Heartwood blog readers, I will be teaching classes starting this September at the new Woodcraft in Walpole, MA. The location is about 15 miles southeast of Boston, two miles north on Route 1 from Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots and Revolution.

The first two classes I have scheduled are Fundamentals of Handplane Selection, Setup, and Use on Sunday, September 22, and How To Make and Use Mortise and Tenon Joinery on Saturday, November 2. Each starts at 10 AM and is five hours long.

I will present the topics in a clear, logical, at-the-workbench manner, much as topics are presented here on Heartwood. The classes will include demonstration, talking, and, of course, plenty of hands-on. If you have any questions regarding the class content, please email me or comment here on the blog.

Signup can be done by phone, email, or at the store. Please visit the site for details.

There are many classes available at this Woodcraft, which houses an exceptionally spacious, well-equipped teaching room. Topics include turning, finishing, sharpening, carving, veneering, power tools, guitar making, and classes for beginners.

If you are anywhere near the area, the store is a very worthwhile visit. It is gorgeous – huge and nicely laid out. Manager Jerry Klevas has thoughtfully assembled the inventory, and thus on a recent visit I was delighted to see tools and supplies that had been difficult to find elsewhere. The store also has a nice lumber selection including specialty woods.

For effective instruction, class sizes are small, so if you are interested, I suggest signing up very soon.

Woodworking In America, the annual extravaganza hosted by Popular Woodworking magazine, will be held Friday through Sunday, October 18-20, 2013 in Cincinnati, Ohio (Covington, Kentucky, to be exact).

I’ll be there, and I’m stoked. Here’s why:

Most of all, I will meet many of my fellow woodworkers, including readers of this blog. Some I have communicated with for years and will finally meet in person.

I plan to do a lot of learning (and drooling) at the booths of the toolmakers in the Marketplace section of the conference. This will be a great chance to pick the brains of the small-scale, ultra quality toolmakers that I so greatly admire. I might even have a suggestion or two to offer.

The classes have first-rate presenters and useful topics. Among the many offerings, I have my eye on a carving class with Mary May, Sketch Up sessions with Bob Lang, the historical perspectives of Don Williams, and gleaning what I can from the brilliance of Silas Kopf.

As if all of that is not enough, I plan to take up saw maker extraordinaire Mark Harrell of Bad Axe Toolworks on his claim that he can transform any key on my keyring into a serviceable dovetail saw in five minutes with nothing more than a 5″ extra slim saw file.

Of course, Mark has said nothing of the sort, but I do know that WIA is going to be a great time, and I will gain knowledge and skills. I hope to see you there. Go to this link to register.

Some topics have been explored in greater depth on the Heartwood blog as series of from three to ten posts. This has been a popular feature of the blog and will continue. The shorter series are the length of short magazine articles and the longer ones would constitute book chapters.

For the convenience of readers, each of the more than a dozen series written over the past four years is now directly accessible in its entirety via a link list that can be found by clicking on the “Series Topics“ link just below the autumn scene header photo.

Comments are closed on posts older than thirty days, which includes virtually all of the posts in the catalogued series, to limit the incessant flow of spam. However, please feel free to email me with questions.

As always, thanks for reading, and happy woodworking to you.

Rob

If you are looking to acquire hand tool skills and can get to, or live in, the north-central Massachusetts or southern New Hampshire areas, consider contacting Steve Branam, author of the Close Grain blog. Earlier this year, Steve started his Close Grain School of Woodworking in Pepperell, MA.

Learning hand tool skills can be confusing and take longer than necessary if you go it alone. In Steve’s words, “Part of what I want to convey is that this is well within the scope of most people’s ability.” As you can see from the outline of the skills he teaches, his approach is systematic and thoughtful. It is skills-based learning, rather than project-based, which makes a lot of sense to me. I also like his down-to-earth approach, devoid of hyperbolic claims of quick and easy perfection.

The best part is that Steve offers you three ways to learn. At his Pepperell location, you can attend group classes. There you can also get private instruction from him in which you have the option of choosing the skill areas you want to work on. Thirdly, Steve will actually travel to your shop/home (within a 60-mile radius of Ayer, MA) for private instruction. In all cases, he even provides tools and materials, or you can use your own tools. There is no excuse left for sitting on the hand tool sidelines or floundering with trial and error.

By my calculation, Steve has somehow managed to circumvent the normal human requirement for sleep. Actually, this is my way of expressing admiration for his entrepreneurship as well as his dedication to sharing woodworking skills.

With over a half million apps available for the iPhone, surely there must be plenty of value to woodworkers. So I had hoped, but my search, while not exhaustive, has been generally disappointing. There are lots of apps for DIYers and contractors, but few of real value to small shop furniture makers. Some of the woodworking apps aren’t worth even their small cost, some are mostly designed to market in-app purchases, some directed at novice woodworkers give little truly useful information, and some just do not work well.

Here are some notable exceptions that I recommend.

The Woodshop Widget lists movement and hardness values for 288 wood species using data mostly from the US Forest Products Laboratory. You can easily calculate the change in width of flatsawn, rift, and quartered boards over a range of humidity that you specify. Also included are a board-feet calculator and several other handy functions. Its $3.99 price is about the most I can bring myself to spend on an app but this one is worth it.

Board Feet Easy Calculator does one job, does it well, and is free.

WoodworkerCalc, $0.99, is primarily a very handy fractional calculator designed for the fractions woodworkers use. I find it is faster, easier, and less mistake-prone in use than my old dedicated fractional calculator. It allows you to set the precision of fractions (e.g., to 1/32 or 1/64) and decimals. It contains a few other functions including, of course, a board-feet calculator.

Woodworking with the Wood Whisperer is a free companion app to Marc Spagnuolo’s website. The app gives you access to hundreds of videos, audio podcasts, the WoodTalk online forum, articles, and much more. The well-produced videos are not only informative, but also enjoyable because Marc is a gifted communicator with an engaging, likeable style.

Readers, if you’ve found other worthwhile apps to add to this list, please feel free to comment.

The manufacture of Bartley gel finishes had been discontinued for some time. Reader Mike Dedon gave me the heads up a few days ago that they are now available.

I missed the clear satin gel varnish, having been a fan for many years. Some old stash is pictured above. I called Bartley and they confirmed that the formula for this is unchanged with the exception of a new dryer because the original dryer is no longer made. The new dryer, I am told, imparts a purplish tint to the product but only when it is in the can. The clear varnish is available in satin only.

Seagrave Coatings, the new manufacturer, has been reported for a while now to have acquired the formulas from the former manufacturer and would be producing the finishes. There are several other brands of gel finishes but it is good to have Bartley’s available once again.

Mike tells me he tried one of the gel stains, and though the color was slightly different from his old stock, the application and results were just as good.

Two sources are Bartley and Woodworker’s Supply.

This Wednesday, April 4, 2012 I will be presenting at the Woodworker’s Guild of Rhode Island. The meeting starts at 7:00 pm and is held at the Scituate Community House in North Scituate, Rhode Island, which is just west of Providence. Click here for a link to a map and directions.

The nice guys at WWGRI were kind to invite me to speak and demonstrate at their group. Naturally, I demanded my usual compensation: all the plane shavings I can stuff in my apron pockets and not a penny less. Seriously, it’s always fun to hang out with fellow woodworkers and share the craft that we enjoy so much.

The topic of the talk segment will be “The Design Journey,” which is summarized in my article in the Winter 2012 issue of Woodwork magazine, and is discussed in the 2010 eight-part series here on the blog, “Creating a work in wood – from idea to finished piece.” This will include a short series of slides.

Then at the bench, I will demonstrate strategies for planing difficult woods. Bed angles, cambers, bevel-up, bevel-down, back bevels, toothing blades, scraper planes, and so forth will be included. There are many ways to approach this task and this presentation will hopefully assist each woodworker in finding what is right for his work with his tools.

The WWGRI welcomes new members and, Heartwood readers, if you are in the area, come on by and say hello.

#&@$*%!!

For a few weeks, there have been technical troubles with this blog. Error messages appeared over the header, the blog was inaccessible at times, some text was corrupted, and, most frustratingly, I could not even access the administration dashboard. My web host, whose name I shall kindly omit from the discussion (yes, that is smoke you see coming out of my ears), has, after an exasperating delay, corrected most of the problems, which by the way, they created. Some issues remain to be fixed, but at least I am now able to post.

I apologize to readers who visit this site to enjoy useful woodworking information and discussion, especially those whose comments may have been lost in the shuffle. This little post is just intended to let you know that things should be back on track soon and I will continue to try to bring you quality content.

As always, thanks for reading, and happy woodworking.

Rob