about my blogs

[PF note: I have been getting some new subscribers here and thought I’d bring you up to date on what’s going on with this blog. So for some of you, this ain’t news. Others might find out what I’ve been up to]

my old shop from years ago

Thirty years ago I began a dream-job – making furniture in a living history museum, then called Plimoth Plantation. I did it for 20 years. I loved that job for about 16 of those years. I still miss parts of that work. There’s parts of it I wouldn’t do again if you paid me…

After 20 years of that, I moved on and went out “on my own.” Since leaving that work, I’ve made my living by selling furniture and other woodwork, teaching workshops and classes, making videos – first with Lie-Nielsen, then through some I’ve made here at my shop, writing articles and books – and now a subscription blog at Substack. 

The hardest part, well, one of the hardest parts – was/is the travel. When I was first doing it, I was still employed, so it was maybe two weeks out of the year. Then I booked more and more of it – to the point where when I was here, I’d be packing or unpacking for a trip. Seeing all those people, teaching classes – all of it was great fun and I always appreciate that people would dedicate the time and resources to spend the time with me that way. I hope they learned something or somehow got something out of it. I got to go places as far-flung as Sweden, England, Australia, Alaska and lots of places in between. 

Öland

Once the pandemic shut the country down, the travel stopped. I’ve done some traveling since then, but not much. I still venture out a few times a year, I’ve taught ladderback chairmaking at Pete Galbert’s once or twice a year for the past few years. And something carving/oak-related at Lost Art Press in Covington, KY once a year. I might add one or two more, not sure. 

There’s personal reasons for me to be at home more. But I still gotta eat, so do my kids. So I took some cues from Pete Galbert and Chris Schwarz. During the pandemic, Galbert began a vimeo-on-demand series about chairmaking. I bought it and loved it and decided to give it a shot myself. I had made a lot of videos with Lie-Nielsen Toolworks and done several episodes of Roy Underhill’s Woodwright’s Shop TV show. So I knew a little about what I wanted you to see – and my son showed me some basics of how to edit video files. But what I can’t do is shut up – I used to talk for a living. So my first video series, on building a joined chest with a drawer, starting from the log – runs over 20 hours! Sorry about that…

[videos led to my all-time favorite comment from a reader/viewer. Hearing the noise of my neighborhood, particularly sirens heading from the nearby police & fire stations toward the highway that runs between Boston & Cape Cod, someone wrote to me “It looks like you live in this beautiful rural setting but it sounds like you live in Detroit.”]

One reason I made that series, aside from making a living, is to have a record of it. I included a joined chest in my book Joiner’s Work – but to have the whole thing step-by-step on video – maybe someday that will turn out to be a good thing. I never know how many more of these projects I have in me. I then did a shorter one on making the Jennie Alexander ladderback chair, and have one underway now about some Germanic chairs and another joinery one planned. So there’s some videos that you pay for, but I still have many videos on youtube that are free. One was a whole series on making a joined stool –

first version of this box with drawers underway

From Chris I swiped the idea of a subscription blog – I’ve written this WordPress blog for free since 2008. It limps along now, but has over 1,500 posts. Some of those were just me selling stuff, announcing classes, etc – but most of them amount to articles about my woodworking. They’re still here, they’re still free. I’ll keep them here as long as WordPress lets me. I still refer back to things on this blog regularly – to see what I did when, “when was the last time I made such-and-such” – even “how did I make such-and-such.” 

The substack blog has two levels of subscription – free and paid. Free subscribers get a few posts in full – the first ten or so are free to all. Every once in a while I make one available to all. Otherwise, they see the beginnings of the posts. Paid subscribers see all the content. I aim to take another cue from Schwarz and make a once-a-week freebie there. 

One thing I see on them when I look back on this WordPress blog is the comments, particularly those from Jennie Alexander. I worked closely with JA for years and years and in the last years of her life, she wasn’t able to keep woodworking, But her thoughts were still on the subject. So those comments mean a lot to me now. I’ve been working off and on for a few years now on a project I call my Craft Genealogy. It’s about the people who taught me woodworking – Alexander, Drew Langsner, Daniel O’Hagan and more – I post snippets of that research regularly on the Substack blog. It will turn into a book once I get a handle on it. There’s still some research to do. Alexander and O’Hagan in particular left a lot of notes – and Drew is still around. So I keep reviewing and asking questions. 

I’ll keep trying to post on this blog now and then, but most of my action is over on the substack one. Now that people are paying for it – I’m trying hard to give them their money’s worth. One reader begged off, I was writing too much! Looking for a happy medium..

Links:

https://peterfollansbeejoinerswork.substack.com/

https://christopherschwarz.substack.com/

https://petergalbert.substack.com/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbA33W8-cWNHzkYTDh7kBGA