledge began to look like a book, but a printed book seemed to fall short of the best way to present techniques for working on a computer. Then I found out that it is possible to embed video with PDF documents.

The result of this is my new digital format book, Woodworker’s Guide to Google SketchUp 7. It’s all on a disc that you open with Adobe Reader. There are 184 pages of text, and within the text are 49 short video clips. You can read in detail how to perform a technique or solve a problem, then click on the page and watch a video that shows you what to click, where to drag and when to type. You can have Reader open in one window on your machine and SketchUp open on another so you can practice as you read. If you want to review a lesson, you can quickly find the video to refresh your memory. All of this is easily searchable, and the entire document is bookmarked. Entries in the Table of Contents are links; click on the topic in the TOC and that page opens in an instant.

As the author, editor and publisher of Woodworker’s Guide to Google SketchUp 7, my opinion is naturally biased. Several bloggers have had nice things to say about this new book, including Al Navas of Sandal Woods, Kari Hultman of The Village Carpenter, Matt Vanderlist of Matt’s Basement Workshop and Bonnie Roskes of 3dvinci. Read what they have to say, ask your friends on online forums, or purchase a copy to try it yourself. Woodworker’s Guide to Google SketchUp 7 is available for immediate delivery at Popular Woodworking’s Woodworker’s Book Shop.

The question everyone asks is “what is the difference between this and the Shop Class videos Popular Woodworking released earlier this year?” The material covered and techniques presented are similar, both the videos and the book take you from opening SketchUp for the first time and show you how to efficiently plan woodworking projects and extract useful information from a completed model. The one that works best for you depends on your style of learning. The Shop Class videos are all video and fast paced, they are a lot like recorded versions of the sessions I give at our Woodworking in America conferences. The book has room for more detailed explanations of why and how to do things; the videos within reinforce the text and screen shot illustrations.

If you have any questions, send me an e-mail, or leave a comment.

Click Here to Purchase digital book: Woodworker's Guide to Goole SketchUp 7

Click Here for information about Shop Class: SketchUp for Woodworker's videos.

--Robert W. Lang

Monday, July 26, 2010 2:07:35 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2] 

From 2004-2009, we published 16 issues of Woodworking Magazine. The magazine was conceived to challenge the conventional wisdom of the craft and find the most accurate, fast and straightforward way to perform an operation. We tested many techniques, published projects that were historic classics, and presented a new type of tool review that covered the items we consider critical to good work – 6" rulers, hinges, marking knives, tenon saws and more. (While we had to stop putting out two distinct magazines, we folded much of the Woodworking Magazine philosophy – and its design – into Popular Woodworking Magazine.)

We've collected all 16 issues of "WM" into a series of three handsome hardcover books. Therein, the articles are presented exactly as they appeared in the magazine – but on heavier, brighter paper. The books are bound in red cloth and stamped with gold foil titles, and each has a nice, glossy, full-color dust jacket. In other words, these books look great on the coffee table in addition to being an excellent source of woodworking information. Plus, the final book, "Volume 3," has a comprehensive index that covers every issue, to make it easy for you to find the project, technique or tool review you need.

And right now, we're offering a special deal on the three-book bundle at WoodworkersBookShop.com – just $65 (almost $18 off the total price of the three books ordered separately – and shipping is free in the U.S.).

— Megan Fitzpatrick

Thursday, July 22, 2010 4:30:07 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1] 

Bob Baker, a furniture and tool restorer and excellent planemaker, died unexpectedly last week.

I had the pleasure of meeting Bob in February of 2006 when we hosted a gathering in Cincinnati for many of the best planemakers and gave each of them the opportunity to present their work to one another, and to talk about planes, planemaking and toolmaking in general. Bob was high on that list of "best planemakers." In the picture at left, he's presenting two of his planes to the rest of the group.

I met him only that one day, but as I look back through the pictures of the event, I remember a kind and genuine man who had a grin on his face almost the entire time. Kari Hultman, who knew him better than did I, has written more about Bob on her blog, The Village Carpenter, and there are some touching comments below her post that I hope you'll take the time to read.

Editor Christopher Schwarz wrote a story about about our "planemakers'" event for the August 2006 issue, which features some of Bob's work. You can link to it here. 

— Megan Fitzpatrick

Tuesday, July 20, 2010 3:00:25 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0] 

One of the earliest machines I remember Dad having in the shop – besides a table saw and a radial arm saw – is a 12" disc sander. I hated to change the disc on that thing. Peel the backing off then work like the dickens to slide it in place and get it adhered before the glue stuck on something other than where it should. Every time, the results were the same.

Finally, I discovered a simple step-by-step method to get the job done without nasty consequences. I know that many of you will think this a foolish waste of blog space, but heck, that’s what I do. So here goes.

Begin by using a knife to slice the film on the back of the sanding disc. It’s not a Herculean event. Don’t cut all the way through.

Peel off one half of the film

Slide the still-filmed portion of the back into the slotted area between the machine’s disc and the table (or covering) while you keep the un-filmed area away from the surface. After you get the sanding disc positioned, press the sticky portion to the machine’s disc to adhere one half of the sanding disc to the machine. Half the task is complete.

Next, spin the disc so the stuck part is down inside the machine and the still-filmed part is at the top. Bend the sanding disc out from the machine’s disc and simply peel away the remaining film.

Press the second half of sanding disc to the machine’s disc and you’re ready to work.

Granted – this is not undiscovered woodworking knowledge. I almost thought this technique too simple for the blog, but it’s small techniques such as these that keep the blood pressure down. Do you have any similar ideas that make shop life easier? If so, add it to the comment section. I could use a few more points shaved from my stats.

— Glen D. Huey

Save money and time in your shop with "601 Woodshop Tips & Tricks," from a guy with 50 years of experience in woodworking, Graham McCulloch. Click here to order a copy.

Friday, July 16, 2010 1:57:01 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [9]