Southeast Michigan Woodworkers

One of the things that I have enjoyed about SEMIWW is the varied stages of woodworking evolution of the different members.  I see others going through the same stages and interests that I have been through.  First I was smitten by the bug to make something of wood.  It quickly dawned on me that I needed to acquire tools.  I chose the handtool path because it met many of my needs, lack of shop space, quiet, not too dusty, and cheap.  After years and years of this stage, reams of sandpaper and gallons of WD-40 and time spent cleaning up rusty tools, I started doing what I had originally wanted to do, build some stuff.  

 Of course this stage requires research and practice.  First you have to learn about joinery, design and techniques then you have to practice.  Shop projects that no one else will see and small items that can be easily burned are good for this stage.  I would also recommend taking classes, besides the learning, you meet other woodworkers and get to share experiences, gloats and tall tales.  I have usually made friends with a few of the other students, found some to be really annoying, there is always someone that you can feel superior to and at least one that is so skillful that they are really intimidating.  It’s also a great way to meet the celebrity woodworkers that write books,  articles for magazines and are cited as experts on the net.  

So lastly, you reach the stage where you are fairly competent, at least the projects look similar to what you had in mind, and you have learned to hide or recover from your mistakes.  This is where I find myself and now I have two new problems.  First, I have way to many tools filling up the shop, and second what do you do with all of the stuff that you make.  My house is only so big and if I kept everything I make, my house would look like my shop.  This is where family and friends come in, you can give most of the things you make away.  I see this as having several benefits, you don’t have to look at your mistakes, everyone has different tastes so you can research many different type and styles of furniture, schedules are open ended, and if there are problems down the road you can always say, “Hey, what did you expect, it was free.”

I suppose that was the long way around to my point.  SEMIWW is going through a little upheaval at the moment, but let’s stick with it.  Thanks to a big effort by our computer savvy members, the website is working well.  The new board is slaving away on a back channel to improve meeting content and bring the fun back into our interactions.  The club is evolving and we all have to let our leaders know what interests each of us and lastly we all need to contribute our efforts to strengthen the SEMIWW.  I have enjoyed being associated with everyone in the group and I really would like to see it continue.  Woodworking is inherently a solitary activity and for me SEMIWW is an outlet that allows me to socialize with others that share the same interests and to gain and share knowledge about woodworking.

I’ve been going back and listening to old podcasts from Woodtalk Online, which is a great podcast by the way, and I took a little issue when they were talking about the future demise of the woodworking group. In their opinions, with the rise of the internet and sites such as our forum, sawmill creek, etc, information you used to go get from a group is now easily available online.

While our group isn’t perfect and lately we’ve had some issues, one thing was very clear from the meeting we had last night. Heck, we enjoy getting together. We enjoy checking out each other’s shops, tools, and projects. I don’t think anyone there thought of the forum as the answer for the group. Oh we love it and use it. It keeps us connected the rest of the month, but really, no  one wants to get away from meeting together.

It was the group meeting format that drew me into this woodworking hobby. I was looking for something to do that didn’t involve a computer all the time since that’s my day job, and found a group of guys who enjoy this very hands on, get your hands dirty, hobby. If it wasn’t for the group and the meetings that I drive out more than an hour for, I don’t know that I’d be sitting with a garage full of tools and a table in my hallway.

We’ve got a bunch of great guys in Michigan doing a bunch of really cool woodworking things. I’ve been hanging around some of them for the last year as part of the SEMIWW group.

The more I’ve been messing with this new hobby the more I’ve been wanting to setup a blog for the things I am doing. I figure maybe someone else out there might find it some light reading or it might also help someone else with their own stuff.

Toward this end I’ve setup this blog on the SEMIWW website. I’m secretely hoping to get more guys in the group to blog the every day stuff they run across and maybe even post about their projects as they progress. All too often you see the final picture, without any decent understanding of what it took to get there. If one blogs along the way, a lot more of that can come out.

So here’s my start. I’m working on putting up the ceiling in my garage so I can insulate the last space…above. I’m doing it in a different way. I’m not just putting up drywall, I’m trying to do it while keeping the joists exposed. I’ll try to post some pictures as I figure out exactly how it’s going to work.