New Article Subject?

[John Padgett]

Hello. I am planning my next article in a woodworking publication and cannot decide the subject. Any thoughts on what hand tool skills or projects you would like to see? Thanks in advance.

John.

[Chris Griggs]

Something coopered....

[eric mah]

Something bent.

[Jim McGee]

My be advice is, look through the last five years of Popular woodworking and find a subject that hasn't been covered before.

[Sean Hughto]

A birdhouse. Specifically a multifamily purple Martin house. The article should cover the benefits of supporting these bug eaters and give details as to drainage, cleaning, pole mounting, hole sizing, etc. as informed by birding experts.

[Jason Coen]

"Setting A Chipbreaker for Finish Planing of Birdhouses, Part I of VII"

[Randy Karst]

+1 on something coopered...

[Jim Neeley]

multi m&T or mitered dovetails? I'm thinking something for the post-beginner.

Otherwise, a bird or bat house...

[Paul Saffold]

Something you know about, not something you look up on Google.

[paul cottingham]

"Setting A Chipbreaker for Finish Planing of Birdhouses, Part I of VII"
With video, and accompanying endless debate.

[Stanley Covington]

1. How to make a two-bladed mortise gauge like a kinshiro from scratch.

2. How to quickly create a glass smooth polyurethane stained finish on an open-grained wood like red oak.

3. A comparison of the various styles of plow plane traditions: American/English, French, German, Japanese, metallic vs wooden, etc.

Stan

[Jason Coen]

I haven't seen an article on full-blind dovetails in awhile.

Federal furniture could always use more ink.

[Karl Andersson]

making all-wood spoked wheel, like for a garden wheelbarrow

[mike holden]

French Rococo style furniture is sadly under represented in the press.
American Victorian style is also mostly ignored.

[Brett Robson]

Carving techniques, specific to period furniture, such as acanthus leaves and fans, shells and such.

[Randy Karst]

In addition to Chris's "Something coopered," I like Stanley's "How to make a two-bladed mortise gauge like a kinshiro from scratch."

[Jim Koepke]

My thought for an article would be about making hidden compartments in cabinets and furniture.

Of course the problem with that is if everyone knows how to hide them, then they really aren't secret.

jtk

[Derek Cohen]

Break new ground ..

How to build a ball-and-claw workbench.
Using scrapers to thickness timber.
Finding secret drawers.
Panel raising with Japanese vs Western chisels.

The list is endless ..

Regards from Ottawa

Derek

[Jim Koepke]

You could try an article on repairing old hand drills. :)

jtk

[Trevor Walsh]

+1 for cooperage as well, doesn't have to be barrel, straight tapered bucket would be good too.

[Jim Matthews]

Perhaps a survey of shops to get a consensus on tools we actually own and know how to use, first?

Too many articles presume the presence of expensive equipment, without illustrating alternate methods.
If each project included a breakdown of the gear required (with MSRP listed) and materials, it would
separate the fantasy projects from the affordable ones.

I think a coopered Purple Martin birdhouse would be odd enough to get plenty of crossover readers...

[Bobby O'Neal]

Make a panel gauge.

[Zach Dillinger]

French Rococo style furniture is sadly under represented in the press.
American Victorian style is also mostly ignored.

I agree with Mike on the French Rococo front. Not so much on the American Victorian... a lot of that stuff is just dreadfully tacky.

I think the most underrepresented (and my personal favorite style) is William and Mary.

[Richard Verwoest]

I would like to see an article on ways to mount projects to walls. Something beyond franch cleats and dry wall anchors. Something more like this for example, http://www.huset-shop.com/images/SwedeseTreeWall.jpg

[Pat Barry]

I would like to see the definitive way to sharpen chisels and planes presented, once and for all! This seems to be an area of great debate. I suspect putting it on the cover would boost circulation by 2X for that month.

[Jim Foster]

Making Hollows and Rounds inexpensively. Sharpening them. Using them. Acceptable materials. (They only have to last 1 or 2decades, not 100's of years) When I add up the cost of the LN tools Larry Williams suggests getting that I don't have, it creeps close to $400 for the float planes and 1/10 mortise chisel.

Note: I thought the Larry Williams DVD was an excellent intro to making Hollows and Rounds, so my comment on cost is not a disparagement in any way.

[David Weaver]

Jim - keep your eyes open for vintage 1/8th chisels. I found one for about $7. It's not as small as a tenth, but it's just shy of an 8th and provides plenty of room. For what you do with it, paying that much for a chisel is exorbitant. The vintage 1/8th chisels that are longer have to have a profile like a mortise chisel, anyway, because they don't have enough width to provide strength.

1 pull side float, one push cheek float and an edge float and you can do pretty darned good work.

You can also make the edge float out of 1/8th O1 stock and harden what you can of the end with a mapp torch and leave the rest unhardened. The first several teeth are going to get the brunt of the work, anyway. If you can file a saw, you can make a float for the price of scrap stock stock and a taper saw file.

Sorry to butt in...I'd suggest buying a bunch of floats and stuff and just selling them at the end, but you'll likely want to keep them when you get them, just in case you get the urge to make profile planes or rabbet planes in the future.

[ian maybury]

Hi John. Just some thoughts on approaches to writing rather than specific topics.

Mag writers always seem to end up 'method writing' - that is consuming pages describing methods and techniques in objective step by step language, while bowing left, right and centre to the gods of political and commercial correctness and structured methodology. With the result that they often end up publishing wads of boring pedantry describing stuff that for anybody with two grey cells to rub together de facto follows anyway.

Which results in criticism. Which leads to the presumption that we readers have short attention spans, which leads to the shortening of pieces to soundbites. Which still misses the point because the result still doesn't hit the data points that matter.

Who in heaven can be bothered wading through pages of grey porridge to fish out the odd useful nugget of information buried in the dross?? Or to find that after all that there's key information missing?? Or worst of all to find that having spent a lot of money buying featured tools and equipment that the reality of their performance doesn't live up to what's implied.

It's so important for a woodworking writer to bring out the information that determines the difference between success and failure for the individual woodworker. Not all information is of equal priority in this regard.....

Project ideas are always inspiring. It's always to my mind useful to be prompted/reminded about different methods of getting a job done. It's equally useful to have the specific points/steps that are most likely to be problematical when using these techniques highlighted - plus proven fixes/techniques by which to avoid these pitfalls. It's equally useful to be informed of key points about required tools, machines, materials, sources of supply and so on. I've no interest in ploughing through pages of information setting out the obvious in step by step form, or by implication bigging up vested interests though.

This isn't necessarily the same for everybody. I've been banging away about the interplay between choice of method/technique and skill levels. With the example of the recent video showing a Scots maker shaping tenons in minutes using a wide chisel as an example - to make the point that how effective a given method may be in the case of a specific woodworker must depend very heavily on their skill level. Which tends to suggest that pieces need clearly to be pitched to specific skills levels, or find intelligent ways to efficiently cover the key considerations relating to multiple levels.

Mag pieces rarely address the issue of skill level, presumably for fear of offending potential buyers in our wannabee 'everybody can be anything they want tomorrow if only they buy into the lifestyle (which xyz just happens to sell)' and marketing driven perception of reality. Pandering to this tendency as above rules out whole swathes of considerations that in practical terms however matter a lot.

Responding to these issues entails writing about topics at a much more intimate, grounded and granular level than is typically the case. It requires the mags deciding whether they are commissioning writing for the benefit of their readers, or for the benefit of their advertisers and other commercial interests. It requires integrity, technical and and genuine creative writing skills too.

An example. Seemingly simple operations for many also turn out for example to be highly problematical because they are trying to get the work done using poor quality machines and tools - or because they are deficient in key skills. Yet this reality is rarely addressed in most writing for fear presumably of offending anybody. So another great swathe of important input is ruled out of court.

Etc Etc.

Pardon my offending anybody too, but it'd be really great to see a new wave of woodworking writing in this sort of vein emerge...

ian

[Brian Kent]

I echo some of the period furniture recommendations. How to carve a specific detail for a specific type of furniture.
Tool substitutions - what you can use instead if you do not yet have a bandsaw, a planer, etc.
I like the hand-drill rehab and use idea. What are the hand drill limits? How big a hole is too big with your antique, unsharpened bits in dry white oak?

[Trevor Walsh]

There are thousands of articles, books and teacher to show you how to cut a particular joint, and other similar technical aspects. The articles I've found most useful are ones that describe the methodology of accomplishing a certain work. One that comes to mind was the description on FWW on the order in which a table, a carcass and a chair were built, as archetypical forms. I absolutely hate Greene and Greene, I don't read those articles, there may be a great piece of technical or procedural info in the article, but the aesthetic of the work just turns me away.

Likewise I enjoy George Walker's pieces in PopWood because he explains the design and eye to make good pieces, which can be applied to any style piece.

Words like, Handy, in only 5 steps, the last..., the best...., are really fluff articles. How many Best sharpening method articles have been published?

For an example of an article I'd love, coopering. The article is aimed at explaining the geometry of coopered components, the fits involved in different areas (e.g.bottom to sides), if the work is to have a hoop how do I make a wooden hoop, how is a metal hoop sized, riveted and set in place? Using an archetypical form of a milk pail to show it all means I could take the same info and apply it to a butter dasher, an ovular tub, a bucket with handles etc. The article should also show alternative ways of doing something, tablesaw jig to cut tapered staves (or a good reference to one) and how to lay them out manually and cut them with a jointer plane.

[Bryan Ericson]

How about an article that details how to convert project plans that specify powered equipment to use hand tools and traditional joinery? For example, a table plan that you like in a magazine specifies a table saw, a router, and pocket screw joinery - what would one do to convert those plans to use hand tools and wood joints?

[Chance Turner]

Wedged mortise and tenon joinery methods.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I think I'd love an article that discusses stock selection outside of appearance. I've read plenty of articles on how to lay out the parts for a frame and panel door to look the nicest, where to use quartersawn and flatsawn for visual contrast and interest, why riftsawn works great for square legs, etc. But as an amateur woodworker, I always struggle on things like stock thickness and structural concerns. When does my carcase need to thick? When can I get away with thinner? Does that chest need to have the same super-thick boards as the one I saw at the antique shop? How do I size drawer components, both the box and the bottom, to both the size and the expected weight carried? How does a choice of different woods, either species or grain orientation, affect how I choose stock sizes? Are there choices beyond aesthetic that determine when solid casework is better than frame-and-panel? How to size frame and panel construction when using it in casework and not just a door? When do I need bomb-proof joinery? When do I use double tenons?

Some of these questions I'm a lot more comfortable with than I used to be, but it's always easy to follow a plan in a magazine, but as soon as I start thinking of altering something to fit my space or intended usage or material at hand, I start to question if I'm going to be building something that's going to fall apart 5 or 10 years from now. On the other hand, I've built some stuff that looks clunky because of poor stock choice, as well.