Rob Johnstone
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The Call of the Wild
I admit it. I am of two minds – OK, my kids might say that is an understatement — but when it comes to my wood preference, the statement is dead-on. On one hand, straight quartersawn grain is very pleasing to me. I like it in spruce, white oak, red oak, mahogany … you get the drift. I have built tons of projects with quartersawn lumber.
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Ready…Set…Go!
If you are like me, this is the time of year that you start to get that unsettled, fluttery feeling in the pit of your stomach … it’s gift building season. If you are exactly like me, you can ignore that feeling until, say, December 11th. Which, of course, is not only my birthday (I’ll be 55, thanks for asking!), but is also exactly two weeks from “the big day.” After all, Christmas is in the air (according to advertisers) right around Halloween.
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Flooring Fanfare!
Man alive! When I said that I thought you would have an opinion about my flooring conundrum, I didn’t know the half of it. I got nearly as many flooring suggestions as I received woodworking bromides when I requested them a few issues back. And as usual, you did not disappoint … you will find many of your suggestions and opinions in our Feedback Department, but I’ll give you a feel for some of them here.
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Flummoxed over Flooring
I have had a project on my to-do list for over a year now. In fact, if you had asked me at any time in the past year what the next task on my docket was, I would have told you without hesitation, “I am putting in a new wood floor in my living room/dining room.” And I would not have intentionally been lying about it!
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Autumn’s Woodworking Ramp-up
While I do make a significant amount of sawdust in every season of the year, there is something about the arrival of fall that increases my time in the workshop. Perhaps, as with bears and hibernation, my body responds to fewer hours of sunlight with a biologically driven need to cut, glue and finish. It seems to affect other aspects of my life as well … this weekend, I stopped by a garage sale and could not resist buying a Stanley #78 rabbet plane and a Miller’s Falls bench plane (got ’em both for 40 bucks!).
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It’s SHOW TIME!
If you are seriously in the woodworking business, chances are that you will be in Atlanta this week attending the IWF … aka the International Woodworking Fair. The IWF has long been the venue where the newest and coolest of woodworking tools and gadgetry is first revealed to the public.
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The Artful Codger
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.
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Electronic Woodworking
Recently, the Woodworker’s Journal did some surveying among online woodworkers to find out what you all are up to. It was quite a long and wide-ranging survey, but some of the questions were about social media. I have to say that I just love woodworkers! Some of the responses were “Huh? What’s that?” Others were more enthusiastic and some, just confused: “I don’t like socialism!”
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Hot and Dusty
Recently, in the print magazine, I waxed poetic over the halcyon experience of summer woodworking. How I loved to open the overhead door of my shop and work well into the sunlit Minnesota evenings (it’s not quite midnight sun up here, but close). And that, while there were some bugs to swat and some drops of sweat to wipe away … it was one of the best times of year to be in the shop.
