Woodworking Magazine Blog

The dust collection on our shop's cabinet saw sucks. Let me re-phrase that. It doesn't suck. Zero suckage. Two holes. Tons of waiting.

We have a big cyclone dust -collection system. We have our cabinet saw hooked up at its base and in the basket guard. Still the dust tends to build up in the cabinet. (Note: It hasn't ever gotten as bad as when Glen D. Huey turned on his Unisaw and the blade wouldn't move because the dust had collected up to the arbor, stopping the motor.)

Fair warning: I have little doubt that we will sell out our Woodworking in America conference Oct. 1-3 in Cincinnati. We already have more people registered than we did for our first conference in Berea, Ky., and we've only had registration open for two weeks.

The woodworkers who are restoring the White Water Shaker Village are making significant progress – just in time for the Woodworking in America tour of the village on Oct. 3.

With Woodworking in America in our backyard this fall, we are going all out to show the attendees a good time in the greater Cincinnati area.

So we've planned several extracurricular activities for the attendees. All of these events below have a limited number of seats available and will be first-come, first-served (except the pub crawl). There will be a small added expense (except for the pub crawl) to cover transportation or food. We're not doing these to make money -- we're doing them because, uh, we really want to do these things during Woodworking in America and thought you might, too.

This October, Woodworking in America will be held in our back yard here in Cincinnati on Oct. 1-3. Registration will open in early May, and we'll start telling you all about the instructors and 80 sessions as soon as we get all the contracts signed.

But there is one aspect of planning this conference that I could use your help with. For this conference, we're planning some extra evening events. And I'd like some advice from you about which ones you think are most interesting.

Since we first visited in May 2009, the staff of the magazine has witnessed some amazing progress in the restoration of the Meeting House at the White Water Shaker Village, which is west of our offices in Cincinnati.

As many of you know, we are trying to help a bit here, as well. We've completed reproductions of three furniture projects from the White Water collection, which we have donated to the nonprofit organization that is restoring the village.

In college I had a girlfriend who was half Japanese, half German and entirely unpredictable. And for a kid raised in Arkansas, she was quite the exotic Axis-power antidote to my small-town upbringing.

My grandmother flipped her wig when I brought the girlfriend to the Natural State for a visit (mission accomplished). I was exposed to food and culture that opened my eyes to the larger world. Her dad was a Zen Buddhism professor, their home was filled with Asian ink paintings and they ate all manner of foods that were new to me: sashimi, Ethiopian, Northern Indian, Middle Eastern, and stuffed Chicago pizza.

We're hard at work this month planning the 2010 Woodworking in America conference, which is scheduled for Oct. 1-3 in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area.

Because this conference will be in our backyard, we're excited to show off the Queen City a bit, and we know we can make this the best conference yet. There are lots of events we're toying with now: tours of the unrestored White Water Shaker Village, bourbon tastings, an evening at the magazine's shop and the list goes on and on.

Shooting the photo for the cover of a magazine is as unpredictable as my second girlfriend, Kym Harper.

During the Woodworking in America Conference, there were two quotes that really stood out from all the bon mots that were hurled.

This week I'm building the sitting bench for the White Water Shaker community, which will be featured in the Winter 2009 issue of Woodworking Magazine. The version I'm building is a very close copy, so it will be 13' long. The version for the magazine will be 4' long.

Dealing with long stuff is a challenge, so I thought I'd post a couple movies during the next week that demonstrate some of the tricks to doing it well.

Take six boards. Nail and glue them together. How hard could it be?

This morning we skipped the 20th century entirely.

We invited a few dozen readers to the White Water Shaker Village, a 19th-century colony in rural Hamilton County that is being restored by volunteers. And we invited Freud Tools to the event to show off some of their newest tooling. Freud, never a company for half-measures, sent a huge mobile workshop on the back of a diesel truck.

Dang.

This coming week I'm starting to build a pair of close reproductions of the White Water Shaker Meeting House benches. Earlier this summer I measured the original bench, which is in a building near the Meeting House. When I'm done with these reproductions, we're donating the benches to the Friends of White Water Shaker Village, which is restoring the village, and Hamilton County, Ohio, which owns it.

The joinery in the benches is extraordinarily simple. It's all nails and glue. But these benches have been a massive woodworking challenge, even though I have yet to put a single tool to wood.

Don Williams is like a shark in a clown suit. He'll bite you in half while you are laughing.

During his presentation at Woodworking in America last weekend, I am quite sure that he destroyed the assumptions about pre-industrial woodworking of many of us in the room. And he did it with jokes, amazing slides and a smooth delivery.

Separating Shaker furniture from Shaker ideals has risks. The resulting design can have awkward details. Or the overall look can get wedged somewhere between contemporary studio furniture and country-style stuff you might find at a shopping mall.

Shaker furniture is not just a lack of ornament. It is a diverse collection of works by more than 250 cabinetmakers in 18 communities spread across a wide swath of early America. Yes, there are rules and ideals that course through all pieces made by the brethren, but there is diversity within as well.

The words "always" and "never" will get you in trouble – so you should always endeavor to never use them.

During the early stages of learning to cut dovetails, I foolishly tried to read everything I could on the topic. It was foolish because it would probably take two lifetimes (in dog years even) to get through all that material. And it was foolish because that time would have been better spent practicing the joint.

The 1830s marked one of the pivotal moments in the history of American furniture. As the country took its first steps toward industrializing, tastes in everything – from architecture to clothing to design – took a turn for the radical.

In fact, some historians say that this moment is when our world transformed from a culture based on wood to one based on metal (and later synthetics).

You can now read our account of our visit to White Water Shaker Village on our web site in full. I'll warn you, however, that words and photos do not describe what this place is like. (It's like the old expression, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.")

On Wednesday morning the entire staff of the magazine crowded around a handmade door in an early 19th-century structure as our guide fiddled with a padlock on the door. A couple clicks later the door swung open and it sounded like everyone breathed in simultaneously.