I’ve never been much of a bystander, so I quickly set to work on prototypes for personal protective equipment (PPE) that I hoped to produce in sufficient quantities to at least cover the needs of my closest friends and family. And since “crazy” seems to know my exact location at all times, it took less than 48 hours for a major national news network to find me and place an order for 8,500 face masks for the purpose of protecting their reporters and staff who would be so critical in covering news of the crisis.

To make this essential, yet (then) extremely scarce piece of gear a reality, we ramped up from a single parttime employee to a team of 10 to seamstresses working from home. Calavera purchased many thousands of the most expensive vacuum bags known to our woodworking and construction industries and scrounged for every inch of elastic we could get our hands on. By the time of this writing, we have shipped well over 20,000 high quality, well-fitting masks, including a couple thousand donated outright to veterans hospitals, food banks and many other good causes around the community. (And yes, I made sure Mom and Dad had plenty from the start to stay safe.)

We must take responsibility for one another, regardless of politics, beliefs or any of the other factors that make individuals out of each of us. I have been extremely grateful for the opportunity to put whatever skills I have to use for the greater good, in whatever small manner that may be. And well, if I’m being honest, I do enjoy a good challenge and a little bit of chaos now and then. Stay safe, good people, in these challenging times.

Michael Williams is the founder of Calavera Tool Works

The post Apron-maker Shifts to PPE Amid COVID Crisis appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

I’ve been a woodworker and a fly fisherman for years, so it was probably inevitable that sooner or later I would build a bamboo fly rod.

Inevitable, perhaps, but not necessarily a walk in the park. It cost me a fishing season. I broke rods long before they left the shop. I made rods that worked better as tomato stakes. I fried one rod to a crisp. I suffered epoxy failures and polyurethane busts. In short, I enjoyed every minute of it, and three rods after I started, I have a rod that I’m not ashamed to show to the world. It would have gone better if I had learned to follow directions at some point in my life, but it’s too late for that. I will never be a legendary rodmaker, but I hope I can save you from some beginner’s mistakes – perhaps all of them – in this article.

But let’s start at the beginning. A bamboo fly rod is made of six strips of bamboo glued together to form hexagon (photo below). The strips are triangular in cross-section, and since the rod tapers from handle to tip, the triangular strips taper, too — the triangle is bigger at one end of the strip than the other.

All of this is done in three stages: First you rough out a rod blank, splitting the bamboo stem to stern, kiln drying it, and then planing it into long triangular strips — a set of six strips for each section of the rod. In the second stage, you taper the triangular strips with a block plane and a special metal form. Then you glue the pieces together, clamping the pieces together by wrapping them with thread. On a good day, it’s a piece of cake. On a bad day, it’s worse than getting skunked on the stream. Far worse. The final stage is applying the finish and attaching the hardware. I like to think of the stages as lumberjack, cabinetmaker and finisher.

Stage One: Lumberjack

This stage begins with a piece of Tonkin cane, the only cane used in rod making, because its long, dense, fibers make for a powerful rod. In the entire world, Tonkin cane grows in a single 30-square mile patch of China. When trade with China was banned during the Cold War, the only dealer who still had any cane left was Charles Demerest, in Bloomingdale, New Jersey. From 1950 to 1971, his pre-embargo bamboo was the rodmaker’s only supply. Demerest is still one of the few suppliers in the country, and I buy my cane from him because he kept a tradition alive. His bamboo, like all Tonkin cane, is sold in 10-foot lengths, which are usually cut in half for shipping.

Technically, bamboo is a grass, and a stick is called a culm. The easiest and fastest way to get the strips you need is to split the culm the way Windsor chair makers rive a chair back from a log, and for the same reason. Splitting bamboo gives you a piece with long parallel strands of grain. Rodmakers often make their own splitters out of knives or screwdrivers that they drive into the end of the culm. Mine are chisels with edges that are ground to a rounded point. As the pieces get smaller, I hold the end of the chisel on the bench with one hand, and feed the bamboo into it with the other. Your goal: six strips plus whatever else you can get from the bottom five feet of the culm. This will be the butt section. The tip comes from the upper five feet of the culm, and because rods traditionally have an extra tip, you’ll want to split it into 12 pieces.

At this point, you make a couple of minor adjustments. A stick of bamboo is divided into shorter sections by a series of bumps, called nodes. You need to get rid of the bumps and deal with the bends that typically occur around them. Fortunately, bamboo bends when heated. Holding the node directly over a heat gun (photo below) until the wood is almost too hot to handle makes the heated section bend like warm plastic. Once you’ve heated it, you can flatten the node completely (or almost so) by clamping it in the vise with the outside face against a jaw. Count to 10, and then clamp the edges between the jaws to straighten out the bends. If any of the nodal bump remains, you sand it out by hand with 240-grit paper and a hard rubber sanding block.

Before we shape each piece into a triangle, there are two steps. The first is to get each piece down to a manageable width. Traditionally, this is done with a hand plane — it may be a grass, but bamboo works like wood. Tradition has its place, but this isn’t really the time for it. I rip the strips to width on the table saw (use lots of featherboards) and then I plane them into triangles on jig in the planer (photo below). The planer jig is a simple oak auxiliary table with 60-degree grooves routed into it. Battens on the bottom fit snugly against the front and back of the planer bed to hold the jig in place. Each groove is slightly shallower than its neighbor — the largest is about 3/8 inches deep and the smallest is about 1/16-inch deep. I feed all the strips into the first groove, flip them edge for edge, and then feed them into the next shallower groove. I work my way down the table until I’ve planed the strips to the size required by the rod.

Like any piece of lumber, your strips of bamboo need to be kiln dried. This not only drives out water that might haunt you down the road, it tempers the bamboo, turning what would otherwise be a soft rod into one with backbone. It doesn’t take long — about 10 minutes at 350 degrees for the butts, and slightly less for the tips. The problem, of course, is finding an oven that will hold a strip of bamboo that is still somewhere between four and five feet long. Some people make friends with the folks at their local pizza shop. The current rage is a shop-built oven with a thermostat and electric heating elements mounted inside metal heating duct. (It was on a crude variation of this that I baked a rod into charcoal.) I now use a heat gun, combined with a couple of heat ducts — one inside the other — with lots of insulation around the outer pipe (photo and diagram below). The heat gun shoots heat down the outside duct; it rises into the inner duct at an even temperature. I use two meat thermometers, one at the top and one at the bottom of the ducts to monitor the temperature. I’m lucky: the unit automatically tops out at about 350 degrees, but if necessary, I can regulate the temperature by adjusting the air intake on my heat gun.

Stage Two: Cabinetmaker

Here, tradition rules, I am fine with it. You are working with a finely tuned plane, a razor-sharp blade and a tapering jig that adjusts to the thousandths of an inch. I enjoy it the way I enjoy fly casting—nothing matters but what you’re doing, and what you’re doing is about as good as it gets.

The fact is, that while there is no perfect taper for a rod, there are thousands of bad ones. I chose a time-tested taper developed by Everett Garrison. Garrison made some 700 rods from 1927 until his death in 1975, and they are considered some of the finest ever made. I copied the seven-foot rod he used on the last day he went fishing. The dimensions are listed in the chart (see below) 7’0″ Garrison Fly Rod Taper.  Some of his other tapers, as well as his directions for building can be found in his book A Master’s Guide to Building a Bamboo Fly Rod, co-authored with Hoagy Carmichael.

Understanding how rodmaking works means understanding how the tapering jig works. The tapering jig, also called a planing form, is made of two bars of steel five feet long. The edges that face each other are chamfered and form a V-groove when the bars are put together. At one end of the jig the chamfers form a deep valley; at the other end they form a shallow valley. In between, the chamfer forms a valley that slopes evenly between the two ends. The bamboo sits proud of the jig, and you plane it until the plane is riding on the jig. When it is, the bamboo is the same shape as the valley—wide at one end, narrow at the other. Because of the hundreds of different rod tapers, you can adjust the depth of the valley every five inches using a pair of bolts. One bolt pushes the metal bars further apart, the other pulls them together.

Setting the Planing Forms

Setting the forms to the proper taper requires two tools from the machinist’s trade — the dial caliper and a depth indicator with a pointed tip (above). Initially, you set the forms with a depth gauge, and after planing a test strip, you check the setting’s accuracy with the dial caliper.

On the face of it, setting the planning forms to get the taper you want is a matter of tightening and loosening a series of bolts. The problem comes in knowing how much to tighten or loosen them. For this, you rely on a machinist’s tool, called a depth gauge, which reads out the depth of a hole in thousandths. Because you’re measuring a V-groove, you put a 60-degree tip on the end of the gauge.

But because of the fine calibration involved, machinist tools have to be “zeroed out. ” On a dial caliper, your bring the jaws together, loosen the lock on the dial, and then turn it so the needle is pointing exactly at zero. For a lot of reasons, this is tricky with a V-point tip, and unless your setting is accurate, you can’t very well adjust the forms.

Here’s the solution. Zero out your dial caliper and then set the opening between the jaws to .100. Put the dial indicator between the jaws, and turn the dial until it reads .866. Lock the dial in place, and you’ve calibrated the depth gage. You’ll note the wooden base on my depth gauge. The 60-degree tip is a bit wide, and catches on the metal base that came with the indicator. A lot of rodmakers use wooden bases, and until I get around to buying a new tip, I will, too.

But depth gauges are like fishermen. They aren’t always truthful. Set the forms .003 inch wider than called for, and plane a spare strip of bamboo. Check the size with your calipers, and adjust the forms until your sample and your calipers tell you you’ve got it right.

As you plane, always keep the outer face of the bamboo, called the rind, against a chamfer, so that you don’t cut through the fibers there, which are the strongest. Alternate planing between the remaining two sides with every pass, so you don’t plane more off one side than the other and end up with asymmetrical strip. Measure with your dial calipers as you go, and if the sides differ, plane the short side until they are equal. Once you’ve planed the butt sections, reset the jig for the tips, and plane away.

A Custom Built Rodmaker’s Plane

At some point early in your rod building, the edge of your plane will dig into the planing forms you’ve just spent a small fortune to buy. Everyone does it, and no one likes it. But special rodmakers’ planes give you the control you need to avoid gouging. They have a groove milled down the middle, creating two outside “rails” that glide along the form. The groove travels over the bamboo, and the blade extends just far enough to do its work without cutting into the planing form. I don’t always use the plane, but when I do, it is virtually impossible to gouge the planing form.

The only rodmaker’s plane on the market is a beautiful piece of work, but you’ll pay for it. Instead, I made my own by routing a groove through a favorite block plane. I used a 5/8-inch straight bit in the router table, and set the distance between the bit and rail to 1/2 inch– the width of a rail. Raise the router bit to make a cut about .001 deep and make a trial run on a piece of wood to check your setting. When everything is right, take the blade out of the plane and run the plane across the spinning bit, holding it tight against the fence. Turn it around, and make a pass with the other side of the plane against the fence. Repeat until the groove is .003 deep.

I tried this on a junky old plane, and when it worked (to my amazement) I tried it for real. Plane, router, and bit are all doing well.

Gluing the Rod Together

When the strips have been planed to final dimension, it is time to glue them together. Initially, I used polyurethane glue. It is widely available, affordable, and waterproof. It fills gaps, has a working time of 20 to 30 minutes, and dries the same color as bamboo. Unfortunately, 20 to 30 minutes isn’t a lot of time when you’re trying to clamp up six pieces of bamboo only slightly thicker than the butt end of a leader. The pieces slipped, slid and twisted as I worked, and to make a long story short, the polyurethane rods were the ones that became tomato stakes. I use industrial epoxy now, which is surprisingly friendly– it dries slowly, so if I have a problem I literally have hours to solve it.

The strips that make up a fly rod aren’t going to clamp together with even the best clamps, so rodmakers clamp them with a shop-made jig (photos below, designed by Everett Garrison) that binds the pieces together in taut, spiraling wraps of upholstery thread. You apply the glue first, of course, using a toothbrush to spread it over all six strips, which are lined up side-by-side on top of a piece of masking tape. You roll the pieces together, and then run them through the binder. A drive belt made of kite line turns the rod and moves it forward as upholstery thread, fed from above, wraps tightly around the rod.

Making a Garrison Binder

It is hard not to look at Garrison binder and think of Rube Goldberg, but at heart, it’s actually a simple machine. The drive belt — a length of kite string with the ends tied together — travels up from a weight and pulley to the rod. The belt wraps twice around the rod, and goes down to the drive wheel. From there, the belt travels back to the weight and pulley, back up to the rod, and so on. Turning the crank on the drive wheel turns the rod and moves it from left to right. The rest of the wheels — made from old pulleys — are simply there to guide the string. The two immediately left of the drive wheel pinch the string against it so the belt won’t slip. The other two wheels guide the string on its trip from the weights, and keep it from twisting.

The purpose of all this is to wrap upholstery thread around the rod and bind the pieces together. The thread feeds from above, is tucked under the drive string at the rod, and spirals around the rod as it moves.

The base of my binder is made of HDPE, an epoxy resistant plastic that works like wood. You can also make the jig out of wood or metal. None of the dimensions are particularly critical. The wheels can go almost anywhere, though the jig does seem to work better if the drive belt runs at an angle as it approaches and leaves the rod. For better traction, put a rubber band around the drive wheel.

The weights are fishing weights, connected to a pulley by a carabiner. I filed a small groove in the face of the pulley so that I could feed the drive belt through it.

Download construction drawings of the Garrison-Rod-Binder

Flatten the Rod

The fishing weights hanging from the drive belt determine the pressure with which the string is applied. On a tip as tiny as this one, as I discovered, the weight of anything more than the pulley is enough to snap the rod until you get a good 10 inches from the tip. At that point I add a 12-ounce weight. I use a 16-ounce weight on the butt section. Once the rod is wrapped, you straighten out any twists, and then roll it under a board, a roller, or both, to straighten it (photo below). I set it under weights on the planing form to keep it straight while the glue cures. There will still be some minor twists and bends when the glue dries, but you can straighten them out with gentle heat from the heat gun.

Stage Three: Finishing

All that remains is putting the ferrules, handle, reel seat and line guides on. Ferrules first: The i.d. of the ferrule is less than the o.d. of the rod, so you file down the ends as the blank turns on the lathe. You’ll need a three- or four- jawed chuck and a support to keep the far end the blank from whipping around. I made my support by bolting a piece of plywood to a table saw outfeed stand. Drill a hole in the plywood, line it with something soft (like a cork with a hole drilled in it) and then feed the rod through the hole to steady it.

The handle and reel seat get glued on next – get ready-made ones for your first couple of rods. You can learn to make your own later.

Finishing, as a friend observed, is half science and half snake oil. Garrison hit upon the method most rodmakers use today. He dipped the rod, narrow end down, into an upright pipe filled with varnish, and pulled it out with a motor running at 1 rpm.

This requires a pretty tall ceiling. I don’t have one, so I began to think about the last days of each semester in my college woodworking courses, when the shop smelled of Waterlox and Watco. It was the dustiest place on the planet, and yet because we were using oil-based finishes that we wiped off, we could still get a blemish-free finishes. So far, I’ve finished my rods with Birchwood Casey® TRU-OIL® Gun Stock Finish — a pure tung oil that is also traditional rod finish. I apply it with a rag, and rub it for about five minutes and set it aside to dry. If there are any imperfections once the coat dries, I sand them gently out with 1,000-grit paper. After three or four coats, the finish rivals varnish.

When the finish is dry, you can put on the guides. The loop at the tip of the rod is epoxied in place. The other guides are held in place by silk thread wrapped around the rod. I’ve found my fly tying bobbin is the easiest way to start the wrap. Once I’ve started the wrap, I run the thread through the middle of a book to create some drag, and turn the rod to wrap the guide.

If you started in the fall, and you have made no tomato stakes and started no fires, it will probably be early January by the time you apply the several coats of varnish that hold the silk thread in place. Around here, it will be a couple of more weeks before the blue-winged olive hatch. See you on the stream.

The post How To Make a Bamboo Fly Fishing Rod appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

“Guiness does not have a category for this and declined our request for the creation of a new category, saying they consider the ‘largest end grain table’ to be too narrow for their purposes,” says Dorsey Marshall, Random 8’s shop foreman.

Bonesaw hired Random 8 to create a bar, tap wall, cabinetry and tables for the new brewery’s tasting room. The owner envisioned a large community table that would be situated down the center of the space as its centerpiece. Random 8 was a logical team for the job: the company builds original figured wood and live-edge tables for a variety of clients.

“They trusted me enough to give me complete freedom to design and build the table,” Goodman recalls. “I imagined this hodgepodge of random blocks in a massive, thick table … Once I had the idea, I couldn’t not build it.”

Historic Timbers

Lockman Hardwoods of Elmer, New Jersey, sourced the table’s timbers, which consist of eight different species: old-growth longleaf heart pine, longleaf heart pine, American chestnut, hickory, loblolly pine, white oak, other pine, Douglas fir and Eastern red cedar.

Most of the vintage lumber can be traced to its original structures. For instance, the old-growth longleaf heart pine once formed platform joists and carriage beams in Philadelphia’s Broad Street Station. Its hickory was taken from a house in Salem, New Jersey, that was built in 1744.

Complex, Exacting Build

After acclimating in Random 8’s shop for more than six months, the beams were first cut into 6″ blocks of various sizes, according to two Fibonacci sequences.

“Using those fractional Golden Ratio measurements allowed us to create a pattern that fit together and hit our marks in both directions,” Marshall says.

Given the challenges of using multiple block sizes, the tabletop pieces were meticulously cataloged, then assembled with slow-cure epoxy. Blocks were added to the tabletop in groupings of 18″ to 24″. Shop space restrictions required that the top be built in two halves, finger-jointed across the middle and bolted together with 1/2″ steel rod.

In order to prevent tearout and accommodate for multiple wood species with various densities, the tabletop was saturated with epoxy to stiffen the wood fibers and then milled flat with a router and slab-milling jig.

End grain has limited tensile strength, so the tabletop is supported by a welded framework of 3/8″-thick angle iron. “It extends from the center pillar and is mortised into the corner legs,”Goodman says. “Our aim was to distribute weight to the legs and prevent the tabletop from sagging.”

The table’s length, and unevenness in the taproom’s concrete floor, required that each table leg be cut to specific length to suit its exact location on the floor. Lengths vary by as much as an inch.

Marshall says throughout the build, wood movement was a constant concern and was corrected for in various ways. Even now, several months after installation, the table has shrunk about 1/4″ along its length.

Once the table sections were delivered, forklifted into position and bolted together, Goodman and Marshall still wondered if it would be level. But at the moment of truth, “all our calculations were validated and our second-guessing rendered irrelevant. It was dead-on,” Goodman says.

While the Random 8 team reflects that much was learned throughout the yearlong building process, they also wonder how many other important lessons might have flown right over their heads.

“We’re grateful to have had the opportunity, but we never want to do it again,” Marshall jokes. “There’s a reason nobody builds giant end grain tables … it’s really hard.”

Photos courtesy of Craig Terry

The post Record-worthy End Grain Table appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

The folks at Rockler caught a certain someone in a red suit on video doing some early holiday shopping. He’s got great taste. These 15 tools and products are sure to please any woodworker. Whether you’re shopping for Christmas, a birthday, or even for yourself, these are great gift ideas for woodworkers.

Featured products and more gift ideas for woodworkers:

Router Bit Inserts

If you know someone with a drawer full of router bits, these inserts are a great solution. They make it easy to create the perfect storage rack for any shop. They can easily be installed in a cabinet shelf, drawer insert, or mounted on the wall.

Turning Kits

Give a gift that just might get turned (see what we did there) into a gift for you. There are tuning kits for pens, kitchen tools, bar tools, gardening tools, sewing tools, back scratchers, shoe horns, and the list goes on.

18pc Insty-Drive Bit Set

This set of self-centering and countersink bits lets you convert from drilling and countersinking to driving screws in a matter of seconds – without re-chucking any bits. Very handy.

Bench Dog Planes

This one is for only the very best people on your list. A new hand plane is more of an investment than most of the gifts on this list, but you can bet the level of excitement when it gets opened will be more than worth it.

Square Check Tape Measure Accessory

Measuring across the diagonals of a box or frame is a tried and true method of determining if it is square. This simple tape measure accessory eliminates the challenge of how to hook the tape on a corner.

Router Bit Center/Depth Gauge

This gauge makes it easy to position the router table fence in relation to the center of a bit or set the height of a bit or blade.

Woodworker’s Journal Magazine

Call it a shameless plug, our magazine really does make a great stocking stuffer!

FlexiPort Hose Kit

Woodworkers who own a lot of power tools probably have a couple tools that don’t easily fit their dust hose connection. This hose features interchangeable flexible rubber ports that fit in or over even odd shaped tool ports. It’s a real problem solver.

Turning Blanks

Here’s another a gift idea that just might get turned into a gift for you (we did it again). Woodturners can never have too many turning blanks in the shop to inspire new bowls, pens, or handles for other tools.

Bench Cookies

This is another one of those tools that you didn’t know you needed until you get them. Bench Cookies lift, grip and protect work pieces. Leave them on a plate for Santa on Christmas Eve and they’ll be gone in the morning.

Mountable Dust Coupler

These couplers make it easy to install a dust port anywhere you need it. There’s even a reducer for 2-1/2″ to 4″ hose connections.

Silicone Glue Tools

Every woodworker uses glue. These silicone glue tools almost make it fun to apply and clean up glue. Almost.

Clamp-It Clips

Getting a set of Clamp-It Clips is like getting an extra set of hands. They hold panels at a 90 degree angle to make assembling cabinets or boxes easier.

Bandy Clamps

You can never have too many clamps and there are so many uses for these Bandy clamps.

Wireless Speaker

This wireless speaker will connect with any Bluetooth enabled device. You can make a custom box for it or let the recipient make their own box.

The post Gift Ideas for Woodworkers appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

I opened the crate and stickered the live-edge slabs in my woodshed, where they languished until April of this year. Then, Ken and I set aside a solid week to build an 8′ live-edge table and two live-edge benches. We spent Monday morning moving the stickered slabs from the shed to the shop for inspection. At 2-3/8″, they were too thick for our Festool TS 55 Track saw, which has a maximum depth of cut of 1-15/16″, so I called my friends at Doll Lumber to see if they would plane them down to 1-7/8″. After running a metal detector over the slabs, we schlepped the wood to Doll’s yard — one of the smartest things we did all week. Suddenly, the wood came alive, showing us grain and character. As we sorted the wood back at the shop, Ken and I instantly agreed which slabs belonged in the table and the slab that would become the two benches. The wood spoke to us, and we were listening!

Scale Model for Testing

On Tuesday, we worked on the benches. We decided on a turned leg reminiscent of the designs of George Nakashima, who brought live-edge furniture to its zenith in the 1950s. We wanted a simple taper with a 1″ wedged through tenon in the slab, with the legs splayed at a 15° angle outward to where imaginary corners of the bench would be.

We tested the idea with a 1:50 scale model that we glued together with butt joints and super glue. This allowed us to ascertain the looks and the tip-over resistance of the design before fabricating a simple jig to drill the leg mortises through the slabs.

Wednesday morning, we picked slabs for cutting the trestle leg parts. With careful layout, we were able to get all the pieces for the trestles, plus a live-edge stretcher between, from two slabs.

Each support consisted of two uprights and two trestle crossmembers. In our design, it doesn’t matter which part of the supports is the “top” or the “bottom”: they can be rearranged so that the stretcher is either at floor level or abuts the underside of the table. The stretcher attaches to the uprights with heavy-duty knockdown hardware, allowing the table to be transported in pieces and easily assembled or disassembled.

Thursday was spent sanding all the pieces, including the table top and bottom. We beveled the trestles before assembly with a sharp 45° beveling bit to create absolutely uniform chamfers for a pleasing look.

For one large check in the wood, we chose to glue in a filler piece. First, we taped a piece of paper over the crack and rubbed the area with a soft pencil. We then glued this tracing to a suitable piece of walnut and band sawed the filler piece with the table set to 2°. This put taper into the walls, allowing the piece to be tapped into the void with lots of glue for lubrication. Once the glue was dry, we hand planed the patch level and it became nearly invisible.

Holding Up to the Sit Test

Friday was spent in all the details that are part of any project. We cut elongated holes in the trestle for attachment to the table and screwed metal inserts into the underside of the top so that it could be attached with machine screws and was free to expand or contract independent of the trestle. Once assembled as conceived, the table was rock-solid. Ken and I could both sit on it, and no gyration would budge it.

We disassembled the table and loaded it in my truck for the trip to Ken’s garage, where he spent the next 10 days applying an oil-based Waterlox finish that really brought out the color of the wood. The table now graces a Chicago apartment and will become a Zahka family heirloom. All in all, it was an action-packed week but very, very satisfying.

The post A Table from Internationally Traveled Wood appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

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Back in 2003, Chris was living in Ohio and working for WJ on a freelance basis. Around 2007, he joined the magazine full-time. Chris says, “My responsibilities for WJ expanded to writing new product blurbs, expert answers for the [Q&A section of] the eZine and Industry Interviews. That chance to interview what has become hundreds of companies in the woodworking products industry has confirmed to me that the people behind the product labels we buy for our woodworking needs are really passionate about woodworking, too! They want to make this craft better and keep it thriving.”

It was also around this time that Woodworker’s Journal began creating our own branded video content for our website and YouTube. “My videos were admittedly rough back then (just check out my multi-part overview of the then-redesigned Delta Unisaw if you want proof!), but transitioning from print journalism into the brave new world of social media-driven video was necessary,” Chris said. “Still, back in 2003, would I ever have imagined myself telling woodworking stories, offering teaching content and doing full project builds as a ‘sort-of’ actor some day? No way. But, it’s added a dimension to this job that, I hope, has made me a better editor and more confident woodworking teacher.”

Chris has also continued to contribute to the print magazine. “Somewhere during this latest stage of life, I surpassed the ‘100th printed article’ milestone with WJ, and I’m well on the way to 150.” Beyond the Arts and Crafts Wine Cabinet [from the August 2003 issue] he cited as a favorite project in 2003, updated favorites include a figured maple dresser “that proved ambitious in terms of the number of machine-cut dovetails it required (not to mention the wood was particularly beautiful, precious and expensive,” plus a Greene and Greene-inspired Dresser and matching bed [from the February 2016 and February 2015 issues, respectively].

Chris described those as complex projects that kept him out in the shop for many late nights and long weekends. “We all build easy-peasy projects from time to time, but those drift out of memory pretty quickly. The ones that challenge us to do our best work, or encourage us to take on new techniques that seem daunting, tend to become favorites of memory. I’m sure that’s true for most woodworkers, but it definitely is for me.”

Speaking of shops, Chris is on his second new shop subsequent to the garage in Westerville, Ohio from 2003. First, his family moved to a 10-acre property in a more rural area, the Columbus suburb of Sunbury. While there, Chris converted a dirt-floor pole barn into a heated and air-conditioned 30 x 40-ft. woodworking shop. “In the end, that space was Ground Zero for many, many tool reviews and project builds.

“I’ll never forget the time we rounded up 10 or so cabinet saws for a big tool review, and suddenly the shop became a parking lot for a group of what were then some of the finest cabinet saws on the market. What an amazing ‘problem’ to have had – a woodworker trying out a showroom’s worth of premium table saws, in the privacy and convenience of his own shop, and then sharing that feedback with our audience. I was the luckiest guy I knew.”

Then, in 2011, an opportunity in Chris’s wife’s career moved the family from Ohio to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. “The one crucial feature our home here in Virginia didn’t have when we bought it was a garage – much less a woodworking shop. So, my current 20 x 40-ft. shop was one of the first orders of business when we settled here. While the size and capability of the shop was somewhat dictated by budget, I also wanted my shop to look like the shops of our readers. Essentially, it’s a garage with many of the benefits and limitations that go along with sharing a woodworking space with cars and other stuff.”

If he had to do it over again, Chris said, he would install only one roll-up garage door instead of two, prioritizing more wall space over more vehicle access. He’d also add outlets and ceiling fixtures. “You can never have too many clamps, or outlets, or lights, and I would put all three of those items at the same level of importance,” he said.

Still, the shop does have one feature that never appears in videos or article photos: a large window on one side with a distant view of mountains. “The opportunity for me, in the middle of a big project or video shoot, to look out that window and see the serenity of a mountain view, is a continual reminder of how lucky I am to both do this work and do it in such a beautiful place. In that regard, I’m still the luckiest guy I know!”

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Almost 25 years old, the St. Louis Woodworkers Guild is expected to reach a total of 60,000 toy donations by year’s end — thanks in part to events like “Toy Build Day” held at the local Rockler Woodworking and Hardware store.

The Guild began in 1994, and that’s also when members began building toys and donating them to local children’s hospitals. With 515 toys donated the first year, the volume quickly grew to average about 1,900 toys per year. As membership and enthusiasm grew, the volume increased to more than 5,000 toys donated in 2016. In June of 2017, the Guild delivered its 50,000th toy.

Until recently, the Guild was supplying toys to just three hospitals in the area, but with increased donations they have expanded the program to include five different hospital facilities and “Toys for Tots®” in the St. Louis area.

Enthusiasm for the program is driven by several long-time members that have had children and grandchildren hospitalized for extended periods of time. They have personally seen the need to keep young minds occupied by donating over 1,000 items each for the last several years.

Items donated include an assortment of puzzles, toys, kits to be glued and assembled, dolls, butterflies, cars, trucks, hummingbirds and just about anything the imagination can dream up. “Treasure boxes” shaped like hearts, birds, or any other desired shape are a big hit. Lids are held on with an axle peg and rotate to reveal the secret storage area inside.

Some of the items that have been built include jigsaw puzzles with extra-large pieces and loose fits for children with special needs. Fishing poles with magnetic bobbers allow children to catch fish with magnets in their nose.

Almost all items are unfinished so the children can use their imagination, paints, stickers and markers to bring the items to life. This is not only fun, but an important part of many children’s therapy. Children unable to leave the hospital and shop for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, birthday or holiday presents will often give items they’ve decorated to a loved one as a gift.

With about 230 members, the guild established a goal of 30% participation in the toy program in any one year. Because there are many new members with limited shop equipment at home, the Guild has held toy building sessions at the guild workshop as well as at the Rockler store. New members get instruction on saws, sanders and hands-on experience making simple toys for donation to the program. A few “kits” are also provided at the meetings that contain wood and patterns for members to fabricate and return finished toys at the next meeting.

Donations also come from Guild sponsors and employees, as well as others. Plus, the Guild has a booth set up at the annual Woodworking Show St. Louis where kids can build race cars and donate them to the program.

The St. Louis Woodworker’s Guild’s donations aren’t just limited to toys: they’ve also partnered with Bring Me A Book St. Louis to help them reach a goal of bringing hardback quality books to under-resourced children to read aloud at home and school. Bring Me a Book provides bookcases and books to pre-kindergarten through first grade classrooms, as well as books for the children to take home and keep. The St. Louis Woodworkers Guild is building small bookcases for the children to store those books in at home. They build and finish about 30 small bookcases at a time to accommodate every child in a classroom.

Thirty people is also the estimated attendance for the first Toy Build Day at the St. Louis Rockler store. Some were there to observe and to learn, both about the Guild and about woodworking and charitable opportunities.

Another Toy Build Day event is scheduled to be held at the St. Louis Rockler Store on January 12, 2019. Further information can be obtained from the store online or by calling 314-209-1116.

Further information about the St. Louis Woodworking Guild, including galleries of members’ work, a library and additional resources, is at www.slwg.org.

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