February 2012 Blog Posts (15)

The 2012 Veneer Technologies Craftsman's Challenge Awards competition is open for entries. Categories for entries include architectural woodworking, cabinetry, furniture, specialty items, store fixtures and student designs. The grand prize winner showing the best wood product using veneer will win $3,000. Each of the six category winners will receive $1,000. Third party industry leaders will judge all entries. Winners will be announced at IWF in Atlanta, Aug. 22-25. Deadline for entry is…

I just found out that today, Leap Day, February 29, would have been Taiichi Ohno's 100th birthday. Ohno was perhaps the most influential founder of the Toyota Production System and what we call today "lean manufacturing." John Shook of the Lean Enterprise Institute shares this quote from Ohno:  "We are doomed to failure without a daily destruction of our various preconceptions." Shook also announced the release of the e-book version of "The…

Here's a bit of woodworking nostalgia for you. The new Delta Power Equipment Corp. has given its permission for This Old Workshop to publish online its collection of vintage Deltagrams. Published from the 1930s through the 1970s, the Deltagram was a newsletter full of machinery tips, plans and projects. Although the equipment and techniques are…

Marketing seems to be a big mystery for most small shops. Most say they get their business by "word of mouth" but they don't really know how to generate good buzz much less how to get free coverage in the local paper or regional magazine. I ran across this no-nonsense basic overview of five PR tips for small…

Faced with declining membership, the AWI Georgia chapter decided to dissolve. The board wanted to do something useful with their remaining funds. They requested proposals from several educational organizations. WoodLINKS USA was selected. The money will be used to pay for site license fees for up to six schools in the state of Georgia. The remaining balance will be used to pay for teachers to attend the IWF in Atlanta.

WoodLINKS USA is currently looking for schools in Georgia interested…

A story in the Washington Post continues the saga of the huge disconnect between education and industry. It notes that contrary to all the doom and gloom talk about the demise of manufacturing in the U.S., manufacturing job openings are actually on the increase. The real problem is a lack of skilled workers to fill those…

Some of you may have seen my earlier blog Kitchen job training trumps cabinets in Carolina school. I just got off the phone with Jim McGrew who is leading the fight to save this program. Apparently he's been flooded with some 5,000 communications in support of his efforts to save a vibrant high school cabinetmaking program. The fight is far from over, but following…

If you've ever bought an Ikea product and used it for something other than its original purpose, you'll love www.ikeahackers.net. Here you'll see lights made from coffee mugs, a baby monitor fashioned from a table leg, and towel racks converted to a wine rack. The product names, Grundtal, Spontan and Narberg, are familiar but the end products definitely are not. You don't need raw materials to make a custom product, one suited for your…

Central Point, Oregon – February 6, 2011 – Microvellum, Inc., a leading developer of AutoCAD based design and manufacturing software products for the woodworking industry, today took one more step forward in their drive for global expansion by announcing a newly formed local presence in India.

“The market in India is growing at an amazing pace and local woodworking companies in India are embracing modern, automated technologies. The beauty of it all…

Virginia Tech has just announced that it is changing the name of its well-regarded wood science and forest products department. The new name will be the Department of Sustainable Biomaterials. According to a press release, the decision was "based on a desire to more accurately reflect the wide scope of education and research being done by the department and aligns with the college’s broader transition in recent years toward an increased emphasis on sustainability and the…

I ran across this disappointing story about the impending demise of a cabinet making program in a South Carolina high school. Apparently school officials, citing dwindling interest, plan to close both a four-year cabinetmaking program and a four-year auto shop program, including getting rid of both teachers and presumably liquidating more than $100,000 in equipment. The two programs…

I must say I think this looks pretty good ! This is a lower sash viewed from the inside ( I will post another picture of the outside) and the color of the Sapele looks nice with the glass colors. Only 20 more to go!…

Occasionally, there may be a need to utilize a bit of trigonometry to assist in your take off and estimating. There are a few spreadsheet tools that can be used to make the job easier. The PI function can be used in many radial calculations. The syntax is PI followed by open and closed parentheses ( ). In Excel, enter: =PI( ). To most of us, Pi is 3.1416. When you use the PI( ) function, you get 3.14159265358979. 

As an example, the circumference of a 24” circle is…

Ran across this entertaining story in the Washington Post about granite countertops. It talks about how they have become an institution of home ownership. There is some talk of other countertop materials, such as laminate, quartz, and concrete, but almost no mention of solid surface materials. And then, there are the comments, which seem to suggest that granite is old…

We attended the Travel and Adventure Show again this week and enjoyed the experience. I'm not sure if this is an indicator of the economy, but there was a much larger crowd than the previous year. We also noticed that the definition of "adventure" had been expanded to include many of the nearby Midwestern states. Is it as much of an adventure to go to Branson, Mo., as it is to go to the Amazon or Indonesia? One thing that didn't change was the exhibit of Andersen Windows at the show. They…