Last year at about this same time, Rick Hutcheson gave a seminar on scroll sawing at the Woodsmith Store. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Rick is a world-renowned scroll saw artist. We’re lucky to have someone who lives in central Iowa, with his background and expertise, to learn from. He’s written dozens of articles, he owns one of the largest collections of scroll saws anywhere, and he knows what he’s talking about.

This Thursday, Jonathan Benson continues the tradition started by Rick last year. Jonathan is a nationally-recognized furniture maker, designer and lecturer. As he explains, …."my works combine bent laminations of wood and turned elements to create unique pieces." And as you might guess, his furniture pieces are beautiful and inspiring. His Constructivist Coffee Table, Dictionary Stand, and Mirror are just a few examples of his work. If you take a look at this detail of the mirror, you can get an idea of how he uses the veneer to enhance his projects.

All of Jonathan’s recent work is done in a garage shop/studio located at his home near Walnut Woods State Park in West Des Moines. Inside the smallish shop are a cabinet saw, a couple of lathes, an ancient combination jointer/thicknesser, and a shop-made veneer press that takes up the better part of one corner of the shop. In spite of the seemingly cramped quarters, Jon manages to produce some large commissions. The day I stopped by to see him, he was working on a large tabletop made with Brazilian rosewood veneer (Jonathan and the table were recently featured in Workbench Issue No. 294 Craftsmanship Close-Up). 

I can’t express enough how fortunate we are to have someone of Benson’s stature giving a seminar on a Thursday night at the Woodsmith Store. I’m looking forward to it and I hope you can make it. 

Router tables always score high on any survey we’ve done on subject matter for future seminars. We’ve done "Choosing a Router Table," "Setting Up a Router Table," "Using a Router Table To Crosscut and Rip." Just kidding!

But you get the idea. Just about every woodworker has a router table. They make routing operations safer, more accurate, and they’re great for joinery. So if you don’t have a router table yet, after this week’s seminar you’ll probably want to buy one or build your own. In fact, check out all our router table plans now.  There’s sure to be one that fits your needs.

Speaking of survey’s, if you attend this week’s seminar, you’ll once again have a chance to let us know which seminars you’d like to see most. We’re preparing now for this spring and there’ll be several to choose from. And as usual, we’ll have some kind of giveaway at the end of the seminar, with prizes awarded to two or three of the responses.

And if you can’t get to the seminar (or even if you can), drop me a note here letting me know what seminars you’d most like to see. Plus, just like at the seminars, you could win a little something (How about a FREE downloadable plan from PlansNow?) for your trouble. 

Although the snow had pretty much let up by around 4:00pm, it definitely had an affect on the attendence for last nights seminar. The funny thing is, there were still quite a few more people there than for most of the seminars last year. Anyway, those of you who did attend, you got a pretty good show. Doug Hicks gave us some good reasons for why he thinks a band saw is the one tool he would take to a deserted island. I was surprised though that no one asked him about Cindy Crawford!

Doug and his wife Cathy make some pretty fantastic Collapsible Castles with their band saw. And they even have their own non-profit, charitable company to sell the castles. If you’re interested in getting on Doug’s Collapsible Castle Show mailing list, send him an email.  He brought in several of the castles, as well as a dining room chair from his home that he built using templates for pattern cutting on his band saw. Chairs aren’t easy to build, so it was a good example of the value of having (and using) a band saw in your shop.

Last week I posted some pictures of the new shops here at August Home. I’ve gotten lots of great comments on them and I’ll be posting more shots in the future. With the online web hosting sites (like the one I use: Flickr) it’s easy to share images of your work with others and I’d like to do more of that here.

Recently, Tim Wilson (who attends just about every seminar) told me he came up with a simple knock-down base for a poker table he and a friend had built. He sent me some shots of the base and the table last evening and I thought I’d share them with you. Tim’s the Pittsburgh Steelers biggest fan (at least in Des Moines!) and he’s earned the right to show off his work. His note to me said that he needed to be able to easily take apart the base for storage, but it also had to be strong enough to hold up the table. I think the 4x4s and collars are a pretty ingenious solution to his problem.

Tim also said he was going to improve on the base when he had more time and his skills improved. A couple of years ago, I was looking for something unique to build for the annual "Sit On It" auction put on each year by the Young Women’s Resource Center here in Des Moines. I ended up borrowing the idea for the stool that I made from an artist named Mike Lyon in Kansas City. It uses knock-down joinery as well. It was a challenge figuring out how it all went together, but it was fun to build. If you’d like to send in a photo of your own work, send them to me. Then when we get enough of them, maybe we can open up a Seminar Gallery.

Our first "Now You Try It" came off without a hitch this Saturday. Stations for box joint, biscuit joint, and pocket hole joinery were set up in the Dream Shops at the store. Most of the people who came through my station to try the Kreg K3 Pocket Hole jig had never used one before. Surprisingly, a few of them already owned the jig. One guy told me his jig was still in the box. He just wanted to watch someone else use one first!

Craig Stille (shown in the photo above right) says a lot of people who came to his biscuit joint station were just "kickin’ tires." He spent a lot of time demonstrating and says he tried to make sure that everyone that wanted to got to watch him cut one before they gave it a try. "I had a really great time just talking about woodworking and getting to know everyone," he said. "I even sold two of the nice Porter-Cable biscuit joiners."

Even though we were prepared for a lot more people, things were busy early. Doug Hicks (photo above left) said he had about 30-40 people who used the box joint jig, but several more who just wanted to watch and ask questions. "I like these smaller one-on-one sessions," he explained. "If they don’t get it the first time, you can just start all over again until they do."

We devote several pages in each issue of Woodsmith and Workbench to our favorite jigs and fixtures. They help us complete projects on a timely basis and provide us with an endless variety of ways to get the most out of our tools. They’re so popular that we have a magazine based solely on shop-built tools, jigs and fixtures called ShopNotes.

This week’s presenter, Steve Curtis, is one of our shop craftsman. He’s been around for quite a few years, building projects for all three of our woodworking publications. Steve is one of the first people we go to when we need a solution to a problem.

More often than not, he comes up with a simple jig to make a job easier.

He knows what jigs are useful — and which ones help us stay productive — because he uses them almost every day.

This Thursday, Steve will talk about the benefits of building and using jigs to solve real-life problems in the shop. He’ll explain the process he uses for how he comes up with a jig. And how he’s constantly thinking ahead to the next step.

As he says, "…jigs are most useful when they make a job easier, safer, or help you complete a project you can be proud of."

Note: I’ve added some images that I took yesterday in our wood shop here on Grand. This is the shop that Steve Curtis and Steve Johnson work in each day. Check out the images out here.

I’m not a mechanical person. So using power tools, for me, is a matter of faith. I can honestly say that I’ve never tuned up my table saw to the extent that Craig Ruegsegger did at last night’s seminar. I guess this is just another one of those areas where I’ve been satisfied with "close enough."

I thought I’d already made all the necessary adjustments to my saw to ensure that I was working safely — and accurately. But I’m not so sure now. How about you?

After watching how smoothly Craig’s blade tilt mechanism worked last night with just a little cleaning and lubrication, I think I need to reassess my power tool tune-up practices.

And who would have guessed that taking the motor off would make adjusting the stops (inside the table saw) so much easier! It must explain why so many of us were out in the store afterward looking for a dial indicator!

And turned pulleys…

And link belts…

And Top Cote….!

When I first saw the assembly instructions that came with my table saw, all I could do was scratch my head. They were written something like this:

• Unpack tool
• Assemble tool base
• Install tool on base

It took me a while, but I finally got the saw set up. I thought. After all my hard work, it still needed some fine tuning before I was happy with the quality of cut I was getting. Fortunately, I have access to a lot of good information that can’t be found in too many tool manuals. And now, you do to.

This week you’ll learn all the ins and outs for "Setting Up Your Table Saw For Perfect Cuts." Craig Ruegsegger will spend an hour or so showing you some quick and simple tune-up techniques to get your saw running great right out of the box.

These tips are also great for anyone who wants to vastly improve the quality of the cuts you can make with your existing table saw. Craig will cover lots of ideas for cleaning, adjusting, aligning, leveling, checking and re-checking your saw.

Setting up the saw is just half the battle though. To get a perfect cut on your table saw, you’ll also want to make sure to keep your blade in good condition and properly installed. You see, there’s more to getting accurate cuts than just positioning the rip fence and making sure the miter gauge is adjusted correctly. If the blade isn’t giving you the quality of cuts you think it should be, it could have something to do with the condition of the arbor, arbor nut, washer and flanges.

So now you know — setting up your table saw for perfect cuts can’t really be done in just three easy steps!

Have you always wanted to try out a jig or tool before you buy it? On three Saturdays this winter you’ll have the opportunity to do just that under the guidance of an expert from the Woodsmith Store, Woodsmith, ShopNotes or Workbench magazines.

Just visit the store between 10:00am and 2:00pm and we’ll have everything set up. There’s no pre-registration required. And best of all, it’s FREE!

At today’s "Now YOU Try It" seminar, you’ll learn how to cut a beautiful and strong box joint on the Woodsmith Box Joint Jig. Then find out how easy it is to securley join two pieces of wood with the Kreg Pocket Hole Jig or a Biscuit (Plate) Joiner.

Presenter: Craig Ruegsegger, Senior Editor & Videographer — Workbench, Woodsmith, & ShopNotes Magazines

Presenter: Steve Curtis, Shop Craftsman — Workbench, Woodsmith, & ShopNotes Magazines