Love It:

[Jon Grider]

1) The surface of the first few boards of hard maple after putting on a sharp set of planer blades.

2) The smell of air dried cherry when sawing.

3) Going to the lumberyard on a Saturday morning with a Yeti full of fresh ground and brewed Columbian Supremo.

Add on if you care to.

[Frank Pratt]

Favorite smells in the garden in summer:
- tomato plant foliage
- rosemary
- lavender
- basil
- thyme
- sage
- fresh turned black soil
Oh yes, this is a wood forum. Favorite smell in the shop is milling western red cedar.

[Roger Feeley]

The smell of arc welding (stick)

[Jon Grider]

The smell of arc welding (stick)

OK then, that ranks up there with spoiled raw chicken meat.

[Aaron Rosenthal]

The look on my wife’s face when I bring in a project that I’ve actually finished.

[John K Jordan]

I love starting with a wet tree and watching as the inside is revealed at the sawmill. (and the smell of fresh eastern red cedar!)

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I love starting with chunks of wet tree and ending up with beautiful, dry turning blanks.

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I love to watch the fascination and joy of a young person when we make something together at the lathe.

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And I love photographs!

Oh, and since I'm elderly and feeble I love having a shop with heat and air. :)

JKJ

[Matt Day]

The warmth of the sun on that first nice spring day after a long cold winter.

The smell of freshly milled rough lumber, and watching it being “unwrapped” while jointing/planing.

[Jim Matthews]

The smell of freshly split Oak.
The first hot stove fire in Fall.

The smell of mittens drying on the stove.

[Frank Pratt]

The smell of freshly split Oak.

I assume you mean white oak. Red oak smells like cat pee :(

[John TenEyck]

The feel of a well tuned handplane as it takes off a gossamer thin shaving.

A project that turns out exactly like I had envisioned it months before.

The anticipation of what's inside a log as I cut it on my bandsaw mill.

Using lumber I've milled and dried myself to build a piece of furniture.

Quite time in my shop.

John

[Michael J Evans]

The look on my wife’s face when I bring in a project that I’ve actually finished.

This is perfect and gave me a good chuckle. Thanks

[Ronald Blue]

The smell of hay curing before baling.

The smell of a freshly picked cornfield.

The smell of ground fresh worked for planting.

The feel of 11,000 plus cubic inches starting up and settling into a deep rumble.

The fresh smell after a spring rain.

[Mike Kees]

Witnessing the result of hours of tuning and adjusting shop machines to reach their full potential.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Love framing something big, smell of fresh cut 2x, sounds of lots of work happening, seeing how the project turns from paper to real in a matter of hours.

Also love woodworking in my nice warm shop while its snowing outside.

[Mel Fulks]

When I could find the flaws in a customer's design. Make them mad, get them to accept my superior changes, then thank
me with tears in their eyes ....and name a child after me.... One of them was 14 !

[Robert Hayward]

The smell of hay curing before baling.

The smell of a freshly picked cornfield.

The smell of ground fresh worked for planting.

These three made me stop and wonder. How many people in this country have never smelled any of these three?

11000 CI, what ever is this powering???

[Mike Henderson]

The smell of hay curing before baling.

The smell of a freshly picked cornfield.

The smell of ground fresh worked for planting.

The feel of 11,000 plus cubic inches starting up and settling into a deep rumble.

The fresh smell after a spring rain.

What is that thing with 11,000 cubic inches? That's over 180 liters which is huge.

Mike

[Myles Moran]

I'm also super curious about this 11,000 in^3 engine. That sounds... Fun.

Back on topic, adding a few:

Taking a visibly cupped board and working it into useable s4s. Watching the contours move after every pass on the jointer, and then watching them move on the planer only for them to mostly/completely disappear when you reach final thickness.

When planing wood, the weight reduction as the rough sawn stack is too heavy to lift in one go to doable in one go. (Also the opposite, struggling with the dust collector shavings bag out of the shop)

Surfacing rough sawn stock and watching the grain get crazier and crazier after each pass. What looked like a boring piece of wood now has the cut list completely turned around because it's the feature in this project.

[John K Jordan]

The smell of hay curing before baling.
...

Oh yes, I agree, the smell of cutting, teddering, raking, and baling.
Reminds me of the Lovin Spoonful singing "... and fall on my face in somebodies new-mown lawn"

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A friend and I used to bale my fields but now with the horses and llamas and donkeys on pasture I pay the guys that bale for a living.
All I have to do is haul, unload and stack. I buy 150 bales at a time.

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JKJ

[Jim Matthews]

I assume you mean white oak. Red oak smells like cat pee :(

I like both.
It reminds me of Fall.

[Alexander Young]

1. When my square meets up perfectly with my saw blades and then to my work piece.
2. Trees changing colors in the fall.
3. Flowing effortlessly through a series of curves on my SV650S.
4. Doing my job correctly and helping someone.

[Rod Sheridan]

The feeling of riding your motorcycle with all your gear on it for a few weeks vacation............Rod.

[Prashun Patel]

The sound of a log splitting, and the first peek inside.
The first coat of finish
Putting a finished piece that I love in the hands of someone who loves it more.

[John TenEyck]

Well, gee, if anything is fair game then:

The feeling of skiing in 2 feet of fresh powder when your tracks are the first of the day.

Witnessing ice sublime when you are out at -20F and the RH is so low that it does. Otherwise, -20F is almost never fun.

Seeing the Milky Way.

Getting the opportunity to witness wild animal babies suckle on mama.

Being scared to death and riveted with fascination at the same time from animals large enough to kill you and close enough to do it with no protective fence or gun.

A month long hike. The other hikers you meet along the way, except the scary ones. The wonderful people who give you food when you cross a road or buy you dinner in town, or the ones who give you a ride to get there - only to realize the second you close the car door that you haven't bathed in 10 days! That reaction is priceless.

John

[Steve Demuth]

What is that thing with 11,000 cubic inches? That's over 180 liters which is huge.

Mike

Railroad locomotive diesel (or a mid-sized marine diesel).

[Ronald Blue]

Railroad locomotive diesel (or a mid-sized marine diesel).

Either an EMD or GE locomotive engine. 4300 and 4400 horsepower respectively. Ironically they have both went smaller and gotten more power per cubic inch. Rather than V-16's they are now V'12's. They also power a lot of towboats running up and down the Mississippi and it's tributaries. But I worked on the locomotive end of it. The 12 cylinders are actually 1,010 cubic inches per cylinder so a little larger displacement. They get 4,600 horsepower from the 12 cylinder.

[Ronald Blue]

These three made me stop and wonder. How many people in this country have never smelled any of these three?

11000 CI, what ever is this powering???

I'm sure some have no idea what those aromas are. Nor have they eaten wheat that was just combined out of the truck.

[Tom Bain]

“I love the smell of Napalm in the morning ... it smells like ... victory”

Sorry couldn’t resist.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

I'm sure some have no idea what those aromas are. Nor have they eaten wheat that was just combined out of the truck.

Grasshopper legs and all! How about chewing that wheat until the gluten does it's thing and makes that "gum". Bet less have tried that!

[Roger Feeley]

OK then, that ranks up there with spoiled raw chicken meat.

Nah. It's about memories. I worked as a production welder back when I was in High School. I took a night course at the local VoTech school and parlayed that into a job. it sure beat flipping hamburgers for the summer. My work was MIG but there was a lot of stick welding going on. I enjoyed those two summers more than any job since. So yeah, burning flux is stinky but the memories are great.

[Jon Grider]

Nah. It's about memories. I worked as a production welder back when I was in High School. I took a night course at the local VoTech school and parlayed that into a job. it sure beat flipping hamburgers for the summer. My work was MIG but there was a lot of stick welding going on. I enjoyed those two summers more than any job since. So yeah, burning flux is stinky but the memories are great.

Cool Roger, they say smell is one of the most powerful triggers of memories. My son went through the local community colleges welding curriculum so he can probably relate to your memories more than I. I guess now that I think about it, welding smells do remind me of when he still lived at home and our nest didn't seem so empty. I still have some of the pieces he used as tests to get his certs. He was so proud of his work and so was I. Sorry if I seemed flippant with my response to your post.

[Jon Endres]

Smell of first freshly cut lawn in the spring.
Running a rough board through the planer and seeing the wood after the first pass.
Drawers that fit the first time.
Buying cherry plywood for under $50 a sheet.
Turning on a restored vintage machine for the first time.

[Mike Kees]

The sound of a 24 valve Cummins diesel as it fires up in a parking lot... The sight and feel of a cutthroat trout that has inhaled one of my dry flies... Another amazing prairie sunset almost every day... I have no memories associated with smells because I have almost no sense of smell.