There are very few! Yet I, and I think the readers themselves, appreciate what does come in. 

By the top trusted, popular, skillful blog-ranking companies documenting online, Heartwood is consistently ranked in the top 10 most popular woodworking blogs in the english/US language. It is between #6 – #9. That rates above some major woodworking magazines and tool dealers.  

It has been in function since 2008. Though there is a two-year entry gap before a half-year ago, it has run at the maximum content level in the past half year. The site now has 259,000 words, not including comments, and 1400 photos. That is like 3 or 4 books. All from one author, yours truly, and one small shop. 

The material is hands-on and mind-on useful, and, I hope, enjoyable for you to read.  There is no business or money at play here. Just the beloved woodworking – and woodworkers! 

And, I greatly appreciate the readership – and comments!

Online videos, as we all see, can quickly, amazingly produce thousands of comments. Some are just a few words, but it is communication and appreciation. Written blogs are, of course, different. Video seems to stimulate reply more than writing does. I get it. 

So, dear readers, I hope that some more of you will sometimes go to the clicker and pop in a comment. (I have to approve any comment. That keeps away the massive spam leaches.) Most importantly, your fellow readers will appreciate your thoughts and observations. Of course, I will too.

So, if you have something to say – and you probably do – maybe to put in another side of thought – whatever – I hope you will give it a go. 

Thank you, dear readers! 

I have had these small sayings posted in the shop for a long time. I look at them often for their help.

The one from the late Sam Maloof, above, is on the door of my drafting setup. I really need that advice!

In the photo below, it is from the late James Krenov. It is pinned to the top of the tack board just above the workbench where I mostly attach the design drawings for the current project. It is simple, clear, and certainly should not be forgotten.

Shown below, on the other side of the tack board, is a sentence from The Book of  Wisdom in the Old Testament of the Bible. It is a simple way of lifting the significance of wood. Yes, good old wood!

So, there are some ideas you may wish to use. Of course, you surely have your own sayings or bits of advice that would help you in your shop. If you have not already, I suggest posting some.

I also have a few other postings in my shop which I will share in time. They all help keep my mind and hands going strongly: woodworking!

Woodwork that you put yourself into creating can last a long time and have personal meaning. Consider that these are among the reasons it is worth doing.

Look back at the item from over 60 years ago discussed in a recent post: Still here

My 50-year file of Fine Woodworking magazine is still housed in a large bookshelf cabinet that I made not long after the magazine began. The beds made for my kids over 30 years ago, used by them in their young lives, are still in the house long after they moved into their own.

Now lately these two nifty trucks are for the grandkids. They are not high art woodwork but as personal creations they are meaningful.

Consider this when you work in the shop: personal connections, the joy of your work (usually), and how it may even outlast you. We work with our hands and tools because it matters.

Now a few comments on the kids’ trucks. They are about 14″l. x 8″h. x 7″w. with specially 10 species of nice wood. Practical, rugged, and fun – constructed to take plenty of playing action. The one at the top has a lifting back, and the other has a lifting lid of its back.

So, dear readers, get into the shop, go to work, and consider what is really going on – and enjoy!

Dear readers, you might wonder why I started writing again last week but was gone for over two years. (This site started in 2008.)

Here is the story.

I was in excellent health – regular doctor visits, no medications, excellent diet, weight, and exercise. However, at the gym one day, I fully collapsed, immediately unconscious. I was rushed to the hospital and underwent brain surgery for a major hemorrhagic stroke in my left-side brain. 

It was May, 2023. This was very bad.

For the next six months, with some hospital stay, shifting to home stay, and back to medical institutions, I worked on recovery. Unfortunately, things got worse by the end of 2023 and early 2024. The second major surgery, to put parts of my skull back together and try to make my brain work, occurred in January, 2024.

I was unconscious and near death, and had religious final rites.   

Odds were not much in my favor, but I lived. Still living in a supportive medical facility, I was a vegetable. My right leg and right arm were completely disabled. I could not speak, move, eat, or have basic systems work. In fact, I have almost no memory of the first 5-6 months of 2024. 

But by late May or early June, 2024, I started to gain some abilities. I could move with supportive equipment, and had some pathetic speaking ability. Of course, I had little understanding and I could not read a word. 

I recall watching a comedy movie about baseball and I was able to laugh. And I enjoyed music.

Some abilities started to return. I realized I could battle forward. I spent the next six months still away from home but working at everything. I relearned to speak, to move, and eventually to lift and walk, to read and to write (4 – 8 hours per day of studying) . . . and to live.

I much later learned via a knowledgeable medical source that about half of people who got what I did unfortunately do not live through it. 75% of the living end up in a bad, restricted state. The remaining 25% of the living gain some improvement but extremely few return to a full life. I am lucky, I did.

By the end of 2024, I came back home. I continued to improve. I can walk, hike, run a bit, exercise and lift heavy weights, read, write, and just LIVE. I diligently continue to work on all aspects of improving. It is going very well.

I do not quit.

I happily restudied woodworking with countless hours in the home shop! On June 24, 2025, I started to write online again. 

That’s my story.

Thanks be to God. Thanks to my family. And, my dear readers: I’m back online.

Click below to enjoy:

So put me in coach, I’m ready to play . . .

Yes, I’m still here. The last post was over two years ago, so perhaps you wonder what has been going on with your devoted author.

I will tell you but in the next post. Here, I want to go way back and tell you first about when I began woodworking. I mean way back. Enough that I can truly say that I’ve been woodworking for about 62 years.

In the basement of the family house, prior to Palm Sunday, I built a little Catholic memorial and then gave it to my mother and father. I did not see it again until 59 years later when I discovered it shortly after my mom died (at 102; dad at 91).

She had saved the woodwork in her small number of collectibles.

Woodworking. It mattered then, and it still does.

And this is how and why I work a saw, chisel, and plane. Because what I do matters.

Go ahead, dear readers, pick up your tools and make things.

It matters.

So, I’m back online. I will tell you in the next post what has been going on. And after that, we will do more woodworking stuff. Lots to come.

You have an idea for a piece – a compelling, strong idea. The more you think it through, the more it grows and the more you think, “I can do this. It’s going to be worth it.”

You research design options, wood, and joinery. Things seem to be coming together. Along the way, however, you find some dangerously impressive work of the general type that you have in mind. This happens to me when I look at woodwork by Tim Coleman, John Cameron, and Craig Vandall Stevens, to name a few. How did they do that?

And you begin to wonder: “OK, it’s not a competition but, good heavens, I love that piece that I’m looking at on the internet and I know, or at least I feel pretty sure, that I will not love mine as much when I finish it – if I make it at all, that is.”

Now what to do? Sometimes it is difficult to avoid outright copying strong ideas – to simply build again what has already been built just fine – but that is not what you set out to do, and not your road to fulfillment. 

Or do you give up part way into the design process and say “Good enough. I know I could do better but why bother?” Will you tank the design, knowing that no one else will know? Or don’t sing at all if you’re not Pavarotti? 

That’s silly. You have a voice. Use it, plain or fancy, innovative or derivative. If you work at it, if you do not lull into laziness, the piece you have in mind is going to be at least good, maybe very good, and who knows, maybe even great. Humility and confidence are willing partners. 

But here is what you do not expect. If you really put mind, hand, and heart into it, I will bet that the piece is going to be better than you think. 

This is perhaps the biggest secret and the magic of creative work. Trust yourself! Yes, it could flop but if you are diligent and you have developed a decent level of skill, the odds are actually in your favor. You are working hard, you are necessarily taking a risk, and you do not, you cannot, know quite what the outcome will be . . . 

Until it is there!

And when it is there, it will be more than the sum of your ideas and your craft. In fact, you likely will look at it sometime hence and think, “How did I do that?”

In fact, the first and only. It has sat, at least until now, for more than 50 years right in the spot in my late parents’ house where I completed it as a high school kid. 

It is nothing special, really, and certainly not nearly as functional as the good old Ulmia, a “real” workbench, that I have been using for about 40 years. Its construction mostly follows a design by John Capotosto that was published in the now defunct Mechanix Illustrated magazine in the May 1971 issue. [Old guys, you may recall that magazine, then a competitor of Popular Mechanics, and if you do, you surely remember “Mimi,” who, in various persons, graced every issue among the ads for cigarettes and automobile gear.] 

At the time, my only power tool was a Sears jigsaw, though I longed for a tablesaw, which is another story. The mostly hand-me-down hand tools that I had were marginally serviceable. It is also, hmm . . . possible, that some local construction sites were relieved of some, perhaps excess, 2-by lumber lying around. 

So, why does it matter? I liked then, and now, and for as long as I can remember, to build things – to make stuff. I can still recall the strong feeling then of wanting to build that bench after seeing the article in the magazine. I knew I could do it. Moreover, after all the lumps and bumps of the ensuing years of life, I am still glad that I made it. 

So, I suppose that is my message to you, fellow woodworkers and especially to nascent woodworkers. If you have that deep urge calling to you to Build It – I think you know what I mean – and you possibly can, then Go Build It. Sure, things get in the way, I know, but remember too, that “it’s always something.” So, do the best you can and build it. 

You will very likely be glad for a long time.

David Charlesworth passed away on May 22. There is an announcement on his website.

Though I never met David, I learned a great deal from his three books and many videos. The books, now out of print, are compilations of wonderful articles that he wrote for Furniture and Cabinetmaking magazine. 

To honor the memory of this great teacher, I want to tell you the main thing, so valuable, that I learned from him, which goes beyond the many specific skills he presented. It was his acutely thoughtful, insightful approach to woodworking. He showed how things could be done with direction and precision. 

David stopped the brain clutter and calmly focused on what was really going on with a plane blade, a joint, or a construction process. With his friendly, humble bearing, evident in writing and videos, he inspired us to do the same. 

Focus, think it through, and try – you can do it. Plan. Create with calm energy and at the same time, stay open to new skills and methods.  

For me, and for so many others, these were his gifts. Thank you, David Charlesworth. Rest in peace.