Many of you know Joel as the organizer and facilitator of the woodworking, gardening, and cooking demonstrations and seminars at the Woodsmith Store in Des Moines, Iowa.  He is also an editor for Woodsmith and ShopNotes magazines and facilitates the blog you’re reading now. It is with great sadness that we pass on the news that Joel lost his wife Lisa on Wednesday, June 24, 2009.  She died from complications of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease).

Lisa Hess was an amazing individual filled with kindness and gentleness. She was a gifted gardener and her landscapes were always filled with immense beauty. She will indeed be greatly missed.

Lisa, while you’re tending to gardens much more beautiful than we could imagine, we promise to try and keep Joel out of mischief.

Any doubts I had about using a plane to fine tune joinery went out the window when I finally bought a good shoulder plane from Lee Valley Veritas. It works so well for paring down a too-tight tenon or cleaning out an uneven rabbet, that I wonder sometimes how I managed so long without it.

During tonight’s seminar, Randy Maxey gives us some tips on using five different hand planes to fix or clean up joinery. He’s a fan of old, refurbished Stanley planes, plus he’s the proud owner of a few of Lee Valley Veritas planes.  His favorite is the versatile block plane, but he’ll also take out his smoother (a Stanley No. 3), shoulder and bullnose planes, and the “Jack of all Trades” Stanley No. 5 general-purpose plane.

There are two bonus downloads. One is from ShopNotes: Using a Shooting Board and the other is from Woodsmith: Pocket Planes

Tonight’s seminar is one of those seminars that started out to be one thing and ended up being another. Well, actually just a shorter version of the first idea.

Back in November, when I was planning the winter/spring schedule of seminars, I also happened to be working on an article for ShopNotes called “Our Top 10 Workbench Helpers.” And, as things usually go, the original idea was changed a little.

By the time the issue was published the article turned out to be called “Top 5 Workbench Upgrades!” So what I hoped to be a full hour-long program will probably last a little over half that time. Someone suggested talking politics to fill the hour…I don’t think that’s going to happen!

There is one bonus download for this week and it’s from Woodsmith: Our Top 10 Workbench Accessories

Here is the additional bonus download, as promised: Adustable Shooting Board

Box joints are so easy to make it’s no wonder they’re used on so many projects. In ShopNotes No. 98, we used them to build a Curved-Lid Toolbox. As a part of that issue, there was a great little three page article called Better Box Joints. All that’s need to make box joints are a table saw and an auxiliary miter gauge fence with an index key. The secret is in the spacing relationship between the blade, the width of the key and the distance between the two.

Bryan Nelson will demonstrate this simple jig this week during his seminar at the Woodsmith Store.

There is one bonus download this week: Curved-Lid Tool Chest, Pt. 1
Curved-Lid Tool Chest, Pt. 2
Curved-Lid Tool Chest, Pt. 3

We have a sales professional at the Woodsmith Store who has strived to learn all he can about the hardware woodworkers use on their projects. His name is Dave Fremming and tonight, Dave will talk about hinges and how to rout a mortise for and install a butt hinge.

As usual, Dave will offer many timely tips and insights about both the shop-made jig he uses to make hinge mortises, as well as the Rockler JIG IT mortising jig (photo below right) that is sold at the Woodsmith Store.

There is one bonus download for tonight. It comes from ShopNotes Issue No. 74: Hinge Mortising Jig

There’s also a short article on how to use it: Using the Hinge Mortising Jig

A little over five years ago, Woodsmith magazine expanded from 36 to 52 pages. The majority of the new pages are devoted to several new departments and features. The shorter articles provide detailed information on tools, jigs and fixtures, small shop solutions, and finishing. The change was so successful that our sister publication ShopNotes decided to go to fifty-two pages per issue as well.

New departments in ShopNotes like “Mastering the Table Saw,” “Router Workshop,” and “Hands-On Technique” brought an exciting focus to woodworking tips and techniques that is unavailable in almost every other woodworking publication out there.

One of the side benefits of these two-page articles has been the added focus to the Woodsmith Woodworking Seminars at the Woodsmith Store. It turns out that many of the two-page department articles translate perfectly into 1-hour seminars! Tonight’s seminar is a great example.

The seminar, “Crosscutting Secrets — Setup, Sleds, & Saw Blades,” features many of the techniques and tips described in detail in the article. “Getting the Perfect Crosscut” was originally published in ShopNotes Issue No. 97.

There is one two-page bonus download from ShopNotes No. 95: Crosscutting Wide Panels

Hope you can be there.

So far, so good. The workbench that we built last fall is holding up well. It hasn’t had any hard usage yet, but it will soon. Randy Maxey has a couple of hands-on workshops coming up in a few weeks. One is on rehabbing a hand plane (3/28) and the second is on using (4/4), so I expect it will be put to the test then. By the way, there are still a few openings for these workshops. Contact the customer service desk at the Woodsmith Store for details.

Many of you wanted an update as soon as I figured out what kind of mobile base system will work best for this huge workbench. Well, the sad fact is, I haven’t come up with one. So far, we’ve been using the pallet jack regularly. There are a couple of good solutions, but they require two people or attaching something permanently to the bench base and I’m not happy with either. So for now, if you’re building this bench, plan on not moving it much. Unless you have a pallet jack handy!

Joel

Our regularly scheduled presenter for this week’s seminar, Garry Rowe, has called in sick! In his place, we have a gentleman from the Des Moines Woodworker’s Association — Turners group, named Andy Klindt. He’ll be talking about turnings spindles as planned and it should be a good experience having someone new again as a presenter.

There are no bonus downloads this week.

We are fortunate to have an expert scroll saw artist living and working here in Central Iowa. His name is Rick Hutcheson and although I’ve gotten in trouble in the past for throwing around the label “expert,” in this case I believe I’m safe in applying the label to Rick.

Rick has written dozens of articles about scroll sawing, he owns one of the largest collections of scroll saws anywhere, and he knows what he’s talking about. He doesn’t work for August Home Publishing, but we’re proud to have him as a presenter and I’m sure you’ll learn a lot from tonight’s seminar. Hope to see you there.

You can learn more about Rick’s work and his scroll collection by visiting his website: Rick’s Scrollsaw. Rick has lots of patterns on his website. Here is the learning tool that Rick showed last night: Learn Scrap

This week’s seminar focuses on cutting cove moldings. Not the kind you’ll find around the ceiling, but the kind that “crown” the top of a cabinet. In this case, the editor’s of Woodsmith needed some custom molding for a media center that was featured in a recent issue of the magazine. Rather than go out and buy stock molding off the shelf, they made their own on the table saw.

It’s an interesting technique and one that uses the table saw in a different way. First, the table saw is used create the shallow cove profile. The secret is to push the cove molding blank across the blade at an angle. Then, the table saw gets used in a more traditional manner to add the simple bevels that give the molding its unique shape and fit. These two distinct operations result in a piece of molding that’s one of a kind.

Ted Raife, senior editor for Woodsmith will host the seminar. It start’s on Thursday, February 26th at 6:30 pm at the Woodsmith Store in Clive, IA.

This week’s bonus download is a 12-page article (split into two parts) and a 2 page technique article from Woodsmith:

Flat-Screen Media Center, Part 1

Flat-Screen Media Center, Part 2

Shop Notebook