Featured Classes

Spoon Carving Spoon Carving with Russ Cherry


Saturday
June 24
9am-5pm
Class Size: 10
Tuition: $115
Item# 991405

 

Introduction to Marquetry with Jane Burke


Saturday
June 24
9am-5pm
Class Size: 8
Tuition: $84
Item# 991383

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Toshio Odate teaching

Send Us Your Ideas!

We are constantly trying to provide our customers with workshops and seminars that they will find interesting, informative and useful. Whether they are classes that focus on developing a particular skill set or workshops that revolve around a specific project, they are designed with you in mind.

If you have a woodworker or artist you'd like to take a class with; a topic, a tool or a technique you would be interested in learning more about; or a project that you've been wanting to build but you need a little guidance with, please let us know. We would love to have your input as we schedule classes and seminars. Feel free to contact us with any suggestions or ideas you may have.


Alan Noel's Finishing Corner

Alan Noel Good Sanding Habits

I'm sure we've all had the experience at one time or another of rushing to get the stain on a project and just when all looks great, the scratches left behind from hand or machine sanding come alive to remind us that more work needs to be done before staining.

Needless to say, sanding out the scratches that are made visible, along with sanding out the stain, is no fun indeed. A good way to avoid such frustrating circumstances is to be methodical in the way all is sanded. Here is what I do to avoid this setback.

Read Alan's Tips

A Weekend with Toshio
by Jim Dillon

A Weekend with Toshio You might think sitting in a demonstration class by a famous woodworker whose books and articles you’re thoroughly familiar with wouldn’t be worthwhile. The analogy is going to a concert when you already own all the group’s albums, and they play the same songs exactly the same way they always have. But a truly excellent musician comes to the show with a new perspective, and new or unexpected material. A perceptive concertgoer will catch musical nuances and elements of technique unavailable on recordings. And at the very best performances, there’s a palpable sense that artists and audience are feeding each other energy, almost collaborating.

That’s how it was the other weekend when Toshio Odate came to Highland Hardware. In a very dynamic, give-and-take series of presentations, Toshio wowed us with material none of us had seen, adjusted his topics based on attendees’ interests, amazed us with his hand skills, and left us all hoping he’ll come back soon.

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Oilstones

Ask the Staff

E-mail us at woodnews@highlandhardware.com with your woodworking or finishing questions. Selected questions will be answered in future issues. If your question is selected for publication, we'll send you a free Highland Hardware hat.

Question: I have a set of oil stones that I inherited from my grandfather. They appear to be in fairly good shape, however it takes forever to grind an edge with them. I suspect that they are just very clogged. Can you suggest a way of cleaning the stones? Also, what is a good technique to get them flat and suitable for honing plane blades?

Answer

D'Oh! Or, What My Mistakes Are Teaching Me

Reader Contribution

D'Oh! Or, What My Mistakes Are Teaching Me
by Richard McCandless

"Oh no! #&**$! Crap! Oy vey! How could I possibly do that AGAIN?"

That's the sanitized version of what I muttered to myself a split-second after making the fourth - yes, fourth! - dumb mistake on my latest project. And that's not counting my inefficient methods of work, time lost picking up other jobs before finishing this one, and the like. If you'd been watching me, you'd have said what Homer Simpson says when he makes a stupid mistake: D'oh!

A business executive told me the story of a new manager who made a terrible mistake in judgment. His error cost the company a lot of money. His boss called him on the carpet. "I suppose I'm fired," said the manager. "Fired?" said the boss. "How can we fire you? We just spent a quarter of a million dollars educating you!"

As long as my mistakes are educating me, they won't be quite as painful. It's just so frustrating to go back and repeat, replace and readjust!

What are mistakes telling us, then? I have a lot to learn about skills and efficiency. That's what the mistakes are telling me. Can I reduce them? Is there anything you and I can learn or buy or do?

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