Millionaires arguing with billionaires?  Yup.

Spoiled athletes making big bucks playing a game kids play?  You betcha.

But, I couldn’t be any happier that the NFL lockout is over and football will happen this year.

What does this have to do with woodworking?  Plenty.

You see, in my shop, I have a longstanding tradition.  For me, the best and most productive days in the shop happen in the fall, when the infamous Florida summer heat and humidity breaks. There’s a project on the bench, the garage door is open wide and the kids are playing touch football in the street. And, on my radio, Gene Deckerhoff and Dave Moore are calling the Tampa Bay Buccaneers game.

I’ll often stop after an amazing play, poke my head outside and tell the kids they need to come in and check out the replay on TV. After they check it out, they’ll run right back outside to try to recreate that play. And, I’ll smile.

Of course, as the game starts to wind down, the announcers get a little more excitable as the game hangs in the balance.  I’ll drift in to watch with the family as the end game plays out. We’ll slap high fives all around when our teams win, and we’ll shake our heads in disgust when they can’t get the deed done.

I’ll head out to the shop and listen to the post game analysis. I’ll listen to the late game. And, after a hard day in the shop, I’ll come in, clean up, eat dinner and snuggle with the kids as we get ready for the night game.

Oh, yes, I’m ready for some football!

The best tonic for a lousy day in the shop is to get right back out there, do things the right way and make some serious progress.

After my previous ‘issues’ in the shop – the ones that caused me to stop everything and start over from scratch – I knew I had to get back in there and get things back on track.  Get back into the flow. Get back in the saddle again.

And, that’s just what I did.  Last week, I went into the shop, cleaned stuff up and got ready for a busy Saturday.  I broke out the plans for the project again and started anew.

No, I didn’t do anything too exotic.  I started measuring, cutting and drilling for dowels just as I had done before – a straightforward rebuild of where I had already been. The real trick came in when I started to glue the outside frames up. That’s when I had the opportunity to rediscover some of the clamps and clamping devices I had already invested in. My two assembly squares were pressed into service on the square parts of the frames during the glue ups.  Simple to use, they not only allowed me to get the assemblies square where they needed to be, but they also clearly showed how quickly things could get out of square when the glue ups were taking place.

I found another set of specialty clamps living on my clamp rack.  A friend of mine had given me a pair of Shop Fox right angle clamps a few years ago, and I never had an opportunity to use them. Until now.  The sloped front braces were presenting a big challenge for me.  How was I going to get them to clamp up tight with conventional clamps?  Simply clamping the shorter top rail and the longer bottom rail didn’t help.  However, these babies were able to grab on to the uprights and pull the dowel joints tight with a few turns of the big handles.

One word of caution… these clamps, while very tough, are not super heavy duty.  I cracked one over tightening it to close a stubborn joint.  The lesson learned there?  Use a mallet to seat the joint as tightly as possible and then get it super snug using the clamp at the end.

So, using a more careful approach gave me good results.  But, I wanted to see just how much things improved.  As you can see in this photo, the original frames were just way, Way, WAY out of square. The one in back is the offending one…

Slow is fast, fast is slow.  When I slow down and do things the right way, I’m going to be moving a lot more efficiently.

Now, it’s time to start making some progress on this project!

So, part of the fun of my new bookshelf project is to cut a series of evenly-spaced dadoes into two side frames for each shelf that are parallel and evenly spaced from the floor.  No easy feat considering that the two frames have sloped fronts as they slope back from the wider base to the narrower top.

What I needed was a way to cut a consistent groove across the inside faces that would be easy and easy to repeat. Enter the Dadonator – OK, it’s a fancy name for a two scraps of plywood – a 3/4″ and a 1/4″ piece I could stack together to give me  a wide base to lay across the frame that would give a great base for the router to ride over.

The two sheets had to be stacked together to give me the right height above the workpiece to use my secret weapon, a 1/2″ diameter pattern bit.  With the straight edge of the ply for the bearing to ride against, giving me a straight dado.  And, with this being a flush trimming bit, I could lay the plywood sheets against the layout lines, clamp them in place and route away.

The result are very clean dadoes lining up exactly across the frame pieces ready for me to do the next step – tackle my shelf glue-up demons!

There are a lot of very talented woodworking bloggers out there. OK, maybe not me, but folks like Kari Hultman, Robert Pridgen, Dan Bean, Dyami Plotke and dozens of others are out there cranking out impressive woodworking know-how that hundreds of woodworkers look at, study and then go into their shops and apply the inspiration at their benches.

But, what about the woodworkers who can’t get into their shops? For them, the content we provide is a vital lifeline back to their shops – perhaps thousands of miles away.

Case in point – meet David Wert, a Staff Sergeant in the United States Army. He has been in active duty for 15 years now and stationed in Fort Riley, Kansas. He is married to an amazing woman and has two little girls. He has really gotten into woodworking in the last couple years, and has a background in woodworking for most of his life. David’s Grandfather is the one who got him started when he was just a kid.  Check out some of David’s work at his RusticJoy Woodworking Facebook page.

Now, he’s three months into a one-year deployment in Afghanistan. Away from his family, friends and shop, following his favorite blogs has been a vital lifeline back to civilization. “ I work anywhere for 12 to 20 hours a day and sometimes it’s just sitting waiting for something to happen. It helps pass the time when I can sit and read what’s going on back in the real world having to do with woodworking. I really like reading all the blogs from you, Shannon Rogers from the Renaissance Woodworker, Marc from The Wood Whisperer and many others that I get a chance to read. I have learned a lot form all the blogs and other web content I have been able to get my hands on.”

When it comes to what he enjoys seeing the most, David has lots of favorites. “I love to read about projects that everyone is working on. Right now I am enjoying Matt’s “Walls of shelves” podcast he is doing. I am limited on what I can do on the Internet over here so I set my computer to play the video and a few hours later it is ready for me to push play. Rob Bois is another one that I really like to watch. He does a great job with the videos he does. I have learned a lot from all the guys on the Internet that I get to watch or read about.”

And, I just had to ask David – what does it mean knowing that we are back here in the States doing the woodworking thing and posting it online? “ I am in awe of the guys that are able to pump out content like they do. I go back and look at all that Matt has put out on Matt’s Basement Workshop and you would think that is his full time job. I just hope to one day contribute to the woodworking community like the guys I follow out there do.”

Any last words, David? “I consider every one of you guys my teachers I follow you all very closely and I want to thank each and every one of you out there that put content out there for the world to see.”

David, I don’t want to go too far out on a limb here, but I think I speak for all of the woodworking bloggers out there when I say thank you for what you are doing, and we look forward to seeing what comes out of your shop when you return home safely to your family.

Happy Independence Day.

Today is Memorial Day here in the United States.  It’s the start of the summer holiday season.  A great day to go pick up a bargain on a TV at a local mega-retailer. You can officially wear white again.

Oh, yeah, there’s also the reason why we commemorate the day in the first place… to honor all who fell in battle to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

I am not one who glorifies war. With two young sons who may one day be called upon to serve, I hope and pray that they will never be put into dangerous situations.  I’m sure that anyone in uniform or knows anyone who serves wishes the exact same thing. At the same time, I also understand and respect the ultimate sacrifices made to ensure that freedom and democracy are seen around the world.

Take a moment today and think of those who made that sacrifice, those who served with them and the families who lost their loved ones.

One of the most fitting tributes to help those who lost their loved ones in uniform is to build a memorial flag case to hold the burial flag.  There are lots of plans out there to built them, but this one from Wood Magazine has the added benefit of requiring only 45 degree cuts, dramatically simplifying the building process. Even if you don’t know of anyone who has died in battle, building one to donate to your local American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars or other service civic club would be a very touching gesture for those who gave so much.

Accountants have their time of the year just before tax day.  Wedding planners work their butts off on Saturdays in June. The post offices and other shipping companies have their times during the holiday rush.

This is my time of the year at work.  Hurricane season begins June 1, and I field a bunch of phone calls.  From the media looking for story ideas.  From other public information officers looking to share information before we head into the season. From groups around the county looking for a speaker to talk about hurricane preparedness.

It’s a busy job, but someone has to do it.

That’s why I wasn’t too surprised a few weeks ago when my desk phone rang. It wasn’t a number I recognized, but that’s par for the course this time of the year.

I introduced myself, and the lady on the other end of the phone asked if I was THE Tom Iovino.  I know there are others out there, but I think I’m the only one on the west coast of Florida.  “You are the woodworker, right?”

Now, that was an odd one for me. I never get calls about my woodworking at my day job. I like to keep it that way – as does my boss.

“I am,” I responded. At that point, she started talking about her father who recently passed away.  He had some furniture in his home, and she was asking if I could take it, break it up and use it to build other projects.

“You’ll have to come today to pick it up,” she said. “We are closing on the place tomorrow and it has to be vacated. I can’t do anything with this.”

I asked a few more questions. It was a desk and a clothes dresser. She believed he had purchased the pieces back in the 1940s.   It was also very high quality, either made of some kind of oak or mahogany. She couldn’t tell. All the drawers were dovetailed. The pieces were solid. Her dad had used the desk to run his personal accounts.

I’m not one to pass on free wood. If someone were offering me a few sweet timbers, I’d leap at the opportunity to snatch them up. And, the temptation to get someone with a truck, run up to this place and hoist some sweet timbers-to-be back to my shop was very difficult to overcome.

But, then, a completely different thought entered my mind. Somewhere back in the piece’s time line, a skilled craftsman searched through a stack of boards to find the right ones to build these pieces. They were milled, cut to size and carefully laid out. Since through dovetail joint jigs weren’t around before the 1970s, there was probably a good bit of hand work to make those dovetails on the drawers. Planing and sanding. The careful application of a finish.

I couldn’t bring myself to break apart well-built and well-used pieces of furniture to build other projects. I guess it’s a reverence for the skill of the person who built the project in the first place.  Or the vision in my mind’s eye of the former owner sitting over it, late at night, tracking his family’s finances, doing his tax returns or writing a heartfelt letter to a loved one.

The furniture – in essence – was worth well more than just the sum of its parts.

After she finally explained the situation with me, I told her no, I couldn’t possibly do that to a piece of quality furniture. I did, however, tell her to call the local Salvation Army office to arrange a pick up of the dresser. At least that would give the piece a little bit more time to find a suitable home.

As for the desk, I searched for the numbers of the three nearest public schools and read them off to her. I told her about how my wife was working on a beat up, rickety desk  until one of the school’s administrator changed schools, leaving his more capable desk for her to use. I told this lady that one of these schools would love to get a sweet piece of furniture to replace an outdated desk in a teacher’s classroom. She promised that she would call to arrange some kind of pickup for a deserving teacher.

I hung up the phone feeling as if I had provided at least a stay of execution for two well-crafted pieces of furniture.  At the end of the day, I felt that was something she could do with the pieces.

After Iggy relented and let me out of the shop (he had me duct taped to the bench brush and dustpan so I could be more efficient while cleaning the shop), I was finally able to get my head around the idea of ‘appearing’ at the Woodworking Show this Saturday.

The plan, according to Andy Chidwick, is to be at a table adjacent to his booth to talk shop with folks. That’s right – be there to talk.  Something I know how to do well.

But, he also asked me to bring some ‘things’ with me to show off during my time there.  Namely, he was looking for me to bring some projects and some tools.

This creates a concern.  Which projects and which tools?

My thoughts turn toward benches. I’m obviously not going to be able to bring my workbench with me. Weighing in at somewhere around 300 pounds, it’s a tad too large to put  in the back of the Jeep and lug to the Florida State Fairgrounds.

I’m thinking instead of going with a classic and a newer.  First, I’ll be packing the Contemplation Bench.  Not only is this a beauty, it’s the piece that help launch this blog.  I built it while working with Marc Spagnuolo at a now shuttered woodworking school in Indiana. From there, our friendship grew and he later invited me to start writing a few guest blogs. From there, the rest is history.

As far as the newer project goes, I was going to bring my table called ‘Centered’. It’s not technically a bench, but everyone wants to sit on it. That was a project that was a departure from what I normally build, and there are lots of points to talk about. The angled legs. The epoxy inlay. My first ever true breadboard edges.

Neither project is ‘perfect’, but, I don’t care.  They both mean something to me, and I plan on sharing that with the visitors.

As far as tools are concerned… well, I’m not sure. Part of me wants to bring my entire plane till that I built for the Great American Teach In. But, that sucker is heavy, and keeping track of all of the planes could be a challenge.

I could bring my routers, but those babies have lots of parts that would pose a challenge. Besides, the next thing you know, I’d be asked to plug them in and do some kind of fancy routing.  I’m actually a bashful router user… I like to make my mistakes on scraps first and make the final cut once I get my nerve up.

Hmmm, I’ll have to give this one some thought.

Finally, I guess I’ll have to bring a computer. We have an old MacBook (Bought back in 2005) and a new netbook computer with one of those very small screens. I could also show off the Android phone I have… but looking at that screen would make for a very intimate experience.  I guess I’m leaning toward the netbook.

Finally, I’ll have to bring my most important tool of all – my little digital video camera. If’ I’m going to meet some interesting folks and do some neat stuff, I’m going to want to get this stuff on the camera.

Other than that, I’m an open book. Is there anything you would want to see me bring to the Woodworking Show if you were attending the show in Tampa?