I haven’t written about woodworking for a long time. There are several reasons for this. For one, I got very interested in photography in June of 2006, and that hobby has been top-of-mind and top-of-wallet ever since. Another reason is that although I have a huge, well outfitted, free-standing shop, it isn’t heated.
That means that using it in the colder months, when I have more time for such pursuits, requires that I fire up the “salamander” and deal with the effects of cold cast iron, wood, and glue.
Another big reason, honestly, is a lack of time. I know everyone says that, but I have a rather unique schedule. I arise at 3:45 every morning to catch a train to New York City and don’t arrive back at home at night until about 7:15–and that’s if the train is on time, which is often not the case. My commute is three hours each way every day, so a normal day for me is at least 14 hours long, and at the end, well, frankly I’m bushed. Many weekends must be filled doing things I couldn’t get to during the week, so this leaves precious few for woodworking. If anything like this has ever happened to you, you’ll understand this: Since I get into the shop so infrequently, I have to spend a lot of time getting back into the groove before I can do anything productive… or even safe.
Still, the articles here on the topic of woodworking are read more often than anything else. Readers have asked if I ever did the follow-up I promised when I wrote How to Make End-Grain Cutting Boards back in November of 2006. Some have also indicated a desire for additional information and techniques.
I had promised to add a post with pictures to illustrate the steps involved in making a simple end-grain board.
This nicely merges my love of woodworking and my love of photography. I plan to do this as soon as I can. Beginning with a simple one-species board made from a single plank should warm me up enough to move on to the other things I said I’d do.
Those include expanding on the basic idea by discussing decorative end-grain orientation:
use of multiple wood species: (Note that the picture below also illustrates making legs of wooden toy wheels and rubber feet as discussed in the earlier article.)
and a great way to make multiples.
I’ll do my best to get to all of these this fall. I need a large new Maple board for the house, and I want to make some other boards as well. Who knows, maybe shop time will inspire me to complete the two Walnut plant stands I started for my wife last summer!
I get great stuff from:
It really helps me spend more time doing this when you get yours using links on my site too.
