There aren’t enough words to describe the craftsmanship and beauty of Jon Goulder’s work. A visit to his website www.jongoulder.com is an inspiring experience.

It’s often said that a picture is worth a thousand words and in this case I totally believe in this old saying. I hope the photo on the right is enough to capture your interest. Just click on it, sit back and watch…

Don’t forget to visit Robin’s website on www.robin-wood.co.uk. You’re in for a treat.

I was catching up on my email and noticed that the book depository is ofering 10% off all orders until the end of December 2009. There’s only a few days left to take advantage of this promotion, but I though I’d share it.

With 10% discount and free shipping I’m adding a couple titles to my collection of woodworking books.

I’ll be recording the interview and will post it in the next few days on the Woodworker’s Republic upcoming website. Stay tuned!

If you’d like to submit some questions, please feel free to add those in the comments below by 8PM EST.

I ran a few tests and everything seems to be working fine, even if you type an old url from my Blogger site you’ll get redirected to the corresponding page in the Wordpress blog.

Please let me know if you notice anything strange with the website, broken links or any other errors.

Being a fan of George Nakashima, I started sketching something with a solid walnut slab for the top. But where can I get such a piece of lumber? Research begun….

One of the first websites I came across was Goby Walnut who sells some of the most incredible walnut slabs I’ve ever seen. Some of the slabs for sale are so large that I guess you could build a twelve seat dining room table from a single slab, take the offcuts and build the coffee table to match.

Call me a city guy, but I had no idea that walnut trees could grow this large!

According to the Wikipedia, walnut trees can grow up to 40 meters tall but I guess the person who wrote that has never seen the one pictured on the right. Without reaching for a ruler, I’d say its probably taller!

This one is probably as high as the apartment builing I used to live in. What’s that guy doing up there?? Is this how they practice bungee jumping in the country side?

In this TED talk he spends nearly 18 minutes trying to answer the question “Why design?” reaching for our own roots four billion years ago.

I recomend you switch to full screen and turn the subtitles on.

Enjoy:

• Philippe Starck thinks deep on design

1. Every link on the web will be broken and people wont be able to find the content again on my website;
2. All the indexes on search engines will be broken, i.e. pointing to the non existent files;
3. How fast will the new pages show up in Google search results?

All of the above being a reason to loose popularity and visitors.

With this in mind I tried to make the change as easy as possible to my faithful readers and with a simple script I managed to produce a table mapping all the old website URLs to the new ones. This way I could take care of the two first points above, but what about number three? That one is out of my control!

Surprise, surprise! Less than 24 hours later the new pages are already on the results page, and I didn’t tell Google to re-index my website.

The nice thing about this is that both links will still work and visitors will be happy. Now it’s just a matter of time before the old pages are dropped from Google’s index.

While looking at my website search statistics I noticed something really curious: if you run a search on Google for “chris schwarz blog” my blog will show up in third place! The first and second being Chris’ won blogs.

Check this out:

Right now, the only change from the old blog is the platform it runs on and the graphic design which I tried to keep simple and clean – there are no distractions, content is king and that’s why you’re here in the first place.

While the Blogger platform is interesting as a startup blog publishing environment, it will soon reveal its limitations to anyone wanting to expand from a simple blog to something more.

And this is where WordPress will win, it is designed as a modular platform that enables you to add plugins to extend its features. With 5787 plugins and 877 themes to choose from, I’m pretty sure that it will cover any feature I may think of.

Drop me a line in the comments section and let me know what you think of the redesign.

While this task may require various tools like a scrub plane, a jointer, a jack and a smoother, most share the same anatomy.

Take a look at the exploded diagram on the left (click on it for a larger view) and you can get familiar with all the terminology and part names used on a hand plane.

Enjoy:

• Handplane Anatomy

The first widget adds the search box which you can place anywhere on all pages of your website while the second is for the results which you’ll add to a single page. It’s better to leave this one in a page on its own since it will take up considerable screen space.

Google offers two versions of the custom search, one that costs $100 per year and a free version where they’ll display some ads on your website.

While at it I also added a few AdSense banners, mostly because I’ve always felt a little curiosity about this advertisement medium and its effectiveness. Now I’ll be able to experience how effective it actually is.

To finish the tweaking session I also changed the blog RSS feed through FeedBurner so I can monitor its the usage statistics. I setup the server to redirect the visitors from the old feed url to the new one but please drop me a line if you stop getting my posts in your feed reader.

I particularly enjoy the one above – most probably because it’s black & white and it features the LN smoothing plane that’s been on my wish list for quite some time.

Unfortunately they’re only 1024 x 768 pixels and it looks rather stretched on my screen. Click on the photo to access the other five wallpapers.

Nevertheless I’ve been doing a little woodworking every now and then and recently things started to get better and I’m in the process of finishing a small desk for my daughter. The piece is now assembled and all is left to do is apply a few coats of shellac with some light sanding in between.

I’ll post some photos once it’s finished but before that I’ll try to post a SketchUp model. This time I decided to draw the piece as I went along instead of planning all the details up front which was a very interesting experience.

While the glue in the desk was drying I started working on a small plow plane similar in size to the Veritas model. I’ve ordered some of the blades offered for the Veritas plane which can be bought both in imperial and metric sizes.

This one isn’t going to be a work of art full of brass knobs, exotic woods and moldings in the body and fence like the ones made by DL Barrett & Sons. I’m using some cherry, walnut and a few small pieces of hard maple and ebony – all from the scraps bin.

In this manifest Hugh MacLeod gives his 26 tried-and-true tips for being truly creative.

Enjoy:

• How To Be Creative – by Hugh MacLeod

For Stanley handplanes there is The Superior Works: Patrick’s Blood and Gore, where you’ll find all the information you’ll ever need on these classic tools.

The next time someone refers to one of Stanley’s handplanes by their funny numbers you’ll know exactly what they’re talking about.

Next on the list is The Disstonian Institute, which has the name implies will provide you with lot’s of information on Disston handsaws.

Last (but not least) on my list is A Millers Falls Home Page which contains a wealth of information on Millers Falls handplanes, hand drills and bit braces.

Happy reading!

These twisted dovetails (or nejiri arigata in Japanese) will give any piece an exquisite handmade look.

And not only these dovetails look great, they will handle pulling forces both sideways and lengthways.

This piece features exquisite exposed joinery that take the build to a higher level of craftsmanship. The three way miter is one of my favorites on this piece.

Enjoy….

• Butternut Cabinet – joinery samples

I haven’t built mine but I keep revisiting this article over and over again: Hand Made Hand Plane.

At just over 6″ long and with a 1 1/2″ iron it can be used as a block plane to trim edges and surface small pieces.

Enjoy!

Besides Chris’ usual essays on workbench design, there is an excellent series on handplaning which focuses on different techniques (seven at the time of writing) to reduce tear-out.

The blog can be found at: http://blog.lostartpress.com/

For those that have been following Chris’ posts on the Woodworking Magazine blog, the good news is that this blog is still active with the usual high quality content!

A properly sharpened scraper attacking the wood at the right angle will produce thin curly shavings and will yield a perfectly smooth surface even on difficult woods like curly maple.

I searched the web and found four great videos showing slightly different techniques for sharpening a scraper and another two on using them.

• Barely Scraping By
  by Marc Spagnuolo
• Tuning-up a Scraper
  by Tommy MacDonald
• Tune Up a Card Scraper
  by Brian Boggs
• How to Burnish a Card Scraper
  by Bob Van Dyke

• Using a Card Scraper
  by Brian Boggs
• How to Use a Card Scraper
  by Bob Van Dyke

I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.