WOOD Magazine

As I write this, we are preparing for our annual issue-planning process in which we roughly map out a year’s worth of content. To keep that content well-balanced over the course of a year, we consider such things as project size and purpose, seasonality, hand/power tool mix, and many more. One of the criteria that is a bit harder to pin down is skill level. You see, we label and sort you, dear reader (and therefore our content), into one of three categories: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. And we try to include magazine content in rough proportion to the number in our audience who identify themselves in each of those three categories. But what is a beginner or intermediate or advanced woodworker? Over the years when we’ve asked you to self-identify as one…

I thoroughly enjoyed your take on provenance in Taking Measure from issue 286 (December 2022/January 2023) and can say that after 30 years of woodworking, I have learned that gifts are much more meaningful when accompanied by a story. In 2018, my family made the difficult decision to tear down my grandfather’s 118-year-old farmhouse where my father and, later, I grew up. The dairy barn my grandfather built in 1931, the year my father was born, had also fallen into disrepair. I saved much of the barn siding and continue to use it in gifts for my family. My first was this replica of the barn itself to display in the kitchen bay window of my mother’s house so she could still “enjoy the view of the barn.” Gerald Pavlik Big Lake, Minnesota I…

SEND US A PHOTO OF YOUR WORK Want to see your work showcased in WOOD® magazine? Send a high-resolution digital photo of your completed project to woodmail@woodmagazine.com. oneida-air.com…

Lee Shuwarger’s 60 sq. ft. shop in Colorado is, by necessity, the model of efficiency. The small space requires Lee to think through the workflow of a project from start to finish. More importantly, his shop requires him to carefully consider tool choices and usage because it doesn’t use electricity from the power grid. The shop occupies a concrete slab that originally supported a greenhouse, so the size of his shop was limited by the area of the slab. Lee framed the walls and roof himself, sheathing the exterior with T1-11 siding. In the temperate Colorado climate, Lee saved on construction costs by omitting insulation. With no electrical power run to the shop, Lee designed and installed a system that generates electricity from the sun. Two 150-watt, 12-volt panels on the roof…

I see various references to the steels used in woodworking tools such as O1, A2, etc. Is there a decoder ring that can help me figure out what these designations mean and which type is best? Bud Pierce Jamul, California A: Tool steel, also known as high-carbon steel, is a generic term used to describe steel alloyed with 0.5% to 1.5% carbon. The addition of carbon allows the steel to be hardened so that it will better hold an edge. Tool steels may also contain small amounts of other alloying elements, such as vanadium, chromium, manganese, or molybdenum. These elements impart different properties such as increased hardness, greater toughness (making the metal less brittle), or more resistance to abrasion or rust. O1, A2, D2, PM-V11, and M2 are the tool steels most commonly encountered…

I was never fond of using pegboard for storage because the hooks were always falling out when I removed a tool. My toolbox cart has three pegboard panels that were going unused. Then I thought of rivet nuts. Rivet nuts, sometimes called rivnuts, install like a rivet using an inexpensive tool. Internal threads in the rivets make them an ideal solution for mounting custom tool racks to pegboard. I found that metric M4×0.7 rivnuts are perfectly sized for standard pegboard. To mount custom tool racks made from ¾"-thick material, M4×0.7×30 machine screws are ideal. Rivnuts provide a secure and flexible option for storing tools and accessories. Nathan Walters Anchorage, Alaska THESE SLIDING RULES RULE Getting an accurate dimension for an inside measurement is best done with a pair of measuring sticks. Two sticks slide over each…