Shop Notes & Rambles
The Rambles are the stories lived and learned over decades — the moments, the lessons, and the shop life that shaped the craft. They accumulate here, sorted by publish date. If you want the curated version, explore the Workshop Library.
Woodworking Design: Getting It Right
Good woodworking looks right because it’s balanced — and the simplest way to get that balance is the 60/40 rule. This story explains how a single proportion can improve drawer layouts, bowl turning, furniture design, and any build that feels “off.” If you want your work to look intentional instead of accidental, this guideline is the easiest place to start.
Thickness Planers: Taming Wood and Humbling Woodworkers
A thickness planer will show you exactly what wood is made of — and exactly what you’re made of. If you’ve ever had a board fight back, a knot explode, feed rollers stall, or grain tear out when you least expect it, this story will feel familiar. It’s about the machines that tame wood, humble workers, and teach lessons you don’t forget.
Sawdust
A Quiet Story about the first woodworking lesson no one teaches — the smell of sawdust in a dim shop, the memories held in an old radial arm saw, and how those early moments shaped a lifetime of craft.
The Jointer: Eliminating the Twist
The jointer is the difference between real woodworking and pretending. It’s the only machine that can eliminate twist, cup, bow, and crook — and when you don’t have one, every other tool in the shop becomes harder, less accurate, and more frustrating. When you do have one, woodworking finally becomes what it’s supposed to be.
Why You Never Have Enough Clamps: My Shop’s Heavy Duty F Clamp Workhorses
Woodworking clamps don’t get much attention, but they decide whether a glue‑up succeeds or fails. In every shop, F‑clamps quietly carry the load — holding boards straight, keeping edges true, and saving projects when the pressure is on. This story looks at why quality clamps last decades, how cheap clamps fail, and why the right setup on the wall can transform the way you work.
If your glue‑ups ever feel chaotic, this story shows how the right clamps bring order back to the bench.
Does Cancer Have a Silver Lining?
Some days cancer doesn’t just slow me down — it forces me to face the parts of my life I’m terrified of losing. This is one of those days.
Hickory: Toughness Forged by Storms and Time
Hickory is one of the toughest hardwoods in North America — a wood shaped by storms, ice loads, insects, and time. Its strength didn’t start as a shop‑floor truth; it began as a legend built from axe handles, old stories, and the idea of a wood that simply refuses to break. Before I ever touched real hickory, I knew the reputation. This is the story of how that reputation formed, and how the real wood proved every part of it true.
Radial Arm Saw — Best Cross-Cut Saw Ever Made
Back in the 1980s, a 10" DeWalt radial arm saw was the first machine that taught me accuracy. It sat in a proper cross‑cut bench, and nobody questioned its purpose. Over the decades I’ve used 9", 10", 12", and even a 16" industrial model, and each one shaped the way I work. This is the story of the saw that stayed with me through school shops, family shops, cheap saws, good saws, and the cast‑iron Canadian machine I use today.
American White Elm
This is the definitive story of American white elm — a foundational look at the tree, the wood, and the century‑long fight to keep it alive. Dutch elm disease erased elm canopies across North America, but Winnipeg protected its trees and preserved one of the last great elm cities. This article traces that history, the loss, the survival, and the rediscovery of elm as a material.
Kick Back
January in the Red River Valley is slow and cold, the kind of morning where cedar scraps, warm coffee, and steady work feel like comfort. But comfort can vanish fast. One rough ash board, one change in the saw’s hum, and a violent kickback turned a simple day into a hard‑earned lesson. This Ramble follows that moment — the shock, the teaching, and the way a shop reminds you that respect is learned, not assumed.
The Value of Wood
Woodworking today feels modern and predictable, but every board carries a much older story. To understand the value of wood now, we have to look at a time when survival depended on it. At York Factory in 1817, wood wasn’t a resource — it was life itself. Timber meant heat, shelter, tools, boats, and the ability to endure one of the harshest places in Rupert’s Land. This cornerstone story follows the men who cut spruce in deep winter, hauled timber across frozen muskeg, and rode the spring flood down the Hayes River, revealing the grit, skill, and human effort behind every piece of wood we touch today.
My First Bandsaw That Didn’t Suck
My First Bandsaw That Didn’t Suck traces the evolution of a woodworker through the machines that shaped his craft — from mid‑century Rockwell Beaver cast‑iron classics to cheap 1980s imports and finally the Canadian‑made General 490 that set the standard. If you’ve ever fought blade drift, rebuilt worn‑out guides, or wondered what separates a good bandsaw from a frustrating one, this story breaks down the real‑world lessons learned across decades in the shop.
🌲 Outdoor Woods — A Story From the Red River Valley
Outdoor wood lives a hard life on the Prairies — sun, snow, floodwater, ice, and decades of exposure. This story explores how outdoor materials have survived here for more than 200 years, from bur oak and elm in early river‑lot homes to treated spruce, painted softwoods, and modern HDPE furniture. Built from real fieldwork across Manitoba and neighbouring provinces, it shows outdoor wood exactly as it exists in the real world: weathered, painted, frozen, flooded, and still standing. This is the long Prairie record of outdoor wood — the climate, the materials, and the choices that shaped two centuries of building.
The Table Saw That Held Me Back
From a plastic‑cranked Rockwell Beaver to a cast‑iron General 350, this story traces the real difference between contractor saws and cabinet saws — accuracy, power, safety, and the moment a machine stops holding a woodworker back. If you’ve ever wondered whether upgrading your table saw matters, this is the lived experience behind the answer.
Ash
Ash is still healthy in Manitoba. Walk a shelterbelt, or a river trail and you’ll see it — solid trunks, full crowns, and none of the hollowing that’s reshaped forests in other provinces. Green ash still anchors prairie shelterbelts, white ash remains a reliable hardwood in the lumber trade, and black ash continues its long cultural lineage in basketry and traditional craft. The emerald ash borer is here, but the decline is early, quiet enough that most people don’t notice. Manitoba’s ash stands strong for now, but once a species begins to slip — whether it’s the commercial white ash, the cultural black ash, or the everyday green ash — the story widens fast across the prairie landscape.
Photography for Woodworkers
Woodworkers search all the time for how to do photography for woodworkers — how to light a project, how to make grain show up, how to take a simple shop photo that actually looks like the work you built. This Ramble walks through that in real examples: tools, tables, nightstands, and the same kind of shop light every woodworker already has. Controlled flashes, diffused sunlight, shallow depth of field, backlight, silhouettes — all the ways light can reveal the craft. It’s not about the camera. It’s about learning to see.
Douglas Fir
Douglas Fir is the wood that shaped my grandfather’s shop — the smell, the grain, the work of his era. Around here, fir belongs to yesterday, but the pieces he built, the boards that survived, and the finishes that still hold his touch prove how much this wood mattered. This is a story about the fir that built a generation, the craft it carried forward, and the way it’s scent can still pull me back to the place where my love of woodworking began.
What Woodworkers Really Do When the Power Goes Out
When the power goes out in a woodshop, everything changes. Machines stop, lights fade, and the whole crew shifts into cleanup mode, safety mode, or story mode — because a power outage in a woodshop isn’t a break, it’s a whole different way of working.
Cedar
If you’ve ever wondered why cedar is so light, so aromatic, and so naturally rot‑resistant, the answer goes back 70 million years. This story explores the science behind cedar’s behaviour, its deep‑time evolution, and why it remains one of the most forgiving woods in the shop.
Wood Doesn’t Lie: Lessons From the Woodpile to the Workshop
A lifetime of splitting firewood taught me the first truths about wood — grain, movement, strength, and the imperfections every tree carries. Those lessons followed me into the workshop, shaping how I read lumber, choose boards, and understand the character inside every piece of wood.