Weekly Editorial
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Back in the U.S.A.
I just flew back from China … and boy, are my arms – OK, even I can’t go for that goofy joke. But I am indeed back home and happy to be in the soon-to-be-frozen north. My tool travels to Asia were eye-opening and truly gave me an opportunity to understand the dynamics behind the shift of manufacture – of all sorts, not just woodworking tools – to the East.
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(Wood) Working on Two Continents
As you know if you’ve been reading these little notes from me – and why wouldn’t you be? (wait – don’t answer that) I am currently on my whirlwind tool tour of Asia. But yet I’m writing to you in this week’s eZine. How can that be?
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Bon Voyage
It’s time for me to get ready for some serious road rash! This coming Saturday (September 16th), I — along with my trusty photographer, Donna Chiarelli — will board a plane headed for China. It will kick off two weeks of traveling from tool-making plant to tool-making plant to see how our favorite woodworking tools are made. The trip will be a challenge.
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(Extra, Extra! Read All About It!)
Sometimes it’s so fun being a woodworking editor that I don’t want my boss to know how much I like it (because he might stop paying me). Today, I am going to let you in on a couple of secrets that I have been sitting on for a while (as uncomfortable as that sounds). The first is a new web site, the eZine EXPO, that we will be putting up for the introduction of the fall woodworking season.
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It’s Woodworking! (Cabinetmaking That Is)
Thank you for all the comments and answers. I can always count on you to offer an answer to a difficult question. Last issue I asked if cabinetmaking was woodworking. (Specifically if you are using huge 1,000-lb sheets of melamine. I know that I said they were 90 lbs. in my last e-mail. After a couple of weekends of hefting and cutting them, I have to admit — I was just wrong.)
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Cabinetry: Is it Woodworking?
This weekend I was making sawdust … of a sort. Our laundry room will shortly be outfitted with melamine cabinetry, made by yours truly. I used a bunch of skills that are based on woodworking (measuring, sawing, gluing and clamping), but a question that I have is this: Should I call it woodworking?
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Hot Weather Woodworking
I don’t know where you live, but here in Minnesota recently it has been stinking hot. Now ordinarily, those of us, whom Garrison Keiller calls, “God’s frozen people,” don’t complain a lot about warm weather — we’re just happy not to have to shovel our precipitation at the end of a day. But the last hot spell has taxed even the fabled “Minnesota Nice.”
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You Asked…I Don’t Know Why
you may well imagine, I get a fair number of e-mails as a result of this eZine. I try to answer as many as I can, but often I am overwhelmed. (To answer 400 e-mails, if each one took, say, three to five minutes to read and answer, that would add up to … well — a lot of hours … maybe even days?
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Coming Soon: Tool Geek Nirvana!
Some exciting things are happening in the woodworking world, and I for one can’t wait to see the chips start flying. If you click over to our Tool Preview story, you’ll read about a brand new line of tools that will be launched this summer. (Made by some good old boys who know what they are doing.)
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Unlikely Heroes
Have you ever had a product (like a tool, for example) perform far beyond your expectations? I had a drill driver like that. Years ago (when I actually worked for a living — unlike now where I just get to do this instead), I was on my way to a job site when I hit a curve on the freeway a couple of miles an hour over the speed limit.
