At least once every season, we invite a guest to present for an episode of the Woodsmith Shop. It's a chance to share another style or approach to woodworking. For us, we always learn something new and get a respite from a tough recording schedule.
Mike Pekovich
For the presenter, it's an opportunity reach another woodworking audience. This week, we had Mike Pekovich from Fine Woodworking on set. His unique style of work makes use of exposed joinery, white oak (mostly), offset surfaces, and a fun surprise. It's also quite fun to make — and that's important for us.
During his episode, he's walking through the process of building one of his tea chests. In spite of its small scale, there are techniques here that find their way into many of his other projects too.
He left a few "stunt parts" behind. And I'm in the process of completing the box on my own based on what I saw during his week here. Though I plan to add a few twists of my own to it.
Episode Transcript
Phil (00:06.766) Hi everybody, welcome again to another episode of the Shop Notes Podcast. I'm your host Phil Huber. I'm joined by Logan as always, but this time with a special guest, we got the trifecta of woodworking managing editors here, executive editors, editors in chief, all that with Mike Pekovich. So you want to stay tuned for this episode as the brain trust meets, I guess.
All right, Mike, welcome to the show and welcome to Des Moines. actually had a couple of nice days for you today this week.
Mike (01:35.461) Yeah, it's great being here. Thanks for having me, both in Iowa and also on the podcast.
Phil (01:41.452) Yeah. the reason you're in Iowa is we had you on an episode of the TV show. So it'll be season 19 airing, later this fall. So you want to, people can mark that on their calendars for when that starts to come out. we could put a photo of your project. We want to just talk a little bit about the project you were, that you did.
Mike (02:04.839) Yeah, so we made a little tea chest. It's a really cool project. It's something that I had made a while back just for myself, but I started teaching this as a project in the last year or so. So that's when I actually got my act together and got plans made and all that good kind of stuff. It's a really cool project because there's a lot of stuff going on in a small package, which I like. So you're not wasting love around doing a lot of prep. But there's enough there to keep you busy at your bench for a while. And it's a really cool thing once you're done.
Phil (02:37.442) Yeah. I, the scale of it, I like in the sense that the corners of the case are dovetailed, but as we were talking about, it's not like 16 dovetails per corner. It's what? Three, four. So it feels like you're, it's manageable to do.
Mike (02:57.666) Yes, and then the rest of the stuff is pretty much handled by machines if you want to, mainly the table saw. And what's a little bit novel about it, it's got a chest, it's got some wrapped handles on the side, and the lid actually consists of two framing panels which are hinged in the middle, so it just sits in a rabbit, you open the lid.
by kind of folding it back and inside there are pair of miter trays that lift out. So there's a lot of cool interaction. You take this thing to the table after dinner, have some tea, pull out the little trays, let your guests rifle through your tea packets, and it's a much nicer experience than just bringing out the cardboard boxes from the cupboard.
Logan Wittmer (03:41.987) I feel so judged right now. What you know what I like about the the lid that you did is you're using dominoes to put that frame and panel together. Which I mean, it's funny because I think all all of us get those comments where it's like, why are you using dominoes? But it's like it's easy and it works perfect. For this you know what I mean like like yeah you could do little tenants but why
Mike (04:15.095) Yeah, exactly. On a piece like this, so it's smaller pieces. The option I might normally do on a small door like this would just be like kind of stub tenon joinery on the table saw. You run a full length groove in there. The thing about this is there's no panel that needs to fit into a groove. It's just a Kumiko panel, which is press fit, which meant no grooves, no stub tenon. What's the next option?
Mike (04:42.817) Domino, get a nice little 5mm domino in there, fits really well. The cool thing about the domino, if you haven't done this before and you have one, clamp it down to some sort of a base and you really turn it into a stationary tool similar to putting a handheld router in a router table. It completely transforms it in terms of what it can do. And then once the domino is locked down,
then you can clamp your small parts to that work surface with a hold down clamp and you can work really accurately and safely with little parts. Cause I wouldn't want to be holding this little part in place with one hand and dominoing with the other. That's just scary stuff. yeah. So it's like, yeah, the whole thing about dominoes, it's like anything else. It's like, why would you have one? It's not whether you have one or not, but if you have one, how can you put it to use to make it work for the things that you're making?
Phil (05:37.454) Yeah. And point taken on putting it into a table like that, because I think a lot of people, when you think domino, I mean, we're conditioned by all the photos that go with it. And it's on much larger work pieces where you take the tool to the piece of wood and doing the joinery. So if you hold up the pieces for this frame and then hold up the domino in your other hand, you're like, nope, just not gonna. And it's the same way with a router table. You're exactly right. If you hold a handheld router table in one hand and a small little piece that you want to put a round over on on all four sides, nope. But you flip that into a router table. Yeah, I'd do that all day.
Mike (06:22.781) Yeah, in full disclosure, I didn't make this concept up. This I picked up from years back. Michael Fortune wrote an article for fine woodworking on using a biscuit joiner, which is, you know, one of those most demeaned, woodworking machines around. But, and of course he's like a brilliant maker, brilliant designer. And I learned from him.
He screws his biscuit joiner down to a base and again basically uses it as a stationary tool. So I did that for years and I just took that concept and said if it works for a biscuit joiner, it works for Domino and really, really smart concept.
Logan Wittmer (07:02.426) Oh, and it's funny because I think some manufacturers have jumped on that as well because you can now buy commercial bases for the Domino to do the same type of thing. You know, kind of the flat flat pack style. I think Veritas has won a few of them have them now. So yeah, it turns it into that little little joinery machine that's just set up somewhere in your shop and you just zip your parts.
Mike (07:30.461) Yeah, in my first hold down for the Domino the table, I make these sort of kind of elevated, I call them bench horses or bench risers. Basically it's two sheets of plywood with some sort of upright in between them so you can clamp the bottom layer to the bench and clamp whatever you want to the upper thing. And I use those for tons of stuff. I just happened to have one which was maybe 12 or 14 inches deep by about 48 inches long.
And so I just kind of screwed my domino to the corner of that to get it to work and it worked really well. So then when I was traveling and teaching, I was bringing this big giant four foot long table with me because that's just, and then I think I was flying somewhere and I said, this is too big to pack. And it's like, wait a minute. This thing only needs to be about eight inches by 12 inch long. And it's like, okay, let me make one a little bit smaller.
Mike (08:27.453) Yeah, yeah, so the one, the one made on the TV show is, yeah, Domino Plate Holder Mach 2, which is much smaller than Mach 1, so.
Phil (08:42.22) That brings up a question that I had in watching you film this episode is,
I know you do a lot of teaching and a lot of, Logan and I have experienced this too, you end up having to, in some ways, teach differently in order to be able to make connections with your students in the class for being able to A, get a project done, B, communicate what needs to happen. How much of that then circles around into your own work where you end up working in the style that you teach. Does that make sense?
Mike (09:28.679) Yeah, 100%, yep, you nail it on the head where the first time you teach, you go in using the techniques that you're just comfortable with in the shop. I mean, my first project was a chimney cupboard where there was a face frame attached to the case sides. And you situate it so the face frame is sticking out 30 second of an inch proud. And then you just flush it with a hand plane. And the owner of the school said, how are you going to do that? I said, just break out a hand plane. We'll knock it out in five minutes. He goes, yeah, right. Good luck with that. He goes, you might want to set up, you know, a router with a flush trim bit. I'm going like, why would you do that? That's like so much work. But then when 15 students all broke out hand planes of various vintages and sharpnesses with various levels of skill, it's like, yeah, okay. So.
You find out really quickly that the things, the methods you use to kind of fumble through a project on your own often doesn't work well in a class setting. So at first it becomes a situation where there's a disconnect. It's like, oh, I do it this way privately, but for a class I'm going to have to do it this way. But then after a point you realize that, oh, the method that I chose to help students get through it a little bit more successfully, that's actually the better way to
So I would say definitely teaching has made me a much better woodworker and that now I would say my processes, it's one to one. There's really no difference between how I would do it in my shop now and how I teach and if I come up with a way to do it better in class, I ended up doing it that way. I'd say the only thing is, you know, in your own shop when you're banging stuff out, you might have a little bit more of a shorthand approach to things, so.
things get done a little bit quicker, but basic processes, yeah. So I think, you know, I kind of learned how to nail stuff together when I was a kid. The next level was taking furniture making classes in college where you really learned how to mill lumber four square and got a dovetail joint. And then when I came to find woodworking quite a few years after that, that was the next level where it's like, let me relearn the craft from all these articles I'm working on every day.
Mike (11:43.081) And then the next level after that would be once I started teaching about 10 or 12 years ago, I really feel that kicked me into a whole different level of woodworking.
Phil (11:57.538) I was thinking Logan did a two door little desk box that we did that had really small doors on it as well. And I remember you, Logan, trying to figure out what's the best way of teaching that as a class. Because it's little pieces, it's power tools, people that aren't familiar with it. There's a certain level of antsyness that goes along with it and you want people to be successful but you also don't want them freaked out either.
Logan Wittmer (12:27.989) Yeah, well, and it's funny. was, I was literally just thinking about that little mantle box when Mike's talking about, know, teaching, making you a better woodworker. And that's, mean, absolutely the case. Like, you know, I, I've in my own shop started to use templates a little bit more. It's like, Hey, like instead of just like drawing a line and cutting out of the band saw, cleaning up the hand plane, which is what I would usually do. It's like, it does work a little bit better, a little bit cleaner if I use a template for it.
And it's like, okay, like I get it. Like it's, one of those following do as I say, not as I do type things. It's like, there's, there's a reason I'm saying this. Like there is a reason involved.
Mike (13:04.749) Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah, there's a reason you're telling someone to do it in a different way than you would do it. It's like, okay, yeah.
Mike (13:20.925) But then in the class situation, I always try to be careful not to turn it into an assembly line activity where the main goal is just for you to end up with something to take home after five or six days because if I take a class, I want to learn something I can apply to my own work. So I try never to use methods, again, that I wouldn't use in my shop or is not appropriate for a person making one of these things in their own shop.
That's really key. A lot of times we'll do articles by people who do more semi-production work or teachers who are getting a lot of people through a project and they say, okay, in order to do this, start by making a template, get your CNC machine and get it all blah, blah, blah. And it's just like, yeah, but if I'm making one of these, isn't gonna, this isn't gonna happen. So I'm always, you know, at the magazine, you're sort of vetting techniques based on.
on what the reader is faced with in their own shops and teaching it's one-to-one. You try to show processes that are super efficient and represent a best practice because there's no such thing as the best way to do anything, but that you are hopefully conveying techniques that are applicable in a single person shop and things that are going to hopefully guarantee the highest level of success for them once they get going. Yeah.
And I know you guys deal with that with every article you guys work on, the magazines as well.
Phil (14:54.274) Yeah, because I think that's one of the first lessons I learned in teaching some of the classes for the Des Moines woodworkers is, what's the goal of the class? Is it the thing or is it what you learned while making the thing that ends up going somewhere else? And I think there are some people that are interested in taking a class to make a specific
Phil (15:24.492) widget that they want that in their house. I've kind of leaned more towards, would rather, we might not get the project done over the course of this class, but I want you to know six different things that you will apply on your next project and the project after that.
Logan It's it's funny because I have the same discussion with my buddy Jimmy clues down in Vegas because he has five students every other weekend all year long for turning classes and His his mentality has always been It's a lot easier for a student to go home with five finished projects because then they can show their spouse like look Here's what I spent eight hundred dollars on you know Which I guess you know I get that but at the same time it's like, would, as you said, prefer to take away a skill that makes me a better woodworker rather than a project that was, as you said, an assembly line type thing. And that's always something I've struggled with. It's like, okay, we're in the shop. I have four or five students. We're working on a project. It's like, how do I avoid having them, you know, standing in line at the table saw that's already set up and all they're doing is pushing their wood through it. It's like, they're not learning a whole lot from that. So.
Mike (16:47.176) Yeah, and just like in article, you never start any project article by cutting down a tree and taking it into play. So, you you're always saying, where's the starting point based on what we're trying to convey in the article? Same thing as a class. It's like, okay, what are the key points to take away and what can I do to keep people from, like you said, standing in line, joining and planning or table saw when that's not the best use of time in a class situation.
Yeah, it's tough. you're teaching a five or six day class, people are traveling, putting up some good money to be there. They need to come home with something to show for that. I get that. So it's always that balance between, for me, it's like, okay, what is reasonable to make in a shorter period of time versus what do people want to make? And obviously the things they want to make and the time it takes to make those things don't always coincide with each other. It's like, yeah, you want to do a Maloof Rocker in five days? Me too. Yeah. So it's that kind of sweet spot of, you know, here's something you can make that hopefully you also want to make. And for me, that always starts like,
The articles I write or classes I teach, everything starts with stealing time from my schedule to get in the shop and make something that doesn't have a reason to be made only because I want to make it. So I figure if I start with something I like, it doesn't matter if it doesn't fly and no one else likes it, that's okay. But on the other hand, I can't really expect anyone else to get excited by a project that I'm not first excited about. So I think that's...
You know, it's like you don't want to kind of teach to a lowest common denominator this, you know, sort of same thing with articles in the magazine. You want to, we never, like as a staff, we sort of, we kind of vet proposals. And what I'm looking for is.
I don't care if five people say, yeah, that's okay, we could run it. It's like, mm, that's not great. But if one person is like, I love this, we have to do this, and the other four people are like, this is terrible. I'll listen to that one person who's like super excited by it because that means maybe one in five of our readers are gonna be super excited too as opposed to five out of five, like, meh, okay, you know, so.
Same thing for classes and teaching and projects. And that goes for just the things that you make in your own shop. I just taught a design class this last weekend and the whole point was to try to encourage people to come up with as many ideas as possible before you decide on one to make. Because if you want to get out in the shop and you have a spare weekend and want to make something and you sort of formulate an idea of what you want to make on your way out to the shop and get going.
A lot of times halfway through that project you're like, is this worth my time and effort and lumber? What am I doing here? So it's that thing is try to get to the point where you're super excited to make something. ideally you want to be to the point where there are too many things you really want to make that you actually have time for. That's good because then you're choosing between things you really like to the one you most like. I think
you know, always our time, our materials, especially if we're doing this full time. It's such a tough go to make time to get out in the shop. And once we're there, we want to come away with something we're proud of, we're happy about. And it really comes down to, you know, deciding on something that you really want to be making. And that's why I think magazines, you know, we're a really good source for that. know, Phil, at Woodsmith, I think you are like the consummate project magazine because I...
think, you know, we talked about yesterday, we were talking about Woodsmith and I said, Woodsmith is the gutter bumpers at the bowling alley that keep you from rolling a gutter ball, but the project you make, you know, it's like you follow Woodsmith plan, you're going to knock some pins down and people are going to be pretty happy with what you're making. You're going to be happy with that too. So talk about that Phil, in terms of kind of your mission at the magazine and what you're hoping to offer your readers.
Phil (21:26.062) I think, you know, it really is easy to think of the 45 plus years of Woodsmith and just think of it as all the projects and the plans. and, and at one hand, you can easily say, Hey, how many bookcases does a person need or end tables or something like that? But that's really, that's, that's almost beside the point because how many different houses or people are there, and we all have different tastes and interests and whatever. And then from a woodworking perspective, what I want to do in those projects is in the same way that we were talking about with classes is I'm kind of using the projects as bait to teach you something else, whether it's case joinery with dados and a handheld router, or this time it's going to be
dovetails or another time it's going to be, you know, a big lesson in mortise and tenon joinery, you know, making a Roycroft inspired piece, which I kind of have on my schedule to write about here. So there's that element of it. The other element, like you said, is confidence that if I'm going to pick a plan that I see in the magazine or from our plan site, that I have
high level of confidence knowing that by the time I'm done, it's going to look very similar to the pictures to the photos, you know, that we have those drawings in there that give you all those things. And I think with that base level of confidence, then
I also want people to feel like now I can kind of riff on this because I already know that the joinery is sound, the design looks really cool. So if I need to make this buffet like a couple of inches wider, like it's still going to work. If I need, if I want to make this dresser out of oak instead of cherry, I know what I can do to do that. And it's, it's going to be the same. So, so I still want that baseline in there. And then, you know, what we want to do moving forward is draw some connections to people that folk are building projects and what can Woodsmith do that supports those project builders in terms of techniques that you would learn or.
alternate technique, you know, I don't have a mortising machine to make mortises. Well, here's an article in a video on using a Forstner bit in your drill press and in two minutes you have a pretty clean mortise that has rounded ends and then you could leave them rounded or here's how to square them up with a chisel, that kind of stuff. So it's that kind of stuff. That's the thing that excites me is
being able to make some of those connections to support a project builder.
Mike (24:46.65) Yeah, I mean, you have the distinct advantage of pretty much building things. Everything is made by a group of really experienced makers. So you know the practices are going to be very sound. And you're talking about, you know, your concern is, maybe we're a little bit too narrow in terms of the techniques we can recommend. And on the other hand, it's like it find woodworking because everything is written by an outside author. In the extreme sense, what's better to have
someone show you a way to cut a dovetail, which is really sound, or 75 ways to cut a dovetail, and you get to choose which one you want to use. So, it's kind of the problem with fine woodworking is, the joke is you can go onto our website, search our archives, and find a million ways to cut a dovetail, but you're still not really left with a smart way forward if you.
You have to kind of choose site unseen. So a lot of my task is we've got so much content. And of course, it's all great stuff. But I think what I'm trying to do is try to curate some of that content to kind of say, look, if you're starting out, start here. And we can kind of give you a path through this and sort of kind of wade through all this is here. Not that some stuff is better than others. But I think.
One thing that gets lost is if you are learning how to cut a tenon from one maker, if you're learning how to lay out a joint from another maker, you end up with bits and pieces where every single one of these makers are super successful because they have an overall process where every single technique lives within sort of a universe. And I think that's what gets lost if you are kind of picking up at random choosing.
this technique or this technique and that's why I try to, in my classes, again, I really, really stress the point that none of what I'm teaching is the only way or necessarily the best way, but within a method of working, all of these parts and pieces line up to create what I hope is a really efficient way to be making furniture.
Phil (27:05.451) Yeah, cause I think when I look back at the way I build a project in my home shop.
I can pick out, if I think about it, different aspects that I've gathered from other makers or magazine articles or people that I work with here. But you can't start by cutting and pasting all of that together. You kind of have to have like a baseline skill of I'm doing mortise and tenon this way. And then once I have that sound, now it's like, the way, you know, Mark in the shop lays out a tenon.
makes total sense and I can see how to apply that to my own practice rather than, like you said, just kind of gooping a bunch of stuff together and stumbling along.
Mike (28:02.497) Is that your cat there Logan?
Logan Wittmer (28:06.051) That's Goose. He's trying to stand on the keyboard, which is really annoying. So I'm like holding him hostage. I'm not in like the towel wrap stage or I have to like wrap him in a towel to keep him from moving, but he's currently just being okay being pet. So.
Mike (28:23.381) Yes, that's cool. Yeah, we have a few Zoom call cats that make their appearances in our staff meetings. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Phil (28:34.818) Yeah, Chris, it seems like they only start being really active during a call. Like there's somehow some frequency sent out by Microsoft Teams or Zoom that activates some kind of signal in all the cats.
Mike (28:49.087) Yeah, or it's this sense that this person is actively paying attention to something other than me.
Phil (29:02.882) Now, maybe connecting a dot between the T-chest and your design class mic that you were talking about is, I think one of the things that I've seen as lessons is using material thickness as a design element.
You know, in the sense that there's a lot of get started and woodworking sort of books out there that have you using available materials from home center or lumber yard. And so a lot of stuff is just built out of three quarter inch thick material and suffers for it.
Mike (29:44.395) Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's true. It's the curse of the, you know, bookcase made from three-quarter inch stock to where the sides are going to look undersized for the scale of it out of three-quarter. And the shells can look super clunky if they don't need to be that thick. I mean, that's a tough place to start out. So.
If that's where you're starting and you don't have a means to mill lumber, yeah, start with three-quarter stock, of course. Yeah, and you'll make what you make. And then, you know, so later you're going to get to the point where you're going to have the ability to work with stock in different dimensions, whether it's ripping at the bandsaw or planing parts, thinner or planer. God forbid you break out a saw and like be ripping your parts and.
Resawing your parts with a hand saw I just I don't know there are people who do this but Shame on shame on them for recommending other people do that no of course there's anything you know everything can be made and woodworking can be made with hand tools because it was done that way for like hundreds of years so Yeah, there's so you don't need a saw stop. Although. They're nice. You don't need a planer bandsaw however
Logan Wittmer (30:47.126) There are sociopaths in this world.
Mike (31:09.402) Yeah, so short of, I can't do anything about working with 3 quarter inch thick stock. It's like, cool, that's okay. You can make an edge look wider by putting a little face frame on it. So you get a two inch, get your one by two and glue it to the front edge of your three quarter stock for the size of your bookcase. And now, okay, that's cool, but I'm still left with three quarter inch thick stock.
for shouts and it looks kind of clunky. Fine, buy yourself a block plane and chamfer a really heavy bevel on that bottom corner of that front. Now all of a sudden the visual part of that front edge is now a half an inch or 3 eighths of an inch instead of 3 quarters. So we can play with the, with sort of that visual aspect of let's vary the thickness of the parts to fit the scale of the piece. But I think the main thing is once you become aware of it.
You can't unsee it anymore. But I think that having someone point out the thing you made and hopefully in a kind way, it's like that's really cool. Wouldn't it be cool if those sides were a little bit thicker and the shelf was a little bit thinner? And even if you don't have a way to go about it, as long as you go, huh, I've never thought about the thickness of my stock making a difference. I was visiting John Reed Fox, he's a furniture maker in Massachusetts.
fantastic designer and maker, someone I just idolized, that was a great thing about going on shoots, was getting to meet these people you admire. And of course, I couldn't constrain myself. I had to show him a picture on my iPhone of a piece I had made to get his take on it. And, you know, always it's under the guise of, I made this, I'm pretty happy with it. You know, something's missing. You know, what do you think? Can I get your opinion on it? And
It was this piece where it kind of slabsides and top and of course dovetails and it's something, and I added some kind of oversized tusk tenons to the bottom shelf just because I felt it needed something. So I was sort of expecting him to tell me those were too big or too small or whatever. And he looked at it and goes, you know, the grain of the drawer stretcher is pretty squirrely. And I'm like, what do you mean?
Mike (33:33.308) It's like everything is nice, quiet grain, but this one piece of wood separating a door and a drawer, hey, was quarter sawn stock, but because it was flipped on its side, the front edge was plain sawn. And he goes, like, I would rather have had straighter, quieter grain, right here. And it's just like that would never have even occurred to me to look at in a million years. But like once he pointed that out, that's all I see.
in everything I make and even worse on everything that I have made in the past. It's like, So yeah, think that awareness is going to grow over time the more you make. just one thing I really stress in design classes is you make something cool. Take five minutes.
Be your own harshest critic. Look at it with a very critical eye and even though you spent six months making this thing and you're never gonna remake it to fix anything, allow yourself some time to say, I would have changed this, I would have changed this, I would have changed this and then turn it off and call it good because good job. You made it, it does what it needs to do. Don't be mentioning these things to other people but unless you make something and really assess it with a clear eye, you can't get better and move.
because all the things that bother you about this piece, they're going to inform the next piece you make and that's how you get better over time. So it's this combination of take a hard look at what you're doing and then give yourself a break and then move on. And you can make 10 pieces and not necessarily progress as a woodworker or designer if you're not giving each one thought. But if you just do your best, take a look and then do your best the next time around.
That's how you kind of get to the point where you're things you're really really
Phil (35:29.24) Yeah, I like that idea because one of the things that's a little frustrating for me as a woodworker in my home shop following some folk online is they're making a lot of the same thing. know, whether it's, you know, chairs or bowls or spoons, and they kind of have a thing and you can see an iterative development over time. I'd like to make
one of those, I don't know that I'm gonna make 12, you know? So trying to find ways to iterate on something knowing that the next piece is not even gonna be that.
Mike (36:12.522) Yeah, that's a good thing. I know some people, really good designers who said, man, if I made anything that looked the same as the last thing I made, that would drive me crazy. I want to do something completely original with everything I make. And I get that. And other people, unfortunately, I put myself in the category of I just tend to, I tend to want to make the same piece over and over and over. Like for some reason and like you said you know one way to move forward is to stay in the same place. Another way to move forward is make sure you're taking a big leap with everything you make and I think each one is good. I think kind of staying at the same place like with the multi iterations you run the risk of maybe not really pushing yourself from a design concept but it does give you a means to really hone in and dial in.
the details of what you're making to get to something good, where I think if you're jumping to really original ideas and you get to say 80 or 90 % of successful, and then you jump to a new thing and get to 80 or 90 % of successful, are you ever hitting the mark of where you're trying to go? I don't know. Michael Fortune, again, huge influence. said,
if you're always hit the target, maybe you're standing too close. Meaning, like, if you're hitting exactly what you're trying to, maybe you're not presenting enough of a challenge for you. So, it's like, okay, that too, yeah. And if you know Michael's work, Michael's work, he's probably one of the most brilliant contemporary designers. His stuff is like you look at it, it's beautiful, and you say, how in the world did that even get made, you know, with the, so.
Mike (38:03.687) Yeah, I don't think there's one right answer. You just got to kind of figure out what fits you, what suits you. I do think that staying in the same place or working only from published plans for fear of messing up, for fear that, if I really try to do it myself, it's not going to turn out good. That's not good. You know, I do think that, yeah.
We're making stuff out of nothing. Like we're starting from scratch. We may as well make it the way we want it to make it. And often we get constrained by this notion of making something that looks real. Like, wow. Wow, Mike, that looks like you could buy it in a store. You know, and it's like, no, and on one hand you cringe, on the other hand it's like validation, right? you made something that looked real. So I think, wow.
That is something maybe we kind of hold as a bar like, hey, I do want to make sure I'm making real furniture at the same time if we constrain ourselves by trying to make something that looks normal, we kind of rule out making something that looks abnormal but in a really cool way. I would much rather, even though I advocate against too much contrast and mixing too many woods in a piece, if someone sends in, you know, a piece to our reader's gallery,
It's got like 17 tropical hardwoods in a bathroom vanity. It's like hey man more power to you because That's you that's where you're at and I think I would much rather see that than something which was feels like a direct Copy of something in a pottery barn catalog that quote-unquote looks correct, you know, not that the you know, I love traditional shaker stuff I love super clean but at the same time man
Mike (39:56.477) Fly that flag, whatever, whatever makes sense. Yeah, learn the rules and don't be afraid to break them if that's just kind of what you're called to be doing. That's okay too.
Phil (40:24.236) Yeah. So the best of news and the worst of news sometimes, because it's like, it sounds really cool. And then it's like, all right, now I got a plan for this. So what are some of the things that you're looking forward to about this? Cause I know last year we were trying to do this as a first event and weren't able to generate enough interest on it. But now this time we know that we're going to have people with it.
Mike (40:54.71) Yeah, how about that? So, yes. I mean, I've only been to England and Europe once and that was with a family of four in tow, which is wonderful. I love my family, every single one of them and traveling with them is great. However, I'm kind of looking forward to going without.
Mike (41:22.924) the time constraint of the attention span of an eight-year-old sort of deciding, you know, how much time I can sit here and look at this, you know, medieval Gothic pierced carving on this piece of furniture. So I have a feeling, you know, I think the biggest thing is that we can kind of geek out with other woodworkers who are as passionate about the things no one else cares about as we are. So I think that's.
That's kind of wonderful. also, you and I are going to be there, but thank goodness. Well, I mean, I don't know about you, you, you're more culture than I am, but thank goodness I'm not the one leading these tours and saying, look at this. We, there's like a full on professional tour people who are like pointing out the good stuff to us and we're just along for the ride. So yeah, I think it's going to be a blast. I know that we've hit sort of the minimum in order to get
Mike (42:20.994) the trip to go but as far as I know there's a number of openings still there if folks want to sign up and tag along.
Phil (42:30.434) Yeah, we would love to make this a filled out trip. Yeah, we have a minimum of 15. We're there. We can do a maximum of 30. So there's room, but not a lot of room. So if this is something you've been interested in, in thinking about, but also want to make sure that it's actually going to happen. It's happening. So.
Mike (42:50.69) Yeah, so even a full trip is still gonna be pretty much a one-on-one experience, I think. yeah, so I'm excited about that. And thanks very much for the folks who signed up before it was even like a guaranteed done deal. Thanks for taking the faith and putting your name on there and getting us to that minimum. yeah, it was kind of like super excited to go, but because it didn't go last year, we're kind of thinking.
The longer it went until it filled up, we'll, maybe it won't go. Maybe I'll have it, you know? And then the first time they said, it's a go, you go, no, we're going, you have to get my passport and all that stuff. And that lasted for about five minutes until now I'm like super excited about it and looking forward to going.
Phil (43:37.186) Yeah. Yeah, I've been re-checking out the links on our itinerary on the different places and looking up some more of the things. you know, one of the first days we're going to be hitting the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which is just going to be a drink from the fire hose sort of situation where there's just going to be so much to see and look at. And then we get to narrow down and tour some
old houses and some schools and Logan you had the idea for one of the tour stops was the the boxwood plantation.
Logan Wittmer (44:18.022) I was waiting for an opening to say, having put a lot of effort into planning this and not going, I'm gonna be pissed if somebody doesn't bring me a piece of boxwood. So yeah, there's a... So a gentleman by name of Hugh Crompton works at the Wormsley Estate. I don't if he's the curator, but it is like a 300-year-old boxwood plantation that is...constantly being managed and harvested and Hugh sells boxwood blanks for woodwind instruments for Toolmakers and stuff like that. So, you know, I bought some boxwood, but I bought like the you know back alley boxwood That's all cracked and spalted. I haven't got any good blanks until you guys return with suitcases full for me But then the next day actually so I think that's on one of the days and then either the next day or following day, there's the Westin Burr Arboretum, which will be really cool. Cause that has a huge collection of, as a tree nerd, that has a huge collection of different species. And these trees have been, you know, they're hundreds of years old and that will be a really cool one as well.
Mike (45:36.02) Very cool. Yeah, Logan, you were pretty instrumental in kind of figuring out the itinerary last year. And from our staff, I was already kind of had something going and we were going to have a NISA tag along. So it wasn't until we kind of saw the latest itinerary from the tour agency or whatever that I kind of got to see it. So tell me more about what's in store for us on this.
Logan Wittmer (46:01.157) So as Phil mentioned, the Victoria and Albert Museum was one that was kind of like a it's like one of those like must go to type things. So what we found when we were planning this, we were trying to find. We were trying to find things that would interest us as woodworkers, you know, and there are modern furniture makers in London, but they're kind of factory type settings for the most part.
You know what I mean? So it's a lot of you going through and their C &Cs cutting outside. It's like we don't want to see that we want to see the history we want to see where a lot of. Are you know American design has its roots you know so? There is the London School of Furniture. I think that is I should probably pull up the should probably pull up the itinerary to make sure I'm not not talking about anything incorrect, but I'm pretty sure there's London School of Furniture making.
And there's a museum that I think it's maybe the Museum of the Home, Victoria and Albert Museum. And then there is some free time in, I think, on that day for people to explore London. So if you find some boot sales, that would be fun. There is a day of going through the Triton office. So visiting the Triton tool manufacturer.
I think they may even and probably should check this but I'm pretty sure that they are sending everybody home with a with a tool. So that'll be that'll be cool as well and then there is I I don't think they're associated with Triton but there is a giant.
Think of it like a woodcraft or a rockler, it's called Yandles. And it's right down the road from Triton. So there will be time spent there as well. They, know they have a huge lumber yard, which would be really cool. Would not be upset if somebody brought me some pear wood as well. So just throwing that out there to you too, that are going. There are a couple other museums. talked about the Arboretum already. I think there is a,
Either the day of the Arboretum, I think there may be a like manor house and estate that is getting traveled. I don't know if it's on the same property as the Arboretum or if it's right down the road, but there is a manor that day. There is an art gallery that has some kind of contemporary furniture and stuff like that. One of the days as well as the Gordon Russell museum.
I think that hit a lot of them. There are a couple really well-known tool manufacturer, or not tool manufacturers, furniture builders in London. And we reached out to several of them and they were all super interested in having groups through. But the general consensus was that their shops are very small. Like getting 30 people into somebody's shop would be very difficult in some of these, know, reached out to.
Richard Arnold and Dave Baron and you know a couple of people there so it'll be a fun fun trip I'm not upset you two are going because it's gonna be exhausting but it will be a fun trip
Mike (49:40.069) Yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to it. For me personally, I think like you said, anything where you can kind of take a step back and look at the things that modern makers were inspired by, I think that's really cool. And just me personally, just with a huge fan of the arts and crafts movement, kind of take, I know the English arts and crafts movement was a really big influence on the American side as well. Curious to see anything along those lines as well.
Logan Wittmer (50:11.235) The Rod Martin Manor, is, that's the same day as the Arboretum. That's an arts and crafts estate. So the entire thing is an arts and crafts estate. So that'd be really cool. So, there are, another thing I did not mention is there are several days where there are group dinners and group, you know, maybe a group breakfast, stuff like that. you know, you are with Phil, Mike and the entire group.
but then you will have free time by yourself as well. But then it's like, know, if you guys want come back here, we'll have dinner at, you know, the, the Chetland ham with everybody, you know, wherever. So.
Phil (50:59.822) It'll be wild. Some days I'm really excited about it. And some days I feel overwhelmed by like there's going to be, we have things that we're going to hit, but it's like, there would be so much else like to be able to see and do. And I'm kind of one of those guys that when you're watching a movie or a show on TV, looking at the stuff in the background. So I'm sure going through all of these houses, there's going to be all kinds of the like.
Phil (51:26.526) stuff in the background kind of things that are just going to be very fascinating to me and I'll probably end up having to spend a lot of the evening deleting photos off of my camera or off my phone just to make room for the next days.
Logan Wittmer (51:41.472) Yeah. The, the, the days are the travel and stuff like that is on a tour bus. you know, Travel's provided, you know, you're, you're basically, you get, get there and we'll take it from there or Mike and Phil will take it from there. will not. So, and our, our, our hope and our goal, and I think Phil, we've talked about this in past episodes when we were doing this last year.
Logan Wittmer (52:09.78) Our hope and goal is to do this yearly, not in the same spot every time. So the initial plan was to do the England trip last year, and then Mike and I were gonna go to Japan this year on a trip. But that may be next year's trip at this point. So our plan is to fill these out, or obviously we've hit the minimum, but we have up to 30 spots available. And then...
Logan Wittmer (52:38.358) you know, kind of go different areas in the world that have a rich history of woodworking or have contributed to the woodworking space in some way.
Mike (52:49.236) Yeah, very cool.
Mike (52:54.912) So yeah, and then for those of you in the Northeast who don't quite have the budget to head to England for a week to look at woodworking, May 9th and 10th, we're running our Fine Woodworking New England weekend event at Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking in Manchester, Connecticut. Basically, it's just that last year was free. This year's almost free. I think it's like 25 bucks a day entrance. That's just because we have a lot of demonstrators and we want to take care of them.
antique tools, food trucks, a number of vendors, both large and small, just jam-packed with demonstrators on a couple different stages and at various work benches throughout the weekend. So just show up, have some fun. That's really cool. And then you guys are doing something in the fall once again in this neck of the woods with the woodworking in America. You guys have got that pretty much underway as well.
Phil (53:50.904) Yeah, we're nailing down some speakers for that, presenters trying to get all that taken care of, trying to be a little bit bigger, kind of like along the lines with Fine Woodworking in New England, just a little bigger and better to make it a richer experience for people. Because I think yours last year was a really big success for where you were starting with. Same thing with ours with Woodworking in America.
Like, what's our next step on each of those?
Mike (54:21.18) Yeah. In the past kind of pre-COVID we've done sort of a similar style event to what you're doing, where it was more of a weekend retreat, smaller group of people, a little bit more intense. And this time just sort of re-introducing ourselves to live events once again. Um, I just wanted to do something kind of as much out of just saying thanks to everyone hanging in there for so long. So that was just a free show off and have a blast event.
and then we hit all kind of touch bases earlier at the handwork show in Iowa. was the first time I was there and I was really, really inspired by that event. Again, you just kind of show up and there's so much going on that that's was something I sort of wanted to emulate on a very, in a very small way in New England, just to kind of provide that, that type of event. two, two very different types of shows. And I think they're both, you should go to both don't.
Phil (54:58.903) Mm, yep.
Mike (55:19.984) Don't try to decide between fine woodworking New England and woodworking America. I really think, or England, I think you need to be doing all three if you really want to be fully rounded with your woodworking events.
All right, I think that wraps up another episode of the Shop Notes podcast. If you have any questions, comments, or smart remarks, I want to hear about them. You can send them in an email, woodsmith at woodsmith.com or leave them in the comment section on our YouTube channel. They're the sugary drink that keeps this whole thing running. So we usually have a good amount of comments that we can share from episode to episode and we'll jump back in with that next week.
Thanks Mike for joining us and we'll see you next time on the shop notes podcast. Bye everybody.
