I will be exhibiting my work at the Paradise City Arts Festival at the Royal Plaza Trade Center, Marlborough, MA, March 19, 20, 21, 2010 (Friday, Saturday, Sunday), booth #233. Come on over if you have the chance.

This is a highly selective juried show with beautiful work in many media including ceramics, furniture, glass, jewelry, fiber, painting, photography, and sculpture. Many of the 175 artists from 22 states, Canada, and Japan are represented in major collections, museums, and publications around the world. Among its many accolades, Paradise City was named the #1 Art Fair in the US in 2008 by American Style magazine and is a perennial Top Ten pick. It is a tremendously inspiring place to be for anyone who makes or appreciates fine craft.

Heartwood readers, if the greater Boston area is reasonably accessible for you, I can tell you this is a worthwhile visit. Of course, I invite you to please stop by my booth and say hi!

Details are at the Paradise City website (that’s my cabinet on their home page). There’s also a little feature on my work in their print and online Spring Guide, page 8, and in their online slide show, “New Faces” (though I am returning from last Fall’s show).

For collectors and anyone who enjoys beautiful craft and art, including furniture/woodwork, seeing the work “live” is the best way to appreciate it and explore your ideas to acquire fine work. It is really the sophisticated and appreciative visitors to Paradise City that make the show!

• When: December 4 and 5, 2009, Friday Noon - 6 pm, Saturday 10 am - 5 pm.
• Where: Holiday Inn, 242 Adams Place, Boxborough, Massachusetts

This is an excellent opportunity to do something you can hardly do at stores and certainly not online: get your hands on lots of hand tools, give them a real test drive on wood, and scrutinize them to your heart’s content. The Lie-Nielsen folks will, of course, be there answering your questions and running two interactive workstations, sharpening and plane tuning.

Four guest demonstrators, including yours truly (representing Popular Woodworking magazine), will be there for the entirety of both days, at workbenches, to demonstrate, discuss tools and woodworking, and to make shavings and sawdust. You will undoubtedly enjoy the offerings of Bob Van Dyke from the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking, Matt Kenney from Fine Woodworking magazine, and Bob Zajicek from Czeck Edge Hand Tool.

I will present a demonstration and talk on shooting at about 2 pm each day, which will cover how to make a simple shooting board, how to use it, and which planes to employ.

Readers, if you are anywhere in the area and can make some time - hey, this is woodworking we’re talking about - come over and say hi, it will be fun to see you. This promises to be an enjoyable and informative two days.

This coming Columbus Day holiday weekend I will be exhibiting my work at the Paradise City Arts Festival show in Northampton, MA. This is a high quality, juried show in which I am proud and excited to participate. There will be fine crafts in many media including wood, glass, fiber, ceramics, photography, and painting.

Northampton is in western Massachusetts. If you are in the area, the show is a great way to get some craft inspiration as well as run up the balance on your credit card. There will be a ton of beautiful work at this show.

Readers, I invite you to stop by booth #632 and we can talk woodworking.

Coming up next week: the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event, December 5&6, 2008 (Friday and Saturday) at the Sturbridge Host Hotel, Sturbridge, Massachusetts. John Economaki, Chris Becksvoort, Bob Van Dyke, and I will be among the demonstrators showing techniques and talking tools and woodworking. Here is a fun and informative opportunity to try out top quality hand tools and pick up skills and tips at the many workstations. I hope to meet some readers of this blog there. This is a relaxed, hands-on event. Admission is free.

There are so many excellent sources to read for woodworking skills that it is difficult to sort through what is available to come up with recommendations. So I will start here with three selections that are easy choices, clear gems, first ballot hall-of-famers.  

Understanding Wood, by R. Bruce Hoadley, may be the one book that I would say every woodworker should have. One cannot go very far in improving woodworking skills without understanding the material and no source is better for this fundamental knowledge. Dr. Hoadley, professor emeritus in the Department of Building Materials and Wood Technology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, shows how the biological structure of wood determines its physical and working properties. This is not disconnected science but rather is practical knowledge that will make you a better woodworker. First published in 1980, it was revised in 2000. (The free Forest Products Laboratory Wood Handbook is a good backup to Understanding Wood.)

Illustrated Cabinetmaking, by Bill Hylton, is a wonderful go-to book when you’re contemplating a project and need to study the options for how to put something together. What are the choices for constructing drawer runners? How much elbow room is needed for a person at a dining table? What are different ways to design a chest of drawers? If a martian landed on earth and wanted to learn as quickly as possible how humans build furniture, I’d hand him this book.

Understanding Wood Finishing, by Bob Flexner, doesn’t just show you how to finish wood, it brings you to an understanding of the subject so that soon you’ll be answering your own finishing questions. I think Bob Flexner’s book and his articles in Popular Woodworking magazine  (and a nice collection of many of his articles ) are not only some of the best explanatory writings in the field of woodworking, but some of the best I’ve read on any topic! (I’m not worthy…)

Being always a student of this craft, I will in this blog continue to revisit the topic of learning resources.

For an enjoyable woodworking experience visit the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event, December 5&6, 2008 (Friday and Saturday) at the Sturbridge Host Hotel, Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Chris Becksvoort, Bob Van Dyke, and I will be among the demonstrators showing techniques and talking tools and woodworking. This is a fun and informative opportunity to try out top quality hand tools and pick up skills and tips at the many workstations. This is a relaxed, hands-on event. Admission is free.

You’ve got some apple wood and want to know its shrinkage properties before working it into your project. Where do you go? FPL, of course. Here’s some more help in searching through this resource.

Forest Products Laboratory’s very helpful Tech Sheets, available for many wood species, are most easily accessed here which brings you to an index with categories of species. I am not able to find a direct link to this index on the FPL homepage. I emailed them suggesting they include this convenience.

Another route is to type the common name of the wood, e.g. “cherry”, in the Search box in the upper left corner of the homepage. For most species, you will find at least one item in the results with “Tech Sheet” which will lead you to either the sheet itself or an index from which you can go to the desired species.

Wood. It’s good.

The Forest Products Laboratory is the best source of information on that wonderful stuff that we woodworkers cherish so dearly - wood. As I graze the woodworking literature in print and online, it seems the FPL does not get the attention it warrants. It is an authoritative and amazingly extensive source.

From the FPL website the entire Wood Handbook, all 14 MB and 486 pages, can be downloaded. I keep the pdf copy on my hard drive. This book is a treasure chest of wood information - structure, physical properties of various species, grading, fasteners, gluing, finishing, etc. It does not spell out woodworking technique but it provides the kind of hard data that can form the basis for rational woodworking methodology. Making a frame and panel and want to know the shrinkage values for butternut? Page 59. Hmm…about like cherry, I’m familiar with cherry, so ok …

Look up the tech sheet for a species using the Search box and you will get to a Technology Transfer Fact Sheet with more information than you may ever want about that species.

And on and on, there’s a ton of useful and interesting information here. (Did I mention that it’s free?)