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Pardon me while I wipe a tear from my eye.

Ok, I'm a bit better now. I think. Sniff.

No, I'm not giving up hand tool woodworking. On the contrary. However, given the circumstances of our upcoming furlough, I would like to sell my English style bench here in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

I am asking 18,000 Dominican pesos. Also, I can throw in a bunch of pieces of wood I have laying around. For those of you that haven't been platana'o, that is a tad less than US$500.

*Edited to add: Thanks for reading. The bench is sold. This fall and winter, I plan to build a new one and talk about it here on UnpluggedShop.com

—Luke

I haven't done any woodworking. It's been a long time. There are things to build, things to repair, tools to maintain, and problems to solve. It isn't so much for lack of interest or desire on my part.

It is just that I have been having some health issues over the last year or so that have left me without the mental or physical energy to chisel, mortise, hammer, saw, or anything else to complete a project. I'm still not feeling too energetic, but I'm on the mend and slowly getting better.

My tools and shop have been sadly neglected. There is dog hair and dirt everywhere. The bench has stuff on it. The tools are probably starting to rust and need sharpening. I still don't have a tool chest. It is well under way, but a long way from being finished. My tools are mostly thrown together in a plastic container. I don't even want to look in there.

Most of the projects I had started are somewhat bigger projects that I just don't feel like getting into yet.

It's a sad tale of a hard year. Where do I start to get plugged in again to my unplugged shop?

—Luke

It's been a while since I have posted anything on this blog. The truth is, I haven't been doing much woodworking or writing about it. I am starting to put together an 19th Century style toolchest though.

I have been enjoying the blog posts in the aggregator. Kudos to all of you who take the time to write about what you are doing.

I just finished upgrading the site to the newest version of the Drupal CMS software I use. It was a nice release on the part of the developers, and the upgrade went smoothly. It fixed a couple of long standing bugs with the site. I didn't introduced any new features in this upgrade although I may tinker a bit later on. However, if you notice anything that isn't working properly or any links that I missed and didn't get updates, please drop me a note.

The observant will notice I removed the Amazon links from the directory listings. It seems nobody used them, and I decided to forgo the trouble of updating them.Read more

Regular visitors to the site will have noticed that there has been some trouble with the latest news entries where I aggregate blog headlines from around the blogosphere.

My apologies for the inconvenience. I never really took the time to get totally to the bottom of it, but I changed and updated some feeds and settings, and it seems to be working fine now.

I do hope the aggregator serves to introduce people to more of the great blogs and resources that are out there, and that it will help some newbies find their way more quickly through the hand tool universe.

Also, I wish to thank those hard working bloggers who each contribute in their own way to our education and inspiration. For those who haven't posted in a while, there is no time like the present!

My favorite woodworking forum is the www.sawmillcreek.org community. There is an interesting discussion going on over there in response to a question about how to get started in hand tool woodworking.

I find it interesting that there are a lot of different answers. As I read through the various posts, many different tips were offered including dvds, books, websites, classes, and so forth.

Perhaps the most important thing to take home from that discussion for the newbie is that you do need help, and that help is readily available in a lot of different ways to suit your time, budget, learning style, and so forth.

For many power tool woodworkers, hand tool woodworking tends to conjure up images of dulls saws hacking through wood and and chisels too dull and rusty to scrape glue. It doesn't have to be that way.Read more

There is good news and more good news in this post. First the good news.

I just counted the number of blogs tracked by my blog aggregator. By my latest count, we are now up to 57 blogs that I am tracking here on this site dealing with hand tool woodworking. Nice.

Now the other good news. There is a great opportunity here for women woodworking bloggers. Of the 57 blogs tracked, I can think of only two that are run by ladies. One of them, The Village Carpenter, is my second favorite woodworking blog and is a particularly good example of how to keep a blog.

Now I understand there are more men working wood than women. A lot more. Don't get me wrong, I am really happy that a lot of guys are doing blogs and podcasts. I would just like to see more women bringing their unique viewpoint into the discussion.

Will the real hand tool woodworker please stand up?

Is he the old-world luthier, the blogging hobbyist, the amish man, the period reproductionist, the advanced master of all tools, the African laborer, or the traditional village craftsman?

I recently posted in this blog asking about the number of hand tool woodworkers in the world. Basically, I framed the question in as strict a manner as possible without excluding myself. (Excluding myself would be really dumb, now wouldn't it?)Read more

The question has come to my mind lately as to how many woodworkers there are who are focused on using hand tools eschewing the use of power tools.

Defined in the strictest sense and including only those who do so by choice as a hobby and have a reasonable collection of tools (eliminating kids with pen knives and third world carpenters working with a single rusty plane or brace, but not Windsor chair makers or instrument makers), I would guess that we are indeed few in number- possibly numbering fewer than 1,000 worldwide.

This blog gets well over 100 visitors on a daily basis, but I don't think that the majority of my visitors fit the hand tool woodworker description in the strictest sense.

I am now tracking over 50 blogs on this site, but relatively few are dedicated entirely to hand tool woodworking.Read more

Once upon a time, there were cheap tools to be found. Across the land at yard sales, estate auctions, antique shops, in old barns and basements, and even in that newfangled online auction, there were deals to be found on tools eagerly awaiting restoration to their former glory.

Long gone are the days of yore. Upon us now are offerings of almost worthless piles of quietly rusting iron lying hither, thither and yon. Grandma is passed on, Grandpa's tools too. Methinks there are no old tools to be had that can be bought with my meager pence.Read more

Workbenches: From Design And Theory To Construction And Use by Chris Schwarz is a book that every amateur hand tool woodworker should study thoroughly.

For most hand tool woodworkers, there is no more important tool in our shop than our workbench.

I just don't know how I can overemphasize the significance of this book. If you are thinking about buying or making a workbench, you should just get it. If you must, borrow it, but get it.Read more