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New years is the traditional chance to be reborn with new convictions that are meant to make you a better, more ideal person. While I like the idea of deciding to do something that you believe will be an improvement, I dislike the tradition of making empty promises to yourself once a year. Real resolutions do not come from big grand announcements, they come from small personal decisions. Those are the resolutions that really last.

Several years ago when I finally quit smoking it came from finally deciding that I was just finished wasting my money and feeling like crap every morning. I didnt make a big announcement to my wife, children, or anybody. I made the decision, weaned myself down and eventually stopped. This time it worked or has worked for the last three years. I had quit before, one time for almost a year, but this time seemed to work because I was making the change for myself and deeply personal reasons. When I quit in the past it was because I was supposed to, this time around I wanted to.

The HMS Resolution (1771-1782), James Cooks ship, watercolour by midshipman Henry Roberts*

I think that the most important thing about a Resolution is not the completed goal, but instead the smaller victories gathered along the way. The manageable chucks of accomplishment that equal completion of the idea. Its like the old logic question "How does one eat an elephant?" and while your mind races ahead of you, trying to come up with complex solution to the problem, the answer is the most simple one possible. You eat an elephant one bite at a time.

The overall resolution for me is to be able to make a living building furniture by hand. I dont have to sell to the world, I dont have to have a president use one of my rockers, I dont have to sell a book about my work and ideas, though all three of those things would be awesome, they can be the next resolution beyond. Now this is not something I am sprinting towards. Im not buying into anything that remotely tingles of "Start Your Own Woodworking Business Now!" I am taking my time and building the foundations of something I want to last. I am not naive enough to believe in overnight success, I will take this problem one bite at a time.

*

I love the story of the tortoise and the hare. I remember it being read to us in kindergarten, and I remember wishing the turtle would punch the rabbit in the mouth. As an adult I am smart enough to see the nap the hare takes not so much as a show of his bravado and over confidence, but of a sign of his feelings of burn out. A state of emotional exhaustion and loss of interest. It is a subject that comes up from time to time among the woodworkers I follow on Twitter, and I can understand it. I have struggled with the feeling several times in the past. I dont have all the answers to help with burn out, but I do have one.

The best way I know to combat burn out along the path to a bigger goal is to make sure to celebrate the accomplishments made along the way, to remind yourself of where you started and see the distance you have come. That is the ultimate purpose of this post.

I started this year working inside a small shop, a very small shop, a space roughly 5 X 9 and sharing floorspace with a stairwell. 
I have since been able to upgrade into a bigger shop (thanks to the generosity of my father) I am now in a 10 X 30 steel building that has allowed me to take my work closer to the level it can be. It has allowed me to start to take my shop closer to the level I want it to be at. I realize that once I start to get busy building pieces for other people, I will have less time to work on the things I need and want for my own shop. So I am trying to take the time now to make some things for shop to get it to feel like the shop I have always wanted. This is reflected in things Ive built this past year like the Saw Till or the Sandpaper Storage Chest. Of the big things planned in the next year is a storage shelf for my hand planes and a joiners tool chest in homage to the Old World Tool Chest given to me this year by my Father in Law.
In the past I have judged my shop by the big tools I had, my goal was to always add one big thing a year. 2010 was no exception with my ability to bring a lathe back into my shop. But overall I have seen the shop grow in so many ways this year. I have added a couple of nice Saw Benches and a specific Joinery Bench designed to be taller and make cutting joinery easier. Beyond the lathe, I have been able to grow my hand tool collection nearly exponentially. I started the year with a small collection of planes. a total of seven, through the past year I have picked up and rehabbed several pieces and now I have just under twenty. Im looking to add a set of hollows and rounds, a wooden plow plane, and a set of blades for the Stanley #45 I picked up earlier this year but havent had a chance to rehab at all yet.

But planes are not the only area my hand tool collection has grown, from hand saws to chisels to braces and bits to marking tools. It has been a very satisfying year and I fear I may have to start to slow down that trend soon or I may find myself drowning, but then again what a sweet death that would be. I think the trick moving forward will to become a little more discerning.

What am I on the look out for as far as a bigger tool in 2011. Most likely, a full size bandsaw.

And here on the blog I had one personal goal that I was sure would pay off. I wanted to manage to write at least one hundred blog posts in a year and I did make that accomplishment. Following behind that has come other great things, including the chance to get to meet and trade ideas with many other woodworkers, from comments left on the blog to getting to know some folks via media like Twitter. (I still cant get over the ridiculous name, but the people that I get to know there are well worth putting up with it)

All in all 2010 was a tough and challenging year over all, but as I look back at some of the accomplishments and steps forward towards the better, I have to admit I am not unhappy and infact I am looking forward to 2011 with a good deal of curiosity and anticipation for things to come. I hope that you are all doing the same!

Cheers and Happy New Year!

Oldwolf

*"HMS Resolution" and "The Tortoise and The Hare" photos were used from the Wikipedia Commons website

So about a week ago I finally got moving on a new project - a knife holder. But then things changed. I started thinking about how my son has developed a real interest in the happenings up on the counters and how he likes to move the dining room chairs over so he can see, and grab, things off the counter. I decided that it would be better if the knives continued living in a drawer with a child lock. End of the new project.

So, it was time for a new, new project. And after resawing the stock for the knife holder, I was darn well going to use it. I settled on making a candle shelf. Using the dimensions of the stock, I designed a set of hanging shelves - well really a shelf/rack with two drawers underneath. Heres a shot of my plans:


The first step was to true one edge of the stock. I held it in the face vise and used a jointer to straighten the edge.


Then I marked the final width with my panel gauge riding on the trued edge - flipping it end for end to mark both sides.


There was less than 1/4 inch to remove, so I opted to plane it off rather than rip it with a saw. I started with a scrub plane for fast wood removal, and then finished up with the jointer. As I got close to the layout lines, the thin strips of wood started lifting up. If I was working square to the edge, they would have appeared on both arrises at the same time. As you can see in the photo below, only the near side was showing the curl, which meant I was high on the far side and needed to adjust my angle. This technique works a lot better than continuously bending down to look at the lines.


You can also see that I never really smoothed the resawn face of the stock. For the knife holder, this was unnecessary as the inside faces would not show. For the new project, the inside faces will show in the upper section, and I needed to spend some time smoothing those surfaces.

My design called for a curve on the upper half of each side. To lay out a true curve, I used a thin dowel. With one end clamped to the stock, I could flex the dowel until the curve was the right shape, and then trace it onto the stock.


After cutting the curve with my turning saw, I used a convex sole spokeshave to clean up the curve.


Instead of trying to replicate the same curve with the dowel for the second side, I just traced the first side. Heres the pair:


Next, Ill start to work on the joints: dovetails for the top and bottom, rabbets for the back, and dadoes for the shelf and drawer dividers. After that, Ill make the two small drawers.

 5/27 ... hmmm ... im still considering all the things i now have to learn about this new layout.  i used it many times yesterday during the first day of open studio. some good things; some bad things; some things i discovered ...

- its somewhat easier to navigate if you use the fly out menus to the right and select blog archive and look at one year or even one month at a time.
- if youre looking for metalwork, banjos, or info on finishing, claro walnut slab furniture, use the categories view.
- i wish it didnt have to cycle back through the home page everytime you close a blown up photo.
- if youre browser supports it, the flyout menu on the top left also has a magazine optiom that gives more information on the individual posts.
- i wish i could figure out if traffic was increasing, or in fact, has dropped to 3 visitors a day, which seems unlikely to me.  another place i looked says that my traffic shot up ... who knows?
- the < & > arrows at the top left are handy for scrolling recent posts.
- im gonna leave it for now and hopefully its working ... please add your two cents ... thanks. dan

from 5/25
 after all my whining about the new blogger interface, i thought it would be appropriate if i also said something really nice about google too.  they do amazing things for me and for dorset custom furniture, like hosting about 1500 of my photos on the internet for free.  and this morning, they sent me a friendly email encouraging me to try their new free blogger layout tools ... the coffee kicked in just before i hit the delete button and i checked it out ... though im not always an early adapter, ( i still dont have a smart phone or an ipad ) i thought this was too good to pass up ... so, now when you visit my blog, you see not only a photo from the current post, but you see the highlight photos from ALL of my 500+ posts.  click on the image, go to the post. what could be easier?  simple, direct and it brings our history to light without the frustrating hunt and peck ... please add a comment or send me an email to let us know what you think about it.  love it or hate it, id like to know ... i have pretty slow internet here and its still works ... so, enjoy ... check out the old stuff when you have a minute ... happy memorial day weekend and stop by for open studio if youre in the area ...