inspiration

Were do you want to start my friend? many fellow jocks have blogs and skill building video’s look at my buddy list and check out Charles Neil,Mark Spagnolo and Thomas t chisel McDonald then there is the Renaissance woodworker the teenage woodworker really the possibilities are endless you have come to the right community David. Look around we almost all have a web site for something it may not be WW but whatever! Welcome to LJ you will like it here.
The cool thing about these pod cast is that they are interactive you can go into the chat room and participate live. Anyone can make saw dust but it take skills to make pretty saw dust :-)

-- All bleeding will eventually stop.

Books + History are my best friends. Taunton Press publish excellent books about WW as welll as their magazine Fine Woodworking. History is the best Instructor over everything else, tools, mastership, tradicion, concepts, recreations, all is there…..

-- Francisco Luna, San Francisco Bay Area.

There are plenty of woodworkers here that are self-taught and I am among them.

The LJ community is a great place to get information and advice. It is a great collective resource of information. If you have a question, someone will have the answer.

I am a big fan of books. I read quite a bit. I spend more time reading them from the library or at Barnes and Noble because even books can get expensive. I experienced most of my growth as a woodworker before I got my computer, it was all books and making personal connections to other woodworkers.

-- Todd A. Clippinger, Montana, http://amcraftsman.com

Completely self taught with books, books, and more books, and now all my LJ geniuses!

This community is great… I would go to the blogs tab and start looking through it. There are some great videos, lot’s of forum topics. The search feature at the top is fantastic…

-- As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17) †

You’re definately in the right place. I know where you’re coming from, although I never had the courage to try my hand at it, I have been woodworking for 18 years, the only formal training I’ve recieved was a year of wood shop in the 9th grade. So it can be done. I watched some interesting and inspirational videos by folks right here. You don’t have to go far, and you’re not alone.

-- Adventure? Heh! Excitement? Heh! A Woodworker craves not these things!

I am also self taught over the years, have read lots of books, DVDs and wood working magazines are a wealth of info. The web has tons, I mean tons of free info and educational websites as others have posted. FYI, PBS also posts videos of the Wood Wrights Shop with Roy Underhill; I was watching one video two days ago and St. Roy was making a tenon using only hand tools, it was very cool. Since I am getting ready to do the same for a toybox, I went to the shop and did exactly as St Roy showed, of course his were much better than mine, but the point is you already have access to a great deal of information on the web, it is there for your viewing pleasure. Good luck.

-- "You get what you inspect, not what you expect"

work all day , 7 days a week , study several hours a night , every night, sacrifice all other aspects of your life in pursuit of being better at woodworking and constantly plan and push . Three and a half years ago I owned just a hammer , have never been to another shop (self taught) and now every month extrude an unbelievable amount of board footage into furniture , doors , custom millwork , etc. – Yes, it can be done

You want to learn fast, this is how you do it. First learn how you learn best…..seeing, hearing about it (least likely) or feeling (touching, handling and doing). The fastest way to learn is to create a feedback loop of learning.
See or visualize, hear or do some work…
Pay attention to what you did RIGHT
Right it down on paper or record yourself saying what you did right…....do over and over
Just by doing this, you will increase the speed you learn…make sure you build on what you did RIGHT
(that means what you LIKED about your work) this way your work will become YOURS on a very deep level.
When I first learned this technique, it was used to teach musical instrument playing…took months, rather than years to become vituosos…....try it and see what happens…....yoda

Hello fellow woodworkers, just wanted to say thank you for writing me back… very inspiring!! On a quick note… Have you ever watched The Wood Whisperer? I try sometimes very hard to do some of those things, joinery etc., and it doesnt seem to work. What have you all done when you get frustrated? How does he do it so easily??

DMS..