Treeeeeees

These are trees on my walk to work at the hand tool school. Beech, oak, cherry, ash, walnut, laurel and rhododendron line the road all the way. Limbs drop and culling provides a reasonable supply of small stock and next weekend (2-3 April 2011) we begin our Discovering Woodworking workshop in the best place for discovering woodworking, which is in these woods.  Join us on the blog for daily updates and uptakes of questions.

Many if not most woodworkers spend no time considering the trees from which we source our wood. Magazine writers and editors, tool makers, machine makers and suppliers and woodworking catalogues have no association with the forest floor and the woodlands  yet we depend on their knowledge to enlighten us as to what tools, machines and equipment we need to work wood. So, anyway, I think this to be a good place to at least look at and meditate on our ongoing dependency on this amazing resource.

We will be looking at some important stuff that most modern-day woodworkers know nothing about. It’s fast paced I admit. We have a lot to get through to lay the foundation, but it will encourage and inspire them in dozens of ways to reconsider both how and why they work wood and introduce them to methods they never dreamed possible at all.

Most people now live in a culture that has shifted to the point that they no longer even know a furniture maker, split wood gathered for firewood from the woods or has any engagement in real woodworking.

See you next weekend!