Next week, several members of our staff and myself will be headed to the International Woodworking Fair (IWF) in Atlanta, GA, for three days of new tool overkill. We’ll be filling you all in on our IWF blog during the show, with both video and text coverage from the heart of the action.
But that’s then.
Yesterday afternoon, Porter-Cable held a new product webinar to unveil five new tools that will be available mid to late October. These folks aren’t gonna wait till Atlanta to start dishing the new goods!
I have to admit that I like art. A beautiful photograph, a lovely piece of sculpture, or a well-done painting – I have all of those in various places in my house. Of course, one of my paintings is of pointing dogs, another of an old train engine – they strike my fancy. As the saying goes, art – like beauty – is where you find it.
The reason I bring this up is that, a while ago, I found a really interesting looking piece of wood – it was cut from the outer aspect of a huge bubinga log. The tree was a monster, almost 400 years old, and for that reason, this piece – which contained bark and exposed sapwood – was able to be sawn flat. The shape of the bark remnants and the graphic nature of the exposed wood kept bringing me back to the piece … but I could think of no really good way to make use of it. Then it struck me: it looked like an abstract painting. So I bought the piece of wood, took it to my workshop, and got busy.
Sometimes being Woodworker’s Journal’s “Field” Editor, I feel like I’m way, way out in some field. What I mean here is, I’m one step removed from the day-to-day feedback we receive in our home office from readers about what we publish. A lot of mail comes in, but generally I don’t get to see it. I work from home, which is several states away.
Calling all flooring guys out there! I’ve got a flooring conundrum to share with you. Care to offer some advice?
Here’s the deal: I’ve had a hardwood flooring project on my to-do list for a long time. It’s my shop floor, actually. A couple of years ago, I got a great deal on 900 square feet of hard maple “shorts.” Tongue and groove, beautiful stuff. My plan has been to lay it over the current flooring in my shop, which is plywood subfloor. Not that I mind plywood, but it gets banged up pretty easily and doesn’t look as nice as a hardwood floor. At $1 per square foot, it was a deal too good to pass up.
The unique grain pattern of this reader-submitted project puts a fresh look on a classic design.
As you can see by the photo it is a Morris style chair. I put a little spin to it like instead of the slats on the sides I used flat panels of Birdseye Maple.
- Jesus “Rocky” Rodriguez
Do you have a project you’d like to share? Click here to send it in!
This reader-submitted project shows once again that great projects can come from wood that someone else might call “trash”.
I built this adirondack style loveseat out of reclaimed redwood, It had previously been someone’s deck. Lot’s of rot, dirt, nails, screws, and loose knots had to be dealt with. This project is based on Norm Abram’s plan, but I’ve made the back a bit taller and the material a bit thicker.
- Dean Morrell
Do you have a project you’d like to share? Click here to send it in.
As I mentioned in a previous post, Milwaukee Electric Tools opened their doors this week to show off what’s new and exciting in power and hand tools. In a very cool venue I might add—Harley Davidson’s Motorcycle Museum in Milwaukee.
Last weekend, I visited the woodworking school of our contributing editor, George Vondriska. He was hosting an interesting event to help veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In World War I, they called it “shell shock”; in World War II, the vets came home with “battle fatigue.” Whatever name it goes by, the veterans who live with it call it awful.
As a Navy hospital corpsman in 1974, I saw otherwise healthy men and women returning from Vietnam who were clearly suffering from the trauma they had experienced. Sadly, it was not nearly as well understood then as it is now. According to several reliable sources, nearly 20 percent of the military personnel who have and will serve in Afghanistan and Iraq (and that number stands at about 300,000 people right now …) will develop the symptoms of PTSD. Untreated, it can lead to all sorts of problems, in the vet’s family life as well as professional life.
So what was this interesting event that I visited? (I even helped out just a little bit.) It’s called Build a Vet a Guitar (in conjunction with Guitars For Vets) … but the best idea is to click on the video below and let George tell you about it.
Summer is typically travel time for us woodworking editors, and this one is no different. In June I was at a Bosch media event to learn about their new tools. Next month many of the Journal staff (including yours truly) will be in Atlanta attending the International Woodworking Fair. But this week, I’m headed to Milwaukee, Wisconsin—home to Miller Brewing Company and Harley Davidson Motorcycles—to visit with the folks at Milwaukee Electric Tools.
LiLi Jackson takes a look around the Furniture Society Conference that took place June 16-19, 2010 in Cambridge, Massachussetts. She even ran across Ray Magliozzi from Car Talk, who just happens to also be a woodworker.
Next week, several members of our staff and myself will be headed to the International Woodworking Fair (IWF) in Atlanta, GA, for three days of new tool overkill. We’ll be filling you all in on our IWF blog during the show, with both video and text coverage from the heart of the action.
