OK, I’m a space nut. And, if you ever find yourself in Washington, D.C., I strongly recommend that you take the time to go and visit the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum.

From the moment you walk in to the museum, you come face to face with three important bits of NASA history…

• Friendship 7, the Mercury capsule that made John Glenn the first American to orbit the Earth,
• Gemini IV, the capsule that Ed White stepped out of as the first American to walk in space, and,
• the Columbia, the Command Module for Apollo 11, the capsule that took Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the Moon and back for those historic first steps.

Just a few minutes’ walk through the crowds, and you will find yourself in front of the Wright Flyer, the first heavier-than-air aircraft that was able fly under its own power.

I’m sure right now, you must be wondering 1) What the space race and the Wright Flyer have in common, and 2) why is Tom featuring this on his blog.

Well, this week, we marked the 45th anniversary of the first Lunar landing by Apollo 11. And, in the many posts I have put onto Facebook and Twitter about the event, I discovered something fascinating…

Armstrong and Aldrin carried with them a small piece of fabric and wood from the Wright Brother’s plane to the surface of the Moon.

It’s amazing to think that only 66 years separated the first flight from the first Moon landing. And, while the Apollo spacecraft and the Saturn V rocket that propelled the trio to the Moon were built from cutting edge alloys, Orville and Wilbur worked primarily with spruce and canvas as their building materials.  Canvas because it was tough and spruce because it had tremendous strength, but remained flexible.

Before the launch, each of the astronauts was able to pack up to five pounds in a personal preference kit. While most of the items in these kits included personal mementoes, Armstrong was able to work with the National Museum of the Air Force to bring a piece of the craft’s propeller and wing cloth in his.

Sure, it was a sentimental act, but it showed just how important wood was to the pioneers of flight – linking Kitty Hawk to the Sea of Tranquility.

The crazy thing about woodworking as a hobby is that – for the most part – it’s a solitary type of event. You get time away from everyone in your sanctum, alone with your thoughts.

Yeah, for an extrovert (more like an exhibitionist) like me, that’s not gonna cut it. That’s part of the reason why I have been keeping this blog going for coming up on seven (???) years.

The other thing I have noticed is that other woodworkers seem to enjoy the whole woodworking community thing. That’s why I could feel the stars align earlier this week when everyone’s favorite Jersey-bred Italian woodworker Marc Spagnuolo paid a visit to Dirty Water lovin’ Boston-to-the-heart Wicked Pissah Tommy MacDonald’s shop to shoot an upcoming episode of Rough Cut.

While this fuzzy focus film grab isn’t as exciting as seeing Bigfoot in the wild, it does capture a fleeting glimpse of two of the biggest up-and-coming names in woodworking in the same shop preparing to build a project that will be coming out in the next season.

Now, this is hardly the first time two big-name woodworkers have gotten together. There was the time that Steve Ramsey of Woodworking for Mere Mortals met his new neighbor… what’s his name?

And, of course magazines always bring big names in woodworking – like Norm Abram and Steve Shanesy of Popular Woodworking – together for articles that go beyond the simple, “Here’s how you build that,” to shed more light on the entire process and the joy they get from the craft.

I think that’s why events such as Weekend with Wood and Woodworking in America are also catching on – it’s bringing together more and more folks to make the craft a whole lot more dynamic. And, local woodworking stores like Infinity Cutting Tools are offering classes, as are established woodworking schools like the Franklin Street Fine Woodworking School here in Tampa…

Well, folks, it’s a movement.

And, I couldn’t be any happier to be a small part of it!

I have got to confess, I feel as if the past few weeks I have been going through the motions here on the blog. Once I had my health scare earlier this month, I really didn’t have the strength, energy or – quite frankly – confidence to get out back into the shop to do any woodworking. It’s also a tough time of the year to be in the shop. After all, the ‘feels like’ temperature is well over 100 degrees, which really didn’t help.

But, this weekend, I took a page out of cowboy legend Gene Autry’s playbook. I identified a job that had to be done, headed out to the shop early in the day (when it was cooler) and got back in the saddle again.

The project was a simple one – to build a pair of doors to enclose the old TV area of the corner entertainment center. With the new front unit, this piece is now being converted to full storage for our old photo albums, school yearbooks and other miscellaneous stuff we have stashed around the house.

This was a very early project I had built, and, at the time, I built the doors using mitered frames grooved to hold some 1/4″ plywood. It was an easy way to do the deed without any real fancy joinery, and the results have lasted more than 12 years so far with no issues.

So, I got to work. The beauty of building doors this way is that you don’t need a whole lot of tooling. I first measured how tall and wide I wanted the final doors, then cut them to size using my miter saw. Since I have it measured out to cut accurate 45 degree angles, I was able to get all of the frame pieces cut accurately in no time flat.

With the pieces cut, I laid them out on the bench and marked where I wanted the groove for the plywood panels. With those marked, it was easy to test cut on some scrap to make sure two passes over my standard combination blade would cut a sufficiently wide kerf to house the panels. Very simple.

I used my square assembly jig to lay out the pieces and mark the corners. From there, I measured for the size of the center panels for the plywood and got everything together for the assembly.

To help hold the miters together, I went with a biscuit joint like I had used on the four original doors. It had been a while since I used that tool, but when I was building this piece back in 2002, it was state-of-the-art for me. Fortunately, it was easy to get back into the swing of things with the jointer, and before I knew it, I had all four corners cut and ready for glue.

Once the glue dried, I brought them inside for a quick dry fit. They worked nicely. Now, I just have to sand, prime and paint the doors to match, then attach the hinges and handles, and that project will be off the list of things to do.

And, I’ll be back in the shop once again to get some more work done…

I’m not sure why, but for some strange reason, I’m sitting here, totally stumped, grabbing for a topic that could work for today’s post. That’s disturbing, because this rarely happens to me. Inspiration normally hits like a bolt of lightning and I start to write.

But, not today.

And, that’s fine. Because the bolt of lightning that hit me deals with a part of the tree we don’t normally think about. The stump.

I mean tree stumps get no respect. They are that umbilical stub the tree maintains to the ground. They stay behind, witness to the tree that once grew there.

If we remove a tree from our yard, we might leave the stump there, or hire someone to grind the stump out of the ground.  We might pour a chemical on the stump to make it rot faster, or we can hook it to a truck and yank it out of the ground.

Sure, we talk a lot about stumps. Someone can be as dumb as one. Politicians deliver stump speeches. In the game of cricket, the stump is the set of stakes that form ‘home base’ that the batter defends.

We might not think that these things are important to woodworking, but you’d be wrong. In the world of veneers, prized logs are harvested and nothing is allowed to go to waste. That includes the wild grains found at the stumps of these trees.

Another thing I have seen done with stumps (or taller trunks that are still attached to the stumps) are some tremendous carvings. When a live oak tree in Largo Central Park in my fair city died, rather than tear the whole thing down and mulch it, the city allowed local wood carver Bob Marek the opportunity to re-imagine the tree, and turn it into a work of art. The sculpture still adorns the main park green, and is a highlight of any visit there.

Another thing that stumps are good for is a game of skill called Stumps. I could try to explain it to you, but you probably want to read the rules here.

So, the next time you see a lowly tree stump, show it a little respect. It did a lot of really hard work, and isn’t totally worthless…

OK, so first my wife invaded the shop, then my oldest son Dominic… now my youngest has joined the effort, and I couldn’t be any happier.

You see, with the summer vacation coming very quickly, my sons have seemed to switch off to take some well-deserved rest. But, of course, we have to keep them moving. Active with the house work. Doing their summer homework. And learning new things.

So, when Steven saw my veneer hammer and started asking questions, well, I just had to shift gears and give him his first veneer adventure. He liked it so much, he put together the following narrative. I hope you like this!

Hello everyone. Today I worked in the shop with my dad, well…veneering!

It was quite the job. We had to first find the right piece of wood for the project. (We picked out a piece of cabinet grade plywood to serve as our substrate – TI) We then had to get the thin piece of wood we call veneer. (He picked out a nice piece of figured maple…. it was sweet! – TI)

But first, we had to soften the veneer with veneer softener.

We had to then heat up the glue for the veneering since we store it in the fridge. (It was at this point that Steven announced that the hide glue we were using smelled like solid cow farts… I love that boy! – TI) We couldn’t quite get it to temperature, but it still melted.

We then applied it to the, “bad side” of the veneer, and the block of wood. We then flipped over the veneer and applied glue to the other side.

We then flattened it with the veneer hammer, and after rinse, lather, repeat, we were done.

P.S: We still had to wash our fingers.

You bet we still had to wash our fingers!  That was some messy work with the hot hide glue, but the veneer laid down perfectly, sticking tight and flat to the substrate.

Once I gave the glue some time to dry, I trimmed the edges of the board on the table saw and broke out my random orbit sander with a 180 grit pad. The piece came out looking great, and super smooth.

After that, I wiped the dust off and wiped on a coat of finish. The grain just popped. Steven originally wanted to put it into a project, but after he saw it, he just wanted the board to display in his room.

And, I couldn’t possibly be any happier.

Oh, I love my friends at work. They are really a talented bunch of folks who make my time at the office a whole bunch of fun. But, there’s this one guy. The guy who asked me to build that new shelf for his kitchen pantry. Guess what I’m doing again? Rebuilding his shelf. You see, when he wrote down the dimensions of his shelf, he didn’t quite get it right. He wanted the shelf to be 33 5/8″ long, which is what I dutifully cut the shelf length down to after getting it all edged. I then went on to sand and finish the piece to make it all work out. Well, it turns out that my man Shan needed a shelf 36 5/8″ long, and when he went back to his house to put the shelf in place, it of course, didn’t fit. So, tonight, I am getting another lesson on how to cut an edge band for a plywood shelf. This time, I will get it roughly sanded  and give him the entire shelf at its current way-too-long measurement and ask him to remove one of the existing shelves from his pantry and take a direct measurement from its neighbor. After that, I can take it back and cut it to the final size before finishing it once and for all.

I guess I can’t laugh too much… if only he knew about all of the mess ups I made on my projects!

Boy, was I a mess late last week. It had nothing to do with the Modern Woodworkers Association podcast, which did end a little later than normal. And, it had nothing to do with work, which has become crazy this time of the year.

No, it had to do with a little concert I went to see on Thursday night. There was this show by this guy you might have heard of – Bruce Springsteen – that I went to see on Thursday night. Now, it’s been a few years since I last saw him (Born in the USA tour, 1985, on the floor of Giant’s Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey), and I can distinctly remember that his show went on for a long time.

This show was no exception…

THREE hours after Bruce and the E Street Band hit the stage, they started their encores. Without taking a break. The musicians are machines, still able to crank out the tunes nearly 30 years later.

Which, of course, led me to make some woodworking observations based on what I had learned from The Boss.

• Don’t be afraid to change your tune. Bruce turned out rockers for years, but took a risk by recording folk tunes in his Seeger Sessions album. While a totally different genre of music, those songs blended flawlessly into the show, adding a ton to what was already a great show. How many times do we build the same kind of projects because we don’t want to get out of our comfort zone? Reach out. Try those projects you have always wanted to. You just might be surprised with what you can do.
• Keep your circle of friends wide. Ever since his original album – Greetings from Asbury Park in 1972 – Bruce has performed with a group of musicians know as the E Street Band. Through the years, the numbers and members of this band have changed, and has evolved into a full-on stage production including a full horn section. By keeping your woodworking circles wide open, you can meet other woodworkers who can bring their special talents to your woodworking repertoire. Perhaps someone had a lathe and can turn a component for a project for you, or a big bandsaw that can resaw a special board for you.
• Keep doing what you enjoy. It was 29 years since I last saw him, and I know it has been 41 years since his first album hit the scene. Still, you can tell that Bruce brings the energy to the show and enjoys himself tremendously. He makes it seem as if it’s not even work. As long as I can get out into the shop and enjoy what I am doing, I can picture myself doing this for years to come.

Fortunately, I had a weekend to catch up on my sleep so I can go to work this week. But, when I do, I will be listening to The Boss on my little office radio.