Audio Woodworking Help Episodes

I get a lot of questions emailed to me. This is not a complaint. I love hearing from you all and it is flattering that you trust my judgement enough to ask a question. It is a little self serving too as it just makes you feel good when you realize someone is reading your content. Ask my friend Matt Vanderlist what happens when you don’t hear from anyone.

These questions vary widely from “what do you think of oilstones for sharpening?” and “what is the best way to camber my Fore plane iron?” to “how can I eat Raisin Bran without all the raisins falling to the bottom and leaving me with just raisins and milk?”. (I get that last one a lot)

The answers to these are of course, “eww, messy”, “very carefully”, and “use heavy whipping cream instead of milk”.

The recent passing of master craftsman and period furniture savant Eugene Landon got me thinking about these emails. Gene shared a wealth of knowledge and enriched many woodworker’s skill sets over his years in the shop. Almost as a final testament, Rick Vannan, a devoted student of Gene’s wrote “18th Century Cabinetmaking: A Forgotten Art”. This semi biography started to tap the immense resources in Gene’s head. I’m so grateful for this.

Now don’t misunderstand me. I am NOT comparing myself to Mr. Landon. I can only hope that I have half as much locked up in my head in 40 years. What gets me thinking is how much information is lost to the general community when we lose a treasure like Gene. So when I get email questions, as I said I love replying to them, but I can’t help but feel that the rest of the community could benefit from and add to these questions. When I reply back to someone, the only people who know the contents are myself and the recipient. For that matter, only my opinion is represented. Wouldn’t it be more valuable if the correspondence were more public and a forum for others to add their two cents could be made available in the comment of blog comments?

Now some of you may be cringing about having your questions broadcast out in the open so let me soothe you by saying I only plan to do so with your express permission. I plan to start creating short audio broadcast where I read and reply to some of these questions in the hope that others can benefit and/or add their own advice. I will continue to reply to your emails as I am now as it may be some time before I can actually put together an audio response and I don’t want anyone waiting around for it. At this point I will try to answer 1 or 2 questions in this format each week and see how it goes. We’ll call it an experiment and if the emails stop coming in then no worries, but I hope that this can be a way to share more information and advice for the woodworker in a bind.

Yes all of this can be accomplished in any of the myriad woodworking forums, but I thought maybe an audio version might add some sunshine to your daily commute and decrease the incidents of road rage. Just doing my part y’know