Shop Update, New Classes

It’s been quite a while since I’ve made any updates to the blog and taught or filmed any classes. I apologize for my long absence. I needed a break, some time to focus on other interests, and time to think about goals for the future.

I’ve also been spending an awful lot of time at the ice rinks in Winston-Salem and Greensboro, NC. I coach my daughters’ ice hockey team, and this season has been particularly busy. We’ve had three practices per week, and one to four games most weekends since the beginning of September. These rinks are 75 minutes and 105 minutes respectively from where we live. So, we’ve been on the road an awful lot since the start of the season.

There’s little chance of life slowing down until hockey season finishes up in late March. We still have practice three times per week. There are multiple tournaments remaining. Then we have multiple games in Winston-Salem, NC; Roanoke, VA; and Greenville, SC. Not to mention my older daughter also has guitar lessons, and my younger daughter has gymnastics twice per week. So, for the most part, woodworking is taking a back seat to other priorities.

However, that doesn’t mean I’m hanging up the tools completely until then. There has been some limited activity in the shop. I have continued some limited work on our kitchen (see my series of posts on building kitchen cabinets). I’ll get back to adding to those posts at some point. I have also been working on some shop organization projects.

Hand Tool Organization

In my 2020 shop tour video I briefly discussed my feelings about working out of a traditional English style tool chest for the last 6 years. In short, I’m not fond of it for an everyday tool storage solution. I’ll talk more about this in a future post. For now, I’ve been working on getting my tools out of the tool chest and back onto the walls. More to come on that later.

Foundations of Traditional Woodworking Classes

I’m currently working on the next installment of my Foundations of Traditional Woodworking video series. This series of online courses is designed to introduce the new or intermediate woodworker to the use of traditional hand tools. The projects are fairly basic and simple because the classes are really not about the projects. Rather they are designed to build specific hand tool skills in a logical, applicable, and cumulative order.

The first class in the series, Hand Saw Foundations, was completed and released in January 2021. While it has taken me some time to get back to these classes, I’m hoping to release the second class in the series, Hand Plane Foundations, in the next few months (see above for some of the reasons that this may take longer than expected). If you are interested in these classes, make sure you are subscribed to the blog to be notified when they are released.

In-person Classes

Finally, I have also started working with the Chestnut Creek School of the Arts again, to make plans for some in-person classes. I’m not sure yet exactly what classes we’ll be offering there, but I’ll announce those classes here once the details have been worked out. Look for those classes later this spring and summer, after hockey season is over. Registration will be through the Chestnut Creek School of the Arts website, so keep an eye on their site if you’re interested in these classes (and feel free to suggest class topics as well if there are in-person classes you would be interested in taking at the school).

Happy new year (and hopefully a more productive one in the shop)!