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Here’s one thing I like about woodworking, especially in fall and winter. After you’ve reached a stopping point for the day’s work, you can squeeze extra entertainment out of your mistakes and offcuts. I’m finding that handplane shavings, by the way, make excellent fire-starters.
I live in northern New England, where wood is plentiful but daylight is not. At this time of year, the sun goes down around 4:30, and it is good and dark by 5:15. I think I must be partly solar-powered, because I tend to shut it down a little earlier in fall and winter. When I lived in Miami, things were different, but then in summers we really suffered – especially loading 4×8 sheets of plywood into the heated veneer press.
Anyway it’s a great time of year in most parts of the northern hemisphere for a few things – fires, reading and TV-watching. It always sounds odd to say this about hobbies and entertainment, but I really need to “catch up” on some woodworking TV shows. Tommy, I’m sorry – you’re a good guy and a good Bostonian, and I enjoyed having a beer with you in Cincinnati last month, but I am way behind on “Rough Cut.” Norm – I’m pretty sure you’ve got some streaming videos available somewhere online, and I need to find them. Roy – Roy! Roy Underhill – you started this whole thing and I know you’re not lacking for audience, but I have to find the time to watch the episodes I have missed over the many years you’ve been doing this stuff.
The Woodwright’s Shop, Possibly the Best Fall/Winter Woodworking TV Show
There’s something about “The Woodwright’s Shop” that makes it the leading candidate for my TV-watching time over the next months. It’s not the fact that I work for the company that sells his DVDs – after all, everything is available for free somewhere online. It is more to do with Roy Underhill’s approach to the craft. I should say crafts, plural. Roy brings a special element to both woodworking and entertainment. It’s always fun to watch and, if you follow along with the projects he shows you, you usually end up with a really simple and thoughtful gift for someone. So that takes care of some part of your holiday to-do list.
The other thing you end up with when you follow Roy is a lot of shavings, wood chips and offcuts. And we know what that leads to!
Before woodworking TV shows existed, there was another form of entertainment.
–Dan Farnbach
