Well fellow woodworkers, Marc is up to his old tricks and another Guild Build is upon us.

For any of you who dont know (can there be any woodworkers who dont know?) the Wood Whisper Guild Builds are a trice yearly build where Marc publish plans & offers step by step instructions while the Wood Whisperer Guild members build along. Bell Forrest Products even sell special kits of all the lumber needed to build a Guild Build Project.

Previous Guild Build projects have been a shaker table, a dresser and a wall hanging cabinet. This Springs build is a Greene & Greene inspired Adirondack chair.

Though its a thing of beauty, Im sad to say I wont be building along due to other time commitments. Dont let that stop you though. Its a community build second to none. You owe it to yourself and your woodworking to give it a try.

My Shaker Table from the
1st Guild Build.

My almost finished Bastard Wall Cabinet is my
excuse for a Winter 2011 Guild Build project.

Now joint the Guild and get to work on that beautiful chair.

I cleaned and rearranged the shop today. Now that the wands are finally (almost) done, I needed to clean and rearrange things so that I could walk, use the table saw and find my bench.

Most of the rearrangement involved the hanging of the Bastard Tool Cabinet on the wall and moving my Festool sanders off the floor and onto the wall next to the Bastard.

There are a few corrections to what I say in the video:

1. I think the Port-A-Mate rack was more. I bought is a while ago.
2. What I say is cherry on the lumber rack looks like, and is, walnut.
3. I say “That’s about it” three (3) times. Only one (1) of those times is at the end.

How’s your shop organization? Time for a cleaning?

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My Festool Random Orbit Sanders

I like to sand. I know that goes contrary to popular opinion, but I find sanding relaxing.The reason I like sanding is that I’ve stocked myself up with an arsenal of sanding paraphernalia that usually make it easy. My normal routine is to use a Festool random orbit sander connected to my CT22 dust extractor via my vacuum boom arm. The result is that sanding is usually a relaxing process. It could be a little monotonous, but listening to an entertaining podcast or book takes care of that. If you don’t have a decent vacuum and boom arm to connect to your sander, you really should. The less dust, the greater the sanding enjoyment.

This weekend I’ve had to leave my fancy set up behind and sand by hand. I’m making some wands (more on them in a future post), and there’s not a flat surface on them.The result has been lots and lots of hand sanding. I’ve used 3M Sandblaster sanding pads for the wands, and while I’ve been happy with the results, I’ve been hating the process. I now remember why so many of us hate sanding.How do you deal with sanding?

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