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Matt Vanderlist, a pioneering blogger, podcaster and advocate for the stretchy pants industry, has launched a new podcast called “The Spoken Wood” that I think deserves some space on your iPod.
Here’s the idea: Take one part of the NPR program “This American Life,” mix in some of the country’s woodworking bloggers and make it free for everyone. Vanderlist has enlisted several woodworking bloggers, including Kari Hultman of The Village Carpenter, Tom Iovino of Tom’s Workbench and me to contribute.
The bloggers or Vanderlist himself will be reading some of their best blog entries for the show, which you can download to your computer or iPod to listen to. The first short segment featured Kari Hultman reading one of her classic posts from earlier this year in which she “opens a can of Martha Stewart” onto her shop and gets organized.
Vanderlist says he plans to post a couple of these stories a week. It’s easy to subscribe to the show via iTunes (so they will be downloaded to your computer or iPod automatically). Or you can listen to individual shows here.
These are great fun to listen to during the drive to work and might just introduce you to some new woodworking personalities. I definitely recommend you check it out. It’s free and it’s easy.
– Christopher Schwarz
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Thanks a bunch, unreal Chris!
I’m not the real Chris, but I’d suggest that it’s not necessary. Look at standard vices for instance, where the chop is much wider than the leg.
With a leg vice, the additional width of the chop will press the work against the edge of the bench top.
This question is totally off-topic, for which I apologize. I tried to add it to one of the workbench-related posts, but the comments seem to be closed on those. So here it goes: when building a workbench with a leg vise, is it necessary or advisable for the leg to be as wide as the vise chop? And if the leg can’t be that thick, is it necessary to offset it and add another (wider) board flush with the bench top side between it and the chop? Thanks and sorry again for the offtopic (I’m starting to build a bench and despite my research on the web I found no enlightenment on the issue and no pictures of transparent leg vise chops that would let me see what’s beyond them).