Accidental

This blog is a complete accident. I was signing up on another websites blog and an additional screen came up that was also for sign up, and I did not realize it was to get a blog. But since I have it I might as well give it a go, but for now what I’ll post will be just random acts of thought until I figure out the blog thing (it seems more complicated than one might imagine). The word “Blogger” has always struck me as it should be referring to an inept logger (much like the connotation “B movie” evokes of a film). So for now there won’t be many features, but hopefully more in the future.

I am currently “practicing retirement” (forced) and have been working wood since the mid 1970’s, but even though that amount of time might translate into a certain level of proficiency, work got in the way. I was in the engineering field and more often than not worked from dark-to-dark six days a week, leaving not much time for an avocation. I am mostly self-taught, as are many others, having only taken one “paid for” course; other than that it has been through reading books and blogs, watching TV shows and videos.

Currently my favorite blogs are those by Chris Swarz of Popular Woodworking (http://lostartpress.wordpress.com/) and Charles Neil of The Workshop of Charles Neil (http://www.cn-woodworking.com), plus of course videos they both have made. I feel I learned quite a bit watching the  podcasts Tommy McDonald made while he was making his Bombay Secretary.

And like most woodworkers I have upgraded my tools over the years. As I said, I started in the mid 70’s when my father gave me an “entry-level” table saw from Black & Decker; added a Craftsman router and a few other miscellaneous tools.

From that table saw I graduated to a Craftsman radial arm saw (which I still have). Since then I have added a contractors table saw, although I dream of having a Sawstop cabinet saw, and things like a thickness planer, jointer and my last BIG purchase was a wide belt sander.

One of those miscellaneous tools I purchased “back then” was a Stanley hand plane, before anyone was writing much about such tools. I sharpened it as I thought I should (only a hollow grind on the bevel and no attention to the back) and had terribly frustrating results so put it away. I have since bought several other planes and now that I know more about sharpening them, have great results with those.

Hugh Terry