Recently, joglo can be applicated as :

* Decorating of the house

* Support of the roof to get Pencu style.

* Placed in the edge of the pools as a relaxing place

* Placed in the house yard or garden.

*Placed in the backyard or terrace at the back house

* Garage or as a roof protection of a car

* Soko Guru or support of pendopo

First thing - an apology. The last month has flown by - I've been helping a friend with some shop fitting and been travelling all around the country. We even made it as far north as Glasgow - so you see, I'm not joking ;)

Since Yandles woodwork show the plane side of things has been busy - especially since I introduced a Moving Fillister model. A certain Mr Schwarz has taken a liking to this one and I'm building his as we speak. There's also the chance to win yourself a Philly Plane - see here.

Next big thing is the "Hand Tool Event" at West Dean College on the 31st May/1st June. Its going to be an awesome weekend with high profile woodworkers from all around the globe present. Many thanks to Mike at Classic Hand Tools for arranging this one! I'm beavering away in the workshop at the moment making some handsome planes to take along.

And other news - I hope shortly to be receiving "Philly Planes" name stamps so I can finally give my planes the professional branding they (hopefully!) deserve. Stay tuned for photo's.....

Cheers
Philly

Hi Folks
As you know, we woodies are constantly on the lookout for good sources of timber. Preferably ones that no-one else knows about...... ;)
Waka and I visited a new saw mill today near Andover, Goulden Hardwoods. Only a small mill, but some interesting timber. And a lot of fun turning over piles of boards to see what we could find. The owner, Paul, was very helpful and the prices very pleasant. If you are anywhere near it is certainly worth calling by!
I came away with some quartered Beech (some 5 inch thick!!) and some beautiful 3 inch English Walnut. And a small piece of Apple - sadly a little spongy, but we'll see.
Now I just need to wait a while for the timber to dry down to a suitable level. The waiting game......;)
Cheers
Philly

For immediate release

LumberJocks.com has reached a new milestone with 5000 registered woodworkers.

LumberJocks.com, online woodworking community, launched in March 2006 and has made a name for itself in the woodworking world. LumberJocks.com is quickly becoming the #1 online social network for woodworkers. The site’s structure and growing features allow members to easily connect with other woodworkers, post projects and blogs and compete in friendly competitions for fantastic prizes.

Woodworkers, men and women of all ages and skill levels, have showcased over 8,693 projects, 5,196 blogs, 405 reviews and 3,981 forum topics thus far.

According to the members, LumberJocks.com is more than just a site where people share the same interest; it’s a place where people share the same passion. “It’s one thing to share knowledge but it’s another thing to share passion. And that’s the one thing that sets this place apart from the others, that’s the one thing that makes this place so addicting. People sharing the passion for this thing we call woodworking.” – Lip (LumberJocks’ member)

LumberJocks.com would like to thank all of its members for their great community spirit and willingness to share information, experiences and endless knowledge. It is because of this immense community spirit and the friendly nature of all our members that we have grown to be such a success. And special thank you to our voluntary welcoming committee for making new members feel at home in our growing community.

We cannot simply build a great community for our members; our members will build us a great community.

About LumberJocks.com

The rapidly growing community at LumberJocks.com is comprised of men, women, children, and youth all over the world, who are actively involved in woodworking. The members are a combination of professionals, skilled hobbyists, beginners and everything in between. They are furniture builders, artists, home renovators, and wood explorers.

LumberJocks.com offers free membership to woodworkers who share their experiences with wood, ask and answer questions, seek and post their personal tool reviews, find and share resource information, and blog their woodworking journeys.

Not only is the site visited regularly by its members but also regular and casual visits by non-members. This past February Lumberjocks.com surpassed 1 million page views per month.

Sister sites, GardenTenders and HomeRefurbers have just recently “broken ground”, with members beginning the journey of sharing their gardening and home repair experiences with each other in the same fashion as achieved with LumberJocks.com.

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Show everyone your mad computer skills or just tell them it is a Rare Resistor Turquoise mined in my basement. Made of Birch


To See it Click This. Flipin Sweet Resistor Ring

Doug Stowe has up a new article on the therapeutic value of creative manual labor such as hand tool woodworking. He has some food for thought that many of us can back up from personal experience even if we don't understand the technical and chemical processes involved.

Here is a quote from the article: "By getting lost in our work, transcending the sense of self, losing all track of time in our creative efforts we generate the same neurohormones that we excite through mind altering drugs and alcohol... We ignore the needs of our children for creative expression only to introduce and enforce their tragic addiction to other things."  read more »

Everybody does it at some time or another….the eternal voicemail.

You know the ones I mean. The attaboy from the Vice President, Your mom telling you that your dad’s surgery went ok, the one where your wife’s excited giddiness comes through the phone like she's screaming in a bullhorn as she tells you that she successfully negotiated Indianapolis traffic to arrive at the Mass Avenue Knit shop. (It was a solo field trip for her while I was in Joinery 2 at Marc Adams School of Woodworking back in 2007). FYI…I don’t think Gail even knew that I have kept that one.

My oldest saved voicemail is actually woodworking related. It’s from Bill W. at Penn State Industries, and it is from December of 2006. Now I would have to believe that Bill would never in his wildest dreams believe that some guy in Michigan still has his voicemail from Tuesday, December 19^th 2006 saved on his cell phone, but I do. I probably haven’t listened to the whole message more than once or twice. However, every three weeks I get queried to erase it, and I spend about 2 seconds listening to Bill tell me that “they are upgrading me to a better dust can” before I hit the 9 button that saves that message for another 3 weeks.

I was redoing the dust collection in my shop over the Christmas holiday in 2006, and the fine folks at Penn State scrambled to get my cyclone system out to me in time for me to install it during my time away from the office.

It was nice that they upgraded me to a “better can” in order to keep my plan on schedule, but the reason I save that message is because installing that new cyclone was the last thing I worked on with my dog, Simon. Somewhere in the confused, cobweb filled part of the brain there is this belief that as long as that message stays on my phone, Simon and I are still together working on that cyclone.

I never would have imagined while stepping over Simon that day as I ran 6 inch pipe along the basement ceiling that his healthy 6 years of life were near an end. I suppose I was naïve. Simon died 4 weeks after Bill W. left that message.

I’m not quite as naïve as I was back then. That message is my ongoing reminder that life happens.

Tommy works on the "really tough" drawer fronts, eight in all. He's trying to "elevate his game," but the project is "starting to get" to him, especially because of all the tiny pieces of wood. But Tommy is satisfied with the finished pieces and determined to keep moving forward.

WOW… this is going to be tough. We have 58 entries in One Man's Junk and 26 entries in Serve It Up With Class category. And now it’s time to pick your top 5 list in both categories and cast your votes (and don’t forget that three lucky random voters will win our stylish LumberJocks Shirt).

Voting deadline is on August 7th at 3 PM CDT.

Note that only LumberJocks who have posted at least one project in the past are allowed to vote and, for those of you who have submitted an Awards entry, you will notice that your project is not listed when you make your selections. (You are not allowed to vote for yourself.) So don’t panic when you do not see your entry in the voting list – others can pick your entry without any problems.

The results will be announced on August 8th.

Click on the big VOTE AND WIN button on the Awards pages to cast your votes now.

GOOD LUCK!

Boats, logs and claps - Oh MY! In Part One of the federal table wrap-up, T-Chisel visits Steve Brown, head of the Cabinet and Furniture Making Department and a 1990 graduate, of the North Bennet Street School. Steve provides a little last-minute how-to information on getting the embellishments perfect and critiques the table as the end of this project nears.

I’ve been thinking about nomenclature. I’ve been thinking about what I call the area where I do my woodworking thing (or at least where all of the tools and equipment live when I am busy surfing the internet or playing Wii Fit and complaining about having no time to do any woodworking.)

Some people call those tool filled places their “SHOP.” However, that seems a little too generic for me because I have more than one shop in my life. All of the car stuff happens in my garage, but it is more of a combination garage/bicycle shop. I’ve said before that somewhere in between my Park Double Arm repair stand and Park TS-3 Master Truing Stand are enough tools to make 90% of the bicycle shops in North America jealous. Do you need to re-tap a bottom bracket? All decent shops can do either English or Italian Threads. However, for some reason I also have a tap for French Threaded bottom brackets, even though I neither work on bikes professionally nor have any French Bicycles. (I never know why I buy every tool I see, whether I’ll ever need it or not).

The non-bicycle part of the garage is pretty well set up for anything I need to do with cars. In the last ten years I have done engine swaps, clutch replacements, Air Locker installations, countless tune-ups, 30 or so brake jobs, 100 oil changes, water pump and radiator replacements, Axle replacements, ring and pinion set-ups, and on and on and on.

Before my wife and I moved to this house, most of the automotive stuff was done at my father-in-law’s shop. Long before I met him he ran a 2000 sq ft body shop behind his house, but he retired and closed his body shop before I ever came on the scene. So in the early days of my marriage, I would commandeer his shop for various automotive projects.

So now to differentiate between his shop, my bike shop, my garage shop, and the area of my plantation where I do welding and metal work, I always refer to my basement area as my WOOD SHOP. I say to Gail, “I’ll be downstairs in the Wood Shop. If the lazy dog should wake up, feel free to convince him to come keep me company.”

I am very happy with the Wood Shop in my basement. However, I will inevitably have to rename that space. Eventually my work will be good enough for me to call my wood shop a “Studio.” It’s a subtle little thing, but it is the key to being a wood artist. Adirondack Chairs are made in Wood Shops by woodworkers. Commissioned furniture projects are done in studios by two types of guys. To the uninitiated, woodshops and studios look a heck of a lot alike. They have identical equipment and tools. The difference between woodshops and studios is the guy doing the work and the deposit slips for his bank account. Today I came up with the official list of criteria required for a woodshop to be called a studio, and here it is:

1) If the woodworker went to art school then it is acceptable to call it a studio. Art School guys are different. A couple of years ago I was a Mechanical Engineer who worked with a bunch of Industrial Designers designing Office Furniture. It was my job to make sure the roll-formed steel and the drawer slides could support the required loads. It was the responsibility of the Industrial Designers to make sure the theme of the company was represented with a passionate design that made one think, “If I have to spend 10 hours a day in a cubicle, this is the work space I want.” Those left handed, beret-wearing guys were studio types.

2) If you are a woodworker who has ever made $1000 profit on a piece then you can call your woodshop a studio. The keyword here is profit. It’s more than selling cherry cabinets for $2000 when you have more than half of that total tied up in materials, overhead, labor, and burden. Woodshops produce items that either generate no income or can sometimes sell for as much as one half of the price of the lumber they use. However, studios are the setting where profitable wooden art projects are created.

Someday my basement woodshop will become my Studio. I am not able to go to art school, so criterion 1 will not happen. However, I have a plan for creating a 4 digit profit on a piece of furniture or a similar woodworking project. I’ll share that plan with you now.

Someday I am going to resaw a walnut plank and find that the bookmatched inner faces form a distinctive picture of Jesus. Then, I will put the resawn slabs on eBay, and send out a press release. Within 24 hours of FoxNews and Headline News doing bits on Jesus in the Walnut, my auction will have bids over $5000. And when the auction ends and the buyer’s PayPal clears, my basement woodshop with the resawing 18” bandsaw will forever be referred to as “My Studio.”

And I’ll get to show pictures to people and say things like, “here is a picture of my Studio. The Unisaw is in the middle, and on the left is my hand crafted maple workbench. If you look closely in the corner you can see my bandsaw where I created my most famous pieces, Jesus in the Walnut, as I was resawing stock one day…”

I finally got my hands on the tool accessories needed to turn a pen(cil). So using a scrap cutoff of padauk, I went to town and made this beautiful padauk mechanical pencil, with gold plated trim and a black stripe on the clip.

Wait, what accessories were needed?

Aside from the obvious (lathe, turning chisels, drill press, wood), the following are absolutely necessary:

1. Pen mandrel to fit your lathe.
2. Pen kit.

Yep. That's it. The mandrel is $9.99 at Woodcraft Item 141469. Pen kits are around $5 at all the usual vendors. I got a pencil kit at Woodcraft.

Another thing you may find useful is a barrel trimmer. this squares the end of the turning blank to the newly inserted brass tube. Keeps things neat and tidy. Mine was $20 at Woodcraft. All that is left is to make the pencil!

I took a scrap piece of padauk and cut it into 4" sections. Two of those sections I put into the drill press and put a 7mm hole through them to hold the brass tubes. I then pressed the tubes into the wood with a drop of CA glue ("super glue") to hold it together.

Then I mounted the whole thing on the turning mandrel with a bushing on either end, and one in the middle between the blanks.

After tightening things up and mounting the mandrel to the lathe I was ready to turn.

Too bad my craptastic Harbor Freight lathe wasn't compatible with the mandrel! I knew it had a "morse taper #2" fitting. But it didn't occur to me to check that the fitting was in the headstock... The part that turns. The fitting is only in the tailstock in the cheap 40" lathe. The tailstock doesn't turn, so the mandrel wouldn't turn. I had to find a way to get the mandrel MT2 base into the headstock.

I had a faceplate that was separated from a mug I made that I hadn't cleaned up yet. There was enough meat on the wood there to carve out a MT2 hole for my mandrel to rest in.

Once it was carved out, the arbor fit nicely. My live tailstock (a MT2 spinner) was tightened snugly into the dimple on the end of the mandrel and I fired up the lathe.

It worked perfectly!

All that was left was to start cutting the wood! I started off gently removing wood because of the thin diameter of the mandrel. I was afraid it would start bowing under any pressure. It turns out that my fears were unfounded. It's very rigid and does not bow under normal cutting pressure.

The pen blanks were turned with a 5/8" spindle gouge and finished with a 3/4" skew chisel. I got such a great finish I was able to sand starting at 600 grit! A pass at 600 and a pass at 2000 got me a nearly mirror finish all by themselves. I then applied some thick CA glue for a finish.

If you're applying super glue for a finish, don't worry about slopping it on the bushings and such. The pieces will pop right apart and the CA glue will be removed the next turning session.

I got the blanks out and started assembling the pencil. The package for the pencil kit didn't explain what parts went where. It took some trial and error to get things where they belonged. I'm sure once I've done a few of these the positioning will make sense. Until then, I'll have to pay extra attention to the order the pieces are assembled.

As you can see, the results were awesome! I'm really happy and want to make more! Lots more! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

This ring is made from Ancient Kauri which is the world's oldest wood at 50,000 years old.

When I work with a wood that is this old it puts things into perspective in a very real way. I think of life without our minds trappings. Not empty but more full of what life really is.
Imagine for a moment the what nature has done for us to have this natural miracle of our life from so long ago. This ring gives you a connection to an extraordinary time of pre-historic sunlight, rains and life from so long ago.
Click to see the ring Eco-friendly Pre-historic Wooden Ring

http://www.simplywoodrings.com

Hi Folks
Been spending some time playing with Photoshop this week. It is such a powerful program and really needs time to be spent with it to start understanding it (and getting results!)
I've been playing around with turning photo's into "oil paintings" - have a look at the attached picture to see the results. Pretty smart - and I could never paint as well as this!!
Hope you like,
Philly

Breaking out the chisels, Tommy demonstrates how he cut the patterns into the door's inner edge. Then, with the doors ready to go, he shows how he will set the hinges. The morning had been somewhat chaotic in Tommy's shop, but now that all his visitors have left he's determined to get focused--and get finished!

The stress is showing as Tommy glues the first set of dividers into the pigeonhole assembly. A last minute save rescues days of work, but in the end Tommy's spirits soar as the painstakingly shaped dividers glide right in.

Tommy and Al talk workshop safety and make a table saw push stick to ensure all your digits stay intact.

Rather than leave an open gap between the doors, even a small one, it is much preferred to create a mating set of lip and rabbet along the inner edges of the front door panels. This serves to provide a positive closure of the doors and masks the very small reveal between the doors. In this particular case , I create an outside lip or rabbet on the right hand door as this is the first door opened. The method I utilize is to mark the outline of the rabbet, in my case 1/4 in. X 1/4 in. and begin to remove material at the edge of the right hand door. The wood removed is part of the hardwood edging I installed within the door panel edges prior to veneering. The tool I use is a skew rabbet block plane with adjustable fence. This particular plane is based on the Stanley No. 140 plane. I added a wood auxiliary fence to the plane to extend the bearing surface of the plane against the edge of the door panel.

This process went along fairly well without any surprises and afterwards I re-installed the door and began to fit the mating edge to it. This rabbet will mate perfectly with the right hand door edge. Rather than concern myself with a slightly wider left hand door I add a lip of the same wood and grain orientation to the inner edge of the left door instead. This allows me to create two identically sized door panels and since veneer is involved, the complexity of the process is simpler if the door panels are of equal dimensions.

I currently have the left hand door rabbeted edge in the process of glue-up and afterwards I will perform any small trimming to ensure the fit is perfect between the doors. There is a small, slightly greater than 1/32 in. gap between the doors at the moment which will have less of a reveal apparent once the lipped edges are created and installed.

When I was a kid, all of my bedroom decorating ideas, and my bedroom decoration itself, came from my parents. It was really easy. All I really needed was my tonka toys and a comfortable bed, and I would be happy. My parents came up with all kinds of great bedroom decor ideas on their own. They put up a picture of the solar system on my wall and even got me a bed that looked like a spaceship when I became interested in astronomy. Another time, they decorated my bedroom to look like one of my favorite cartoons.

All in all, they had fantastic bedroom decor ideas for me, but as I began to enter adolescence, I knew that I needed to take over and make my room my own. After all, aside from the clothes you wear, there is nothing that you can use to express yourself better than the way your rooms are decorated. I became interested in wood carving years ago as a way to add personality to my surroundings. Ask me for some ideas - I have tons of them :)

If there is one power tool that lends itself perfectly to accessories it?s the table saw. Things like push sticks and stop blocks can make using a table saw more efficient and safe. And, auxiliary fences for the miter gauge and the rip fence prevent chip out and protect the factory fence from being damaged.

Best of all, each of these accessories can easily be made in the shop. This week?s Woodsmith Woodworking Seminar focuses on seven accessories that are ?must-haves.?

You’ll find a few pieces of hardware, that can be used for building jigs, for sale at the Woodsmith Podcast Store, plus a link to the seminar guide.

It's time to assemble the lower case. In preparation, Tommy must get the dove tails on the lower assembly of the bombe 100%. To do this he uses a router on a quarter million dollar piece of furniture...insane or genius? You be the judge. Roughing in the pins and paring it with a chisel, Tommy makes quick work of the job.

Highland Woodworking is excited to announce the addition of John Jordan Turning tools! An internationally renowned Wood Turner and teacher, John Jordan's works have graced The Renwick Gallery of The Smithsonian, The White House, The Boston Museum of Fine Art and Atlanta's High Museum of Art.

John Jordan tools have been developed over time and are a result of his many years of creating pieces that are known for their creative detail and texturing. Mention the name John Jordan while around any group of wood turners and the reaction is one of amazing respect. The fine reputation that follows him is echoed in the tools he has created.

Visit the John Jordan Wood Turning Tool collection at Highland Woodworking!

Here's the latest pen. This is a Sapele Cigar pen with a segmented celtic double knot made of Maple and Cherry.
There are 32 pieces in the segmented knot - 16 Maple and 16 Cherry. The picture below shows better detail of the knot, but the picture above best shows the true colors of the pen.

With the sides and fronts cut, Tommy enjoys "smashing" the pins and tails together. The pine is so soft, working with these dovetails is easy. But before he can glue it all together, he has to clean up the drawer then make a groove in the back of the drawer front. With the drawers taking shape, Tommy is finally starting to feel like he's making progress.

HI Folks
Went to the Ally Pally Woodworking show yesterday (with Waka as my trusty sidekick!) It's the fourth year in a row I've attended - we had a good time but there's no avoiding the horrible truth. It's getting smaller every year :( I don't know if there is a single reason for the decline in the size of woodworking shows but I do hope they don't die out completely - it is a great day out and a chance to see tools in the flesh, watch skills demonstrated and meet other woodies in person. Support your local woodwork show while its still there!!!
Met up with a few of the chaps from UK Workshop (Hi Paul, Dave!!) as well as Andy King, Phil Davy and Bruce Manning from Good Woodworking magazine. Andy was filing away at hand saws most of the day - hope your eyesight returns, Andy ;) Also had a good chat (and a coffee!) with Ben Plewes, the new editor of The Woodworker magazine. Sounds like he has some exciting new ideas for the mag!

Managed to grab an hour in the workshop today, when the Wife wasn't looking. And finally did something I've been meaning to do for a while - make veneer. I am planning another Krenov style cabinet so thought the best place to start would be the timber. My last cabinet was built from solid timber and, although I have had no problems with the doors warping (thanks to well seasoned quartered stock) I would like to veneer this cabinet with "home grown" veneer. A big plank of spalted beech has been drying away for a few years in the workshop and it was time to see what it held. I cut off a piece 9 1/2 inches wide by 24 inches long, 3 inches thick. And I ripped it down on the bandsaw (with a fresh blade installed) giving 2mm thick slices. It turned out really well and I didn't lose a slice, which was lucky. A fresh blade makes all the difference!
So I need to sit down with the various book matches and see where inspiration takes me.

And for you guitar fans - I'm still tweaking the Tele scratch plate. Pics tomorrow, promise ;)

Cheers
Philly