​A while back my wife had asked me about making us a new bed frame and I was all for the idea being quick to admit it's long over do, so after locking myself down with pen and paper I came up with a design that I was pretty excited about and after presented it to her I now find myself building us a whole new bedroom set, yeah I know it's funny how these things happen but I am actually looking forward to this project.  The set will include a linen press, two night stands, a blanket chest and of course the bed frame that started it all.  We agreed on cherry as the main wood and maple for a secondary which has been a long time favorite combination for me, it always creates such a great contrast as the cherry darkens with age against the maple especially the way it makes joinery like dovetails in drawers pop, it's pretty awesome.  So yesterday I took a drive over to see my buddy Jerry at Root River Hardwoods in Preston Minnesota, I have been dealing with this mill for years now and they have never disappointed me,  they set me up the stock I need to get things rolling and I headed back to my shop. The first piece I'm going to build is the linen press, measuring 50.5"w x 78.5"t x 24"d the bottom 27" of the cabinet will be drawers with the remaining upper portion of the cabinet being two doors that when opened will reveal a series of slide out shelves. It is a pretty straight forward piece to build but I still did my usual drawing to allow me to work out details like the crest rail in the upper case, the transition molding between the upper and lower cases and ect.  

​Now sadly they did not have any twenty four inch wide boards so to make it happen I will have to do a few glue ups and that's okay. but for me this is one part of the build that can take forever as I agonize over what boards go together so well they create a surface that visually flows perfectly to me, and honestly I believe this is probably the most important step in building furniture it's the attention to  details like this and having the ability to imagine the end result of the material choices you make that can create something beautiful.   The plan this week is to get the panels made up for the lower case then I can start cutting my dovetails to assemble the carcass, and if all goes well hopefully start work on the dividers and runners for the drawers before the weekend. 

I remember as a teenager my brother challenging our fathers knowledge and my father very calmly informing him " I have forgotten more things then you know " and at the age of 93 I would bet it's more true now then it was when he said it with most people he meets. Recently I found myself in this situation, I was trying to explain to someone how to do something that I have done quite a few times over the years but for whatever reason the answer escaped me, I had no problem in physically showing how it was done though. This grew to be a very common situation for me someone would ask me a question and even though I knew the answer there would be days were I drew a blank, and with this starting to effect my everyday life my wife and I turned to the Mayo Hospital in Rochester Minnesota for answers, and after weeks of testing it was confirmed that I have early on set Dementia, a hard pill for me to swallow for sure but it did answer all the questions of what is going with me.  Since this diagnosis I have found balance in my everyday life through acceptance and changing the way I approach different situations and interactions. With this being shared the question now becomes how is this going to effect my content moving forward, and honestly I'm not sure at this point. I am confident with in what I do and still manage to spend as much time as I can in my woodshop where currently I have started building a linen press for my wife as part of a bedroom set that I'm building for us.  For now going forward my main focus will be my website, continuing to share things that I've learned and things I have seen that I feel may be of interest to you.  I will continue to share my latest articles and blogs in social media to allow you to keep up with it all. Producing on line content like videos though is very mentally demanding and something I have struggled with these last few years, that's not to say I will never return to places like Youtube but I am saying that if I do it will have to be done in a different way and I will work on that as time goes on.       

​​Living in Minnesota the seasonal changes I live with here take me to all ends of the spectrum in both temperature and humidity, creating several challenges for me in the shop that through the years I have come to except as normal. Wood movement is one of those things but it is something I can plan for or at least try to account for it when designing and building furniture, and for whatever reason I really don't seem to get a lot of questions about it. But I do seem to get a lot of questions about rust prevention when it comes to hand tools and the machines that I have in my shop, and honestly this is a concern for me but it is certainly not one that I tend to over think or dwell on very much. Really there are only two things that I do to avoid rust issues, the first is being aware that saw dust and wood shavings cause moister to collect on metal surfaces, so when I'm done using my table saw for example I'll use a rag and wipe off the surface of the table. The second is using my oil rag can, this is nothing more then an old rag that has been tightly rolled up and stuffed into an old soup can then moistened with some three in one oil. Making sure the rag is protruding from the opening as in the picture,  I hold the can end in my hand then wipe the surface with the rag end like an applicator.  I use this on almost everything, my hand planes, my chisels, the table of my band saw, I even wipe down my lathe with it. Anytime you walk into my shop you'll always see it laying around so that when I'm done with a tool I can give it a quick wipe before I put it away.  It's one of those things that I remember my father always using and I often wondered if it was something he had learned from his father ? Maybe. And maybe I'm carrying on some grand family knowledge of much wiser men before me, or maybe not. But all joking aside I do know that rusty tools and equipment have never been an issue in my shop, and for this reason I will continue with what I do.                

I think the most under acknowledged item in a shop has to be the roll of blue tape, and almost unarguably a must have. For me It has evolved into a dependency of sorts in so many different areas of woodworking and so much so that I can not imagine doing certain jobs without it. If I'm building a box for example that involves mitered corners the blue tape becomes my clamps, applying a piece across each joint, then with glue applied I close the box using one last piece to hold it all together.  And with most of my applied moldings especially  transition types this is always the clamp I use to tightly secure the molding to the surface until the glue dries.  Even when I am doing things like prefinishing I will use this tape on the joints to ensure no finish gets onto the gluing surfaces. And I certainly can't forget about things like pattern routing, applying a piece to my template and another on my stock then with a couple of drops of CA glue directly on the tape I stick the two together. Personally I think this method works better then double sided tape, it certainly comes apart easier and has the added bonus of not leaving residue behind to deal with after wards, which has always been my experience with double sided tape.  There are also more obvious things like it is really easy to write on making it a great way to mark individual pieces  without directly marking on the project then having to deal with cleaning off all of those pencil or pen marks once the assembly is done. And of course there are a ton of applications around the shop like making start and stop marks on equipment such as a router table, just stick a piece down to the router plate and make your marks and when our done just peel the tape off leaving no marks behind to address. I'm pretty confident that I could go on for a while as to why I think blue tape is amazing but I think you get my point, it is definitely a tool in my shop.  

Growing up in Carpentersville Illinois one of my favorite memories was going to the candy store, with a shinny quarter in my pocket I could get a bag filled with candy. That was over forty years ago and things have certainly changed since those days. ​

​The prices from yesterday might be gone but if you look around prices like that can still be found, and one of my favorite places are antique stores and similar outlets. My typical venture into these places is in search of hand tools, it does sometimes require a bit of digging through the different things that tend to collected and pile up. But the hunt is certainly worth the effort when you find that one tool.

​​A common question I seem to receive is what do I consider to be my favorite tool, and in that moment my response always seems to be based on the tools I am currently using in whatever project I have on my bench. If I'm building a federal piece then I would likely say it was my scratch stock, or building a door I would be influenced to say it was my mortising chisel. Because the tools I use change with each project I build, it makes it hard for me to say with any truth that any one tool is my favorite over all. But on the other hand in the middle of a project, I could easily say that this one tool is my current favorite for doing this one job.   

Over the years I have collected certain tools that give me an enormous amount of joy to use, a tool that works so well the experience is irreproachable. And when I think in this way there are tools that stand out for me, a tool that even after owning it for in some cases years I still get excited at the thought of using it. 
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One of these tools is my Veritas router plane, a rebirth of the old Stanley #71 it's a thing of beauty. I find myself reaching for it like a trusted old side kick in every joinery adventure I go into, from squaring up a tenon and even more obvious of tasks such as cleaning up dado's. There are many times when using this tool that I  have thought about other ways I would approach the work I am in the middle of without it only to be reminded of how great of a tool it is. Like recently when installing the locks and hinges in the slant top desk I built, once my wall was established the router plane just made such fast, easy and accurate work of the job that I could not help but enjoy the experience of using it, or imagine wanting to do it any other way . ​
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The more thought I put into my tools this way I find my shop to have more than a few favorites, none being any better then the next just different.  And it's that difference in each of these tools that gives each one of them a different place in my shop, because without them I would not be enjoying my woodworking as I do. So I guess I would have to say that I have a lot of favorites.  

​A pencil certainly has it's place in construction and if you have ever been around a home builder you've seen the famous pencil on the ear trick, keeping it readily available to mark that two by four or piece of sheet rock. But in the world of furniture building  it's different especially when laying out joinery. 

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​A pencil certainly has it's place in construction and if you have ever been around a home builder you've seen the famous pencil on the ear trick, keeping it readily available to mark that two by four or piece of sheet rock. But in the world of furniture building  it's different especially when laying out joinery. 

​Marking gauges are made in several different styles and I'm not here to write that book, and this could certainly turn into that if I were to start down that rabbit hole. How ever I can tell you that my preference is a gauge with a knife over a wheel or a pin.  It's that nice crisp cut line the gauge creates allowing for next to zero inaccuracies when paring with my chisels, or even when cutting a tenon shoulder removing the guess work created by a pencil.   

Imagine taking a piece of stock, now measure in one inch from the end and using a starrett and a pencil mark your cut line. Now where in reference to that pencil line do you cut to be completely accurate ? Now grab your starrett and with a razor blade mark the same cut, the accuracy between the two is clear.  ​

The problem I have when using a pencil for laying out joinery is the inconsistency the pencil line creates and the fact that it becomes more inconsistent with each line drawn, creating more guess work than I wish to personally get involved in.  Honestly there a lot of challenges in woodworking and I enjoy all of them, but this is not one that anyone should have to chase. A traditional marking gauge cuts a line with as close to zero inconsistency as you can get with hand tools, while giving the added benefit of a knife line cut through the fibers allowing for a nice crisp edge to your joinery. But like a lot of things in woodworking everyone has a preference and for me given the choice I will choose my marking gauge over a pencil every time when it comes to laying out joinery.

​​I think the heart of any shop is the work bench, a belief that I have had for many years. It's the place where every project comes to life, where the craftsman comes alive with in what ever they are building. ​

Being in a world of social media I have noticed the popularity the subject of work benches has become. Every article and video trying to guide you in what bench to build. The problem for someone researching the subject is the amount of information out there that they have to sift through. Then who do you listen to ?  If Chris Schwarz is talking about work benches you can rest assured it is good sound advise. But you have to look at what someone has done to know if you should listen to what they have to say. I would listen to Tommy MacDonald talk about drawer construction all day long before I would spending five minutes listening to the guy with the fancy blue jig talk about the same subject.      
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​I think a work bench is a personal thing that can only be decided on by the person using it, and only after years of developing their craft can they truly know what does or doesn't work for them. If you are a person who creates hand cut joinery maybe a moxon vise is something you should think about, removing the need to build a bench that may or may not work for you. Especially if all your after is a way to secure stock while  cutting dovetails.    

​My best advise is to take in as much good information as you can find. Then look at established woodworkers whos styles of work you are influenced by and see what they are using, committing yourself to understanding why they use what they use.  But most important don't build a bench just yet, get a couple of saw horses and put a few boards across the top and start woodworking. Because only after you progress in your craft and gain some knowledge can you make an honest, informed and educated decision on what will or will not work for you.   
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