With really close supervision I let him cut a straight part of the car on the band saw. But I was really happy that he got excited about using some planes and spokeshaves. On a scrap he tried out my woody smoother, block plane, and old #7. He thought it was very cool to peel the shavings off the board. Then it got even better when he went to town using a spokeshave to smooth the band saw marks off his car. I took a picture of him with the plane, which I’ll post later.

My bench is way too tall for him of course so the planing was hard work. The planes were up near arm-pit height so he couldn’t get any of his weight over the tool. I have thought about building a nice small bench for the kids. That just jumped near the top of the to-do list.

In case you don’t already have it, Issue #2 (Fall 2004) of Woodworking Magazine is available free as a pdf download. Click on the “Download a free issue” link at the Woodworking Magazine homepage .

I have no relation to WW Mag beyond being a big fan, well and a bit of a Christopher Schwarz stalker (in a good way, of course!). ;-)

I’ve been doing more shaping lately, but the prices had kept me away from Auriou rasps despite all the rave reviews. Faced with the possibility of never owning one of these rasps, I tossed reason to the wind and placed an order for a few last night. I won’t feel comfortable though until I get the order processing or shipping email…... Nope, still no email! ;-)

I looked at the offerings by all the vendors Schwarz lists in his blog. Selection varies widely, as do the handles. I found prices at The Best Things to be significantly less than all the rest. Their handles look a lot cheaper than all the others too. Woodcraft prices are $1 to $5 less than all the others on the models I compared. But their selection is pretty small. Get ‘em while you can.

What do people here think about using exotic species of wood – specifically rainforest woods? I’ve looked into the certification a bit an been unconvinced that it offers the amount of assurance of enviro-healthy harvest and transport that I’d like.

I travelled to Costa Rica earlier this year. It was a beautiful trip and is a beautiful country. But what I kept noticing were all the grassy or scrubby fields where there has historically been forest. Some, or much, of this may be caused by conversion of the land for cattle grazing. Some of the trees in Costa Rica, such as Cocobolo, are protected. Yet you see Cocobolo in every gift shop. My friends down there say the locals still cut it because there is little enforcement and they can make good money from it. It seems that those woods will still be cut as long as there is any demand. Thus even if I buy certified Cocobolo (or other rainforest species) it decreases the world supply, which in turn increases the value of every Cocobolo tree still standing if someone were to choose to cut it for market. It’s unfortunate. But I can’t, with a clear conscience, use these useful and beautiful woods.

I’d love to hear dissenting opinions on this.

Part-way through the second 4+” deep hole my chuck and bit plopped off and sat peacefully in the hole staring back at me. I was a bit startled. After making sure my head was still attached and all limbs sill in tact I found this pretty amusing. I didn’t get any pics, and was planning to take a couple if it came off again – I had several more holes to bore. But I guess the couple whacks I gave the chuck with some scrap were enough to seat the chuck well.

If you’re wondering what I’m doing with 4×6 oak timbers. It’s for a little deck-like sitting platform that I’m making into a much bigger project than it needs to be. But hey, I took a timber framing class last fall, and couldn’t pass up this opportunity. If I ever finish it I’ll post it on the projects page. Keep you eye out this time ‘08 or ‘09.

—John

Just a quick first post here as I’m on lunch break. This looks like a cool site, which means there must be bunch of cool people behind it.

Although I don’t have anything specific in mind, I intend to post some real content here in the near future. But, the struggle I have then is it would mean more time sitting at a computer (what I do all day at work) and not at the bench. Oh well. LJ looks to be very informative and inspirational. And the process of thinking through some of these thing enough to type them out can’t hurt.

Later.