Hitting The Wall

When I was in Junior High and High School one of the sports I excelled in was long distance running: both cross country and the longer track & field events. One of the things I learned while training to run is that all distance runners reach a point where every fiber of their bodies is screaming at them to stop, to quit running, to rest. This message is delivered via considerable amounts of pain, noodle-like legs and feet of lead. We called this “hitting the wall”.

By ignoring my body’s command to cease punishing it and pressing onward, time seemed to slow down; I felt as though I was just plodding along in slow motion, running through Jell-O. But the pain would ease up (because I’d go numb), I could no longer feel my feet only hear them thumping into the dirt). In reality I was still sprinting along, but I was totally unaware of that. And I found that not only could I continue to run after 'hitting the wall', but I actually had untapped reserves to call upon if needed.

I’ll spare you the “Glory Days” tale of my exploits and the state records I set. I dredge up this dusty old memory only to use it as an illustration; for I have Hit The Wall.

For the past three weeks I’ve been working overtime to get a trio of our English Garden Benches completed and shipped to Vermont in time for a wedding. How I got myself into this pickle isn’t important, but here I am. I’ve been coming into the workshop as early as 3:30 AM and working as late as 10:30 PM 6 days a week. Sundays I do no woodworking, but I do use time after church to do yard work, and catch up on chores around the house as well as the things I’ve volunteered to do for our church like maintain the web site (http://www.newportpresbyterianchurch.org/) and burn the Sunday Sermons to CDs that can be shared with our shut-ins or used as a resource in the community.

By last Friday night I was all tuckered out, and was reminded of my early days as a runner. This work is not normally as strenuous as a cross country run, but when you do it 6 days a week for 17 hours or more a day, for three straight weeks… then add to the long hours the fact that this is not your normal piece of furniture, the parts for this bench are made from massive chunks of timber and are much heavier than comparable parts for a regular chair or bench so juggling these pieces all day long takes a toll on the neck, shoulders and back. Then add to that the fact that for the past two weeks we have been experiencing unusually high temperatures for June. Actually these temperatures are unusually high for any time of the year for this region. Just a few years ago if it ever got over 85° even in August it was considered to be extremely hot. But here we are with day time temperatures running 93° to 97° every day for two weeks. We’re setting new records! Add to all of this the fact that I passed the half-century mark a few years ago and I’m not exactly as fit as I ought to be -- too much time spent making sawdust and not enough time spent hiking in the woods. Roll all that up into one big ball of wax and mash it into the mold of my life and you have a casting of why I am about spent.

Friday night I “hit the wall” so to speak. When I got home I showered, fell into bed and went comatose for the entire night. Didn’t wake up once, which is odd for me. I also missed my morning wake-up call. Normally I wake up at 4:30 all by myself, Saturday I didn’t flutter an eyelid until 6:00!

I spent Saturday in the shop, but Tim and Marie came to help so we got a lot done and it wasn’t as hard on me as it could have been. Another deep sleep Saturday night. Sunday morning I almost played hooky from Church, but decided that I really didn’t want to do that, I get a lot of benefit from attending, and I’m an Elder and should be leading by example.

Sunday afternoon I needed to get the lawn mowed. We have company coming to stay at Mom’s house and it’s expected to rain all week long, so this is my last chance to get the place looking less like a hay field. Yeah, I know, mowing a lawn is not a big deal to most. You haven’t seen my “lawn”. The photo is just a piece of it. We live on the side of a mountain and there is about a acre of cleared land that serves as a lawn, the rest is forest. There are three flat spots, carved into the slopes around the edges for our house, Mom’s house and our workshop, everything else is a slope, some are steep slopes. I’ve rolled our lawn tractor twice trying to mow some of those slopes… I use a weed whacker for those now. And… the tractor died on me a couple of weeks back, so I’ve been using a push mower that we normally reserve for trim work. UGH! But, I figured that this would help correct that ‘not quite as fit as I ought to be’ problem. Most of the time it’s just a good (3 hour long) work out. But this week I’m exhausted before getting started. This is where that ‘reaching down inside and finding the reserve’ bit comes into play. I reached, I found, I mowed. Then I collapsed on the sofa and took a nap.

But, I am SO close to the finish line. Just a couple more days and the benches will be on their way to Vermont. I just need to dig down for that last little bit of strength, take another dose of Ibuprophen, grab another bottle of cold water and continue to throw those leaden feet out in front of me... for just a few more steps.

Once the benches are enroute, I have promised to give myself an entire day off. I have it all planned out. I’ll sleep in late then get up and fix a hearty breakfast of eggs, (low fat) sausage and toast, then I’m going to stretch out on the sofa and re-watch the entire series of "Firefly". Maybe take a nap in the afternoon. Then when Marie gets home from doing her stuff in Newport we’ll go out to Elkmont and watch the synchronized fire flies. It’s a fascinating thing to see and no one knows just how they accomplish it. Or why. And this just happens to be the one week a year that they do it. It’ll be a micro vacation – just one night.

I’ll be back in the shop on Friday to prepare for the next order on the production schedule, but from that day on it’s back to my usual 8:00 AM to 7:00 PM days, 5 days a week. Making a long, hard run like this occasionally is interesting in that it proves that I can still do it, but it’s definitely not something I want to do again any time soon.

Why The Change?

We have for the past three years or so been posting daily updates of the projects that we are building to a special blog called Daily Shop Notes . Before we started blogging we posted web pages on our site that chronicled our adventures in woodworking, but they didn’t get much traffic. Mostly just the person for whom we were building the piece. We wanted to increase the exposure these efforts got.

The blog is syndicated through a number of RSS feed sources, so people who are looking for woodworking articles – or just blog browsing – come across this far more often. If you are unfamiliar with RSS, CLICK HERE to go to our explanation of this new way to stay informed on a variety of topics.

The blog gets lots of traffic, but very little of that traffic is stopping in to shop with us, they’re just peeking in the window as they walk by. I know this because our web site generates traffic reports that tells me how people are finding our web site, where they are coming from and what they look at when they get here. It does not break it down by individual visitor, so there are no privacy violation issues here, but the How and Where and What are important to a webmaster in determining what’s working and what’s not. The current blog is not. Why is this important?

The whole thing got started as a way to allow our customers to watch as we work. Like a race shop with big plate glass windows that allow fans to see into the shop and watch as the race cars are prepared. But there’s a practical side too. For one thing if the piece we’re working on does not look the way the customer envisioned it, they can bring that to our attention and we can discuss it and make changes during the construction, not after it’s completed. Also, the most common comment we receive from our customers is how much they enjoyed watching their new piece of furniture take shape. Some have said it gave them a much greater sense of appreciation of how fine furniture is built and how much skill and dedication goes into it. That’s a good thing. Too many people think that furniture is made by pressing a button that fires up a machine, feed wood in one end and furniture comes out the other. Maybe it works that way in Taiwan, but not here on Piney Mountain.

While a blog format does a good job of keeping people who are following along on a daily basis informed, those who come by in the middle of a project – or well after its completion – have a terrible time with it because they have to read the thing backwards. By going back to posting construction articles on our own web site, we can offer a home page for each project and separate pages for each day or step of the project. By linking the pages together with PREV and NEXT tabs a viewer can move through a project like flipping the pages of a book. By using the project Home page like the index of a book, a visitor can start his reading at any point. Making access easier will encourage people to view our work, and perhaps convince them that we know what we’re doing and should be entrusted with building *their* special piece of furniture.

So, that’s what we are hoping to accomplish with the changes to our blog. We hope you enjoy it.

Doug & Marie

The buzzard, the bat, and the bumblebee

I received the following in an e-mail today and liked it so much I thought I'd share it here.

THE BUZZARD: If you put a buzzard in a pen that is 6 feet by 8 feet and is entirely open at the top, the bird, in spite of its ability to fly, will be an absolute prisoner. The reason is that a buzzard always begins aflight from the ground with a run of 10 to 12 feet. Without space to run, as is its habit, it will not even attempt to fly, but will remain a prisoner for life in a small jail with no top.

THE BAT: The ordinary bat that flies around at night, a remarkable nimble creature in the air, cannot take off from a level place. If it is placed on the floor or flat ground, all it can do is shuffle about helplessly and, no doubt, painfully, until it reaches some slight elevation from which it can throw itself into the air. Then, at once, it takes off like a flash

THE BUMBLEBEE: A bumblebee, if dropped into an open tumbler, will be there until it dies, unless it is taken out. It never sees the means of escape at the top, but persists in trying to find some way out through the sides near the bottom. It will seek a way where none exists, until it completely destroys itself.

PEOPLE: In many ways, we are like the buzzard, the bat, and the bumblebee. We struggle about with all our problems and frustrations, never realizing that all we have to do is look up!

Sorrow looks back,
Worry looks around,
But faith looks up!
Live simply,
Love generously,
Care deeply,
Speak kindly
And trust in our Creator Who loves us.

How to Eat An Elephant

There is a wise old riddle: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time and keep eating. This bit of wisdom can be applied to many of the large tasks we tackle in life. Recently I’ve heard from a number of people who are interested in woodworking but feel they lack the time, space and tools necessary to make a proper hobby of it.

Sometimes these excuses serve only as psychological barriers to doing any woodworking at all. Perhaps all you really need, is to become a little more disciplined in how you approach things. Here are a few bits of advice on how to get your woodworking more organized:

Finding The Time
Effective time management does require some self discipline. When we think of discipline we often think of military garrisons and monasteries, which have similar approaches to organizing their daily tasks. These societies use structured schedules to let them know when they are supposed to be where and what they're supposed to be doing. Our lives have similar schedules although maybe not as strict. You know when you have to be at work, when you go home, when dinner is and what time you usually go to bed. Interspersed within and between these events are other tasks and natural pauses or open time. The trick to finding more time in your day is to turn these pauses into usable time so you can work some wood or at least think about it.

Maybe you could eek out 30 minutes to an hour in the shop once a week with shorter periods every couple of days just to sharpen a tool or sweep up. At least you’re in the shop and being productive. Your work day may have pockets of down time where you could find it pleasant to work out a design problem on paper, visualize a complicated assembly, mentally organize your physical shop for efficiency, or plan out your next woodworking session. Make use of those down times.

For one week, keep a notepad and pencil with you and take notes of the start and end times of everything you do. Don’t waste lots of time making detailed notes, just the times and a quick note on what you were doing… be HONEST, if you spent 10 minutes sitting on the sofa staring at the wall, put it down as a break. At the end of the week, review your notes and look for patterns that indicate a pocket of consistently free time. With slight modifications to your schedule you may find you can combine a few minutes here and a few minutes there into blocks of useable time. It will amaze you how much time you have that you didn’t know about because it gets frittered away.

One thing that I see a lot of is that the people who complain the most about having no time for themselves are the ones who have a telephone in their pocket and are compelled to answer it every time it rings, no matter where they are or what they are doing. When you hand control of your time over to dozens of friends and relatives, you lose control. Put it on voice mail, get their numbers and call them back when it’s convenient to you.

Television is another time stealer. Most people I know sit in front of the TV for hours every day and don’t even realize it. Want to find time to work some wood? Give up one program each evening and you’ll have 7 full hours a week to put in the shop – practically a full work day’s worth. The time is there, just make better use of it.

Planning Projects
Whether a professional or a hobbyist I find it useful to plan and organize my shop time before I step into the workshop. I like to use checklists I make before beginning a project. These lists keep me on task so I don't piddle my time away. They might be as simple as a list of parts to get out or as complex as a step by step cut list and assembly order. The point is to create efficiencies so you not only enjoy making the project but eventually get to complete it. Remember the elephant? The discipline comes from staying on task and not starting something else until your current project is done. Do this and you won't have 100 half-finished projects taking up space all around your workshop.

Start simple. Find projects that are within the range of your skills and tools. Getting grandiose right away will only serve to discourage you, but a well completed project – even a small one – will encourage you and build the skills needed to try something a little more challenging on the next one.

Building Skills
With each project you do try to learn something new. Perhaps you'd like to learn to hand cut mortise and tenon joints as an alternative to the biscuits you've been using. Choose a non-critical part of the project and give it a try. You can use your shop time to practice a new skill and not necessarily do any project. In thirty minutes a day for a couple of weeks, you can learn many new joinery techniques by cutting test joints on scrap pieces, try out a new finish, or anything else you wish. Woodworking skills build upon one another. Do this for a year and you'll be amazed at what you've learned that can be put to good use in your projects.

Finding sources of new knowledge is easy. There are always local classes available through woodworking specialty stores, most woodworking guilds offer classes as well. For the self motivated all of the woodworking magazines carry articles that show you how to do new things, and these can be studied and practiced on your own time schedule. Buy a selection for a few months from your local magazine rack and see which ones are best suited to your interests and skill levels before subscribing. The Internet is also a valuable source of information.

Work Space
We all dream of having the perfect woodshop. I've had four full-time workshops over the years, and I can guarantee you none of them was (or is) perfect. All but the latest lacked proper heating and air conditioning, dust control, a decent finishing room and adequate space to lay out and assemble parts. None of them had all the tools I wanted. But don’t let such shortcomings deter you from trying. I know several contractors who keep their shops in a pickup truck or van. They roll up to a job, unload the tools and start building cabinets, stairways or cutting trim right in front of the customer's house. Not much fun in the winter or when it rains, but somehow they manage to make a living and build nice stuff.

Some good examples of space discipline are in The Workshop Book by Scott Landis. I keep a copy on the shelf in my office for occasional inspiration. One featured woodworker has his shop in the kitchen pantry of his apartment. He has to open a window to plane long boards. Granted he doesn't have any machinery, but he enjoys his craft nonetheless. Woodworking requires invention as much as it does space.

Getting the Tools
We never have all the tools we want but if we use our heads, we can decide what we can build with what we do have. You do not have to have a fully equipped dream shop to start working wood. If nothing else grab yourself a block of basswood and a pocket knife and learn to carve. It’s a start.

I recently read about a fellow who had been collecting tools and woodworking machines for almost 7 years. When asked what projects he'd been working on, he replied none, because he didn't have all the tools he needed. He had missed out on 7 years of pleasurable woodworking because he hadn’t completed his tool collection. He might not have been able to do everything imaginable, but he prevented himself from doing anything at all because of a perception of need. When I was a kid I came up with all kinds of nifty projects with little more than a coping saw, a hammer, screwdriver and an eggbeater drill. Just because your shop doesn't look like Norm Abrams doesn't mean you can't enjoy making some sawdust.

Start with the tools you need the most. To do that you have to have some idea of what you want to build. If you want to turn bowls your tool needs will be different than if you want to make furniture which will be different from what you need to build cedar canoes. If you haven’t decided what you want to do – or want to try a little of everything – focus on getting the most often used tools first: table saw, router, drill press, finish sander. These are the heart of most every woodshop. Add a few hand tools for fine work and you can build an awful lot of good stuff.

An often repeated piece of advice is to “Buy the best tools you can afford.” This is good advice, and one of the hardest to follow when you are working with limited funding. This does not mean “buy the most expensive tools you can find”. Sometimes more expensive means it is built better, but sometimes it doesn’t, or at least not enough so to be worth the much greater price. But buying the cheapest brand of some tool will almost always yield disappointment.

When considering the purchase of brand new tools, read the magazines tool reviews. Libraries have back issues. Look for the ones giving fair and impartial reviews, not the ones simply promoting their advertisers. Check Consumer Reports. Ask fellow woodworkers for their opinions. Don’t ask the salesman at the tool store.

Don’t disregard used tools just because they’re not shiny and new. Estate auctions, farm sales and flea markets often yield favorable prices on good used equipment. And old doesn’t mean obsolete. Most tool nuts will agree that older tools: those made 20-40 years ago, the behemoths that look like refugees from the Industrial Revolution were some of the best built tools ever made. They may lack the technology of a modern equivalent, but if they have been well cared for they are good sturdy tools that can be acquired inexpensively. But do your homework, know what you’re getting before plunking down the cash.

So, don’t wait until you have all the time, space and tools you dream of to start working with wood. And you don't have to become a monk or join the Army to acquire discipline, but you do have to get in there and work some wood! Just remember that elephant blue plate special; get started, keep at it and don’t forget your napkin.

And the winner is....

The above is a scan of the newspaper article that appeared in several local newspapers. Click on it to read full size. We get the Newport Plain Talk, so I have that article, but am told that it also appeared in the Greenville Sun, the Morristown Citizens Tribune and the Knoxville News Sentinel. Just a few of the others who have covered the contest include Microsoft, MSNBC (I've received e-mails from MSN users who said they read about us on their home page news), Yahoo, WebWire, MoneyCentral, MSN Money, PRNewswire and of course StartupNation.

We were notified on November 5th that we had placed 6th in StartupNation's Home Based Top 100 contest, under the "Boomers Back in Business" category. While there are no cash or goods prizes, the advertising alone is worth the effort of entry.

Normally, when I check in on our web site during the day we show 10 to 20 guests on line. Yesterday we were showing 120 to 140 guests (and ocasionally a member) online at any given time, all day long! This morning we're back to normal, showing 19 as I write this... oop, it just went up to 22.

They say it pays to advertise, especially when it's free!

You may click the winner emblem above to go to our winner blurb on the StartupNation web site. From there you can read about other winners as well as details of how the winners were selected. One of the determining factors in this contest was public voting, and so we must thank those of you, our friends and readers, who took the trouble to vote for us.

Thank You!

The Leaves of Fall

Fall is once again upon us here in the Smoky Mountains. October is historically one of our busier months in terms of tourism as the “leaf peepers” arrive to take in the breath-taking vistas of color that bless us each fall. Well, most of the time anyway.

We have had a few Autumns that were disappointing in terms of the vibrancy and longevity of the foliage colors. This year appears to be destined to be one of those years.

Have you ever wondered (or had your kids ask you) why do leaves change colors anyway? Here’s why:

The leaves of trees and other plants contain three main pigments: carotene, anthocyanin, and chlorophyll the photosynthetic pigment which captures the sun’s energy to make food for plants. As the most abundant pigment, chlorophyll is what gives leaves their green hue in spring and summer.

Another chemical in leaves, auxin, controls a special band of cells at the base of each leaf stem, called the abscission layer. During the growing season, auxin prevents this layer from fully developing and blocking the tiny, internal tubes that connect each leaf to the rest of the tree’s circulatory system.

In the fall cooler and shorter days trigger an end to auxin production, allowing the abscission layer to grow and cut off the circulation of water, nutrients and sugar to the leaves. When this happens, chlorophyll breaks down rapidly. When the chlorophyll is out of view carotene creates the yellow in maple, aspen and birch leaves and anthocyanin provides the oranges and reds of maples, sumacs and oaks. When there’s less sun, anthocyanin isn’t as chemically active and leaves are more orange or yellow than red.

Other factors such as the amount of rain and temperature variation can also affect the intensity of color in fall leaves. This year we endured a near record breaking drought and unusually high temperatures. The leaves are therefore not turning the bright colors we look forward to, but are just withering up and falling off the trees. Mostly. There are exceptions.

We have one young maple tree in our yard that must have some extra deep roots, for it is blazing a bright red while the others maples around it are barely orange and their leaves are littering the ground already.

But, even without the usual vibrance of color, fall is still a beautiful time of year and we enjoy sitting on our porch in the evenings and enjoying the views. We also enjoy the crisp evenings in front of a craclking fire in our fireplace. Let winter come; we're ready!

Doug-Bob.

Note: Material for this article was provided by University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Da Big Sign Caper

In August of 2003 Smoky Mountain Woodworks and Landrum Machine & Cutlery (i.e.: Marie and I and our friends Len & Varena) started Treasures of Appalachia, Inc.. The purpose of this was to help local artists find buyers for their work. Naturally “local artists” included us. The problem is that most of the many, many artists who live and work in this county live and work in places that are tucked away up in the mountains, far from the major thoroughfares; difficult to get to even if you know where you are going. And if you are a visitor to our county, pretty near impossible to find.

So we wanted to open a gallery where locals couple display their work and travelers could find it easily. This effort has had a varied amount of success. Overall, we think we’ve been blessed considering the extremely limited amount of resources we have to work with.

In August of this year (2007) we moved the gallery in which over 50 local artists were displaying their work to a larger and in many ways superior location. One of the tasks that needed accomplishing was to move the big road-side sign and put it up at the new location. We had to leave the framework because it was cemented into the ground, but we took the sign boards to be re-erected at the new gallery. We did that last Tuesday.

To build this sign, Len and I cut all the parts and assembled them on the ground to make sure everything will fit, then disassembled it, carted the pieces up a pair of extension ladders and reassembled them aloft.

Don’t let that fool you though, the components were plenty heavy and it was enough of a strain doing it this way. There was no possible way we could have gotten it up there fully assembled without a crane. Most of the frame is made from pressure treated 2x12s with a 2x6 for the top rail. If you’ve never worked with pressure treated lumber fresh from the lumber yard, let me tell you; it’s quite wet and much heavier than dry lumber the same size. The side pieces are actually 8 feet long, but extend down between the sign boards of the lower sign 4’ to help stabilize the sign so the wind won’t topple it over. Lag bolts will hold only so much, you know. The lower sign is 8’ x16’, our sign is 4’ x 12’ and the point where the two join is 13’ up in the air.

During this reassembly I was using a drill as a power screwdriver. Once, while holding the driver with my left hand and hanging on with my right hand because the direction of the screw and position of the ladder demanded that I work left handed, I was having to apply considerable pressure to keep the driver bit seated in the head of the 3” long screw. The driver bit slipped off the screw and augured into my right hand. The result was a rather deep puncture wound in the fleshy muscle bit between the index finger and thumb of my right hand. It bled like a stuck pig and looked awful as blood ran down my arm. Stung a bit too. Luckily it started to rain and that washed some of the blood away.

The wound is healing nicely now, no signs of infection or permanent disability. It’s tender though.

Last night I was sitting at the computer, engrossed in editing an instructions file for Treasures shopkeepers, when the puncture gave me a sharp, stinging pain. Surprised by the sudden pain I glanced over at the hand. The wound is scabbed over, with a dark spot in the middle and little “puckers” running out from the middle. Well, to my distracted mind it looked for all the world like a spider.

My distracted Brain said, “Ahhh, there is a spider on Right Hand and it’s biting us!” So the parts of my body sprang immediately into action and Left Hand reached over and smacked Right Hand to kill the “spider” and thus rescue his counterpart from further injury.

This was followed by an instant of mental chaos followed by several nano-seconds of creeping clarity as nerve impulses arrived from Right Hand to Brain: GASP --- “AHHHHHHHHHHHH… that HURT!” Left Hand immediately apologized to Right Hand and Brain crawled off to his corner and hid.

I don’t think We’ll be making THAT mistake again for a while!

If you ever find yourself near Cosby TN (which is quite close to Gatlinburg TN, a very popular vacation destination) stop in and say "hey". Maybe even take home some authentic, locally made, hand crafted artwork for your home.

News Bees, Fog Dogs & Insect Serenades

Last night the girls got on one of their barking binges. Several times they’d spring up and run around the house barking out the windows. I’d get up and stare them down until they, with heads hanging and tails tucked would return to their beds. After the second round, I flipped on the outside flood lights -- um… like I’d have flood lights inside – to see if I could see what was riling them and was surprised to have the light swallowed up by a dense blanket of grey fog.

Going back to the bedroom, I mentioned the fog to Marie and she was surprised because just a few minutes before all this began she had noted how bright and clear the moon was as she looked out the bedroom window.

After 3 or 4 rounds in twenty minutes or so, the fog went away as suddenly as it had come (must have been a Mountain Wraith) and the girls settled in to sleep the rest of the night. Lucky them.

By now I was fully awake and am NOT blessed with the ability to just lay down and go instantly to sleep at any time any time I choose like everyone else in my household. By the time I got to sleep, it was nearly time to get up. And I’ve been foggy-headed all day. Curse those mountain wraiths!

For the past two days I’ve spent a fair amount of time in my finishing room as I’m working on staining the big curio cabinet I’ve been working on. Each time I go in there, a few minutes after I get started, I hear a familiar droning buzz…the drone of a News Bee. Now, in case they call these critters by some other name where you are, these are insects that look like small hornets; yellow and black stripes, but the size of a wasp and his abdomen is kind of squared off and gnarly instead of being a stinger tipped cone like a wasp or hornet. They have the peculiar habit of just hanging motionless in the air watching people as they do things.

This one would come and hang about a half inch outside of my finishing room window screen each time I went in and would stay there for the longest time. Normally a couple of minutes of watching is enough then they are off to report to their Editor in Chief. But this guy would stay for a good 10 minutes, barely moving, just watching. I could swear he had a note pad! It got to where I would talk to him and explain what I was doing. I named him Ray, after a local reporter I know.

We have some other strange bugs. Actually, living in the woods as we do, we have a lot of strange and wonderful bugs. Some I’ve never seen before, like the News Bee. Others are more common but they do strange things.

At night we are serenaded by an insect; locusts (grasshoppers) I think, that make a three part thrumming buzz; chic-ka-chaw. But what is unusual is that they do it in unison. It’s hard to say how many of them there are in the trees around us, but it sounds like millions and they’ll get into a rhythm and perfect unison with their song for 10 to 15 seconds. Then a few loose the beat and anarchy spreads for a second, then they rally and get back into rhythm. And they do it over and over and over, all night long. It’s really quite entertaining to listen to while I’m laying in bed not sleeping. I don’t have to strain to hear them, they are quite loud.

Perhaps locusts (or whatever) do this everywhere, I’m not sure about that all I know is that I’ve never noticed it before. But another local resident has been commemorated as being very unusual and bug fans from all around the nation come to see it.

There is one place near Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park where for a few weeks each year tens of thousands of fireflies gather and flash complex patterns in perfect unison. It’s really quite intriguing and no one knows how or why they do it. And apparently this particular phenomenon occurs no where else in our country.

Just one more perk from living here in The Great Smoky Mountains.

That’s about it this time.

A Right Fine Settn' Porch

There are few things I find more enjoyable than sitting on a proper porch with my beloved and a glass of cold lemonade on a warm summer evening.

This evening is one such. Temperatures during the day had gotten up into the mid 80s, but as the sun slides down behind English Mountain across the valley from us the temperature eases. The sky splashed with pink, rose, mauve and vermillion slowly deepens into amethyst, violet and plum. A few bright stars burn through the gauzy haze of high, thin clouds which provide a canvass for the setting sun to paint upon. To the south the multiple ridges of the Great Smoky Mountains slowly disappear into the dusk.

A Chuck Wills Widow sits in the top of a tree across the hard-road from us and serenades us with his gentle melody. Crickets chip, cicadas thrum, tree frogs trill. A flying beetle thumps determinedly against the glass of the porch light. It looks like a June bug, but it’s too early for June bugs, unless he’s an eager beaver June bug. I switch the light off to save him from endangering his well being (and annoying us) and so we can get a clearer view now that the sky is dark.

It occurs to me that too many people have lost the art of porch settin’. Many newer homes have no porch to set on – just a sort of stoop. I suppose one could sit on the step of the stoop, but that’s not the same. No, a proper porch is a comfortable refuge even in a light rain. Though we have no rain tonight. No, tonight is a perfect porch settn’ night. Warm enough that an icy glass of lemonade is refreshing, cool enough to be comfortable, a light breeze to keep the gnats and skeeters away, and a utopian peacefulness to the sounds of the evening.

When the wind blows the right direction, the singing tires of 18-wheelers on Interstate 40 will traverse the 4 miles separating them from us and invade the natural sounds we enjoy so much more. But not tonight; tonight we could be a thousand miles away from anyone.

We sit in our new sling chairs – some call them umbrella chairs because the fold up like an umbrella. We bought them to keep behind the seats of our truck so we would always have chairs handy for outdoor events. They’ve come in handy even for a few indoor events. These we bought new this spring; we wore out the old ones. This time we sprung for the extra couple of bucks to get chairs with arms on them – one arm even has a mesh pocket for holding a glass of refreshment. Originally we planned to put a pair of rocking chairs here, but I haven’t had time to build them yet and these sling chairs are very convenient. When we need them they are comfortable, when we need the space for something else, they fold up and stow away easily. We may just keep these as our porch chairs.

Drowsiness eventually overtakes us and we go inside to get ready for bed. It’s been a long hard day and this respite was the perfect prelude to a restful night of sleep. Just one of the many reasons we enjoy living here in the mountains. It’s a great place for porch settn’.

A Day With A Dingo

Yesterday Marie and I spent, once again, in the company of a Dingo. In case you don’t remember our last encounter, this Dingo is a walk-behind front loader – well, OK, it can be fitted with other attachments to do other things too, but we were using it as an earth mover. And that’s how we spent the day; moving piles of earth from one place to another.

We chose to go with the Dingo rather than the Bobcat this time because the Dingo does less damage to the ground you’re working than the Bobcat. It also costs less, but it carries 1/6 as much as a Bobcat – so that’s a wash. It was the “tearing things up as fast as I smooth them out” thing that was the determining factor.

The first pile didn’t have to move far, just from where it was, next to our septic tank, to the hole above the septic tank – and the ditches running from the new house to the tank, and the ditch from the mobile home/shop to the tank. (The only way I could think of to find the tank was to dig up the existing septic line) And that pile was actually several piles or ridges scattered about the site. Quite a mess really, but it looks better now. It’s still just dirt but now it’s mostly level dirt that can be traversed, not piles and ridges that form barriers to travel. And, before I started digging it all out, I laid down a thick layer of dead leaved over the grass under the big pile to make it easier to know when to stop digging while putting it back and to protect the grass a bit. I had not counted on it sitting there for so many months, but there are still some shoots of grass harboring in a layer of decomposed leaves. They ought to come back fairly well now that sunshine can get to them again.

The second pile, or again: piles, were above and behind the house where the Bobcat and I carried the “fall-out” from our cave-in while building the Great Wall of Edwina. This needed to go back into the caverns behind the wall. That area looks much better now and will look even nicer once we get some flowers (or at least weeds) growing again. This area is the view out our kitchen window, so that’s a priority. I’d bore you with pictures, but our brand new camera quit on us and had to be mailed to Connecticut for repair. Hopefully we’ll get it back soon. The picture above? Oh, that’s a shot from our files of the last time the Dingo entertained us.

The third project was to flatten out the driveway and parking area. The parking area is bare clay and has been pretty badly rutted up by heavy trucks, and equipment used in installing our home. It is now, as Marie put it, “like the infield at Wrigley Field.”

On Friday we decided we could afford some gravel to put on the parking area, but at that late date we were unable to get anyone to deliver it on Saturday. So…

I tried to level out the humps-n-bumps in the driveway, but that was mostly beyond the Dingo’s capability. Here the gravel we spread the last time the dingo visited got churned into the clay below it by the bulldozer and Jadde (as well as by trucks full of cement blocks, a small track hoe, and the truck & trailer of our trim-out guy) forming a very hard, stable base for our driveway. It’s pretty ugly now, but once we get another layer of crusher run on it, it will be a good driveway, even for as steep as it is. Even now, it does not get mucky in the rain like the parking area. I succeeded in scraping off some of the bigger humps and moving that material into the deeper depressions, so it is better, but it is far from smooth.

And finally we moved most of a large pile of black dirt, which I bought from a road crew who were cleaning out the ditches along the Edwina-Bridgeport road last year, from behind the workshop around to the flower beds in front of the new house. There is a high amount of small gravel in this dirt, but it is also very rich, black dirt, not the red or yellow clay you see most everywhere. Around here, even if you buy “top soil” from a garden center, what you will get is red clay that has been screened for rocks and large clumps. This black dirt should be a good start for Marie’s flowers (better than we could buy) and we can cover the stones with mulch once the plants get started. I’ve got a compost pile started using wood chips from the shop. That’s been steeping since last fall so it ought to be ready this summer.

We accomplished in a day what we had hoped to accomplish in… well; in a day, but were afraid we’d need two. A Dingo, in the hands of an experienced operator, is supposed to be able to do some very nice finish work. I am far from ‘experienced’, so it proved very useful for moving around large quantities of earth and some of the spreading but all smoothing and making “pretty” was done with a garden rake and muscle. And those muscles were very sore on both of us last night. Hot showers and liniment all around – make mine a double!

Telephone Tribulations

In our modern society it seems that 90% of the population has a cell phone strapped to their hip or tucked in a purse so they can maintain constant and continuous contact with every other human being they know. When they come across someone who fails (or in my case make that 'refuses') to get on board with this ideology, they become irritable. We encounter these irritable people occasionally and are berated for not being more "accessible". There are several reasons why I will not join in with this 'Borg-like' lifestyle, and I'd like to explain them as this month's article.

Foremost is that woodworking is seriously dangerous business. Any tool that will cut cleanly through a 2" thick slab of white oak lumber will cut through flesh and bone like it's not even there. A blade or bit whirling at thousands of RPM can throw a piece of wood with tremendous force if it binds. Anyone in the path of this missile will get hurt. Therefore a moment of inattentiveness can result in the loss of one or more fingers, or a limb, or an eye, or even your life. When a phone rings, it is human nature to want to hustle to answer it, especially in this age where people expect to get an answer in 3 rings or less. Always. Rushing a cut or abandoning a tool while it's running to answer the telephone is a sure-fire recipe for an accident. So we have, so far, avoided having a telephone in the shop simply for safety reasons.

But, another reason is that so many of the calls we do receive are trash calls. Or, to borrow a term from the Internet; Spam. Telemarketers, wanting to sell us everything from carpet cleaning services to a postal meter, and 'directories' wanting to 'verify' their information (and at the end offer to sell us a subscription to some service they provide) and lately we've been getting several calls a day that are recorded messages bashing some political candidate or other. These calls will end when the elections are over, but the telemarketers are still a serious annoyance.

Yet another is the fact that most of the calls we get that actually pertain to our products are people asking what our pricing is, what our delivery time is, what woods are available, etc. The answers to all of these questions are readily available on our web site; the same web site they got our phone number from. Now, to be fair, I do know that some people are simply much more comfortable with their telephone than they are the internet; they're new at this but have had a phone forever. Some who call don't even have internet access; a friend or relative printed off a page from our web site and wrote our phone number on it.

But at the same time these people must realize that time spent dealing with all these phone calls is time not spent building furniture. Smoky Mountain Woodworks is a small shop, with one or two people in the shop most times. If there are two of us it is usually because we are doing something that takes two people to accomplish. Taking one of them away to answer the telephone effectively shuts down the progress of our work for both people. If the call is from someone who is seriously interested in our work and needs answers not available on the web site, then this is time well spent. But if it is someone wanting advice on how to stain the porch swing he just built or someone gathering pricing from as many furniture makers as possible on 'a dining room table that is so-wide by so-long' (with no details whatsoever), then this is wasted time.

If *you* were paying us an hourly rate to build a piece of furniture, would you want us spending a couple of hours per day answering the telephone on your time card?

We are not to the point where hiring an office manager to do bookkeeping, handle e-mail and answer the telephone would make any sense. That would mean paying them a wage good enough to insure that they will actually show up for work every day and paying workman's compensation insurance, unemployment insurance, FICA taxes and benefits. These costs would have to be factored back into the prices you pay for our furniture -- a piece of furniture that takes two weeks to build would cost an additional $360.00 on average. Would *you* be willing to pay it?

However, there are enough telephone addicts calling us that we need to work out some sort of compromise.

We are currently planning to enlarge our work space. In the new workshop (assuming everything works out) will be a dedicated space for a small office. In that office will be a telephone. However, we will NOT be allowing that telephone to take over our workshop. Instead, the answering machine will go in the trash and we will simply refuse to answer the phone until it has rung at least five or six times. That ought to weed out the telemarketers and casual inquiries leaving only those who are serious about talking to us. We will not jeopardize our physical well-being in order to grab the phone, so it may ring a dozen times before getting answered if we happen to be in the middle of something that shouldn't be interrupted. But if you can be a little patient we will be happy to talk to you, once it's safe to do so.

We hope to have the new work space completed in January of 2007, but we will begin testing this telephone theory starting now by taking a cordless phone to the workshop each day and practicing NOT answering it until it has rung at least 5 times.

How's that for a compromise?

It – Is – Alive!

Well, OK, it’s not really "alive" – it’s more like really interactive. ‘It’ being our new web site.

I’ve been working on this project for about three years now. My initial attempt came crashing down like an imploding building when the programmer I hired turned out to be… let’s say; not as reputable as I’d been led to believe. We’re still licking our wounds over that fiasco so I was not real eager to dive right back in again.

Back in the dark ages; in the days of DOS and dinosaurs, I used to be a pretty fair computer programmer. I took some college courses and learned to use half a dozen different languages. This was to help me get ahead in the job I was working in at the time. But this was before Windows™ so none of what I learned there is really of any use today. But it did give me a familiarity with how things work inside a program. Since then I have taught myself to hand code HTML for building web sites, and have picked up a passing familiarity with PHP, a scripting language used in building databased and interactive web pages. So I thought I might have what it takes to set something up myself by modifying a stock script.

I examined many shopping cart programs and scripts, but I’ll spare you the details of that journey and tell you instead that I settled on one called Zen-Cart. It is an Open Source project, making it both affordable and easily modified.

I installed the script first on our Treasures Of Appalachia web site because the traffic there was nowhere near the level of our woodworking site and would not inconvenience so many people if I blew something up. Since PHP does not run in a Windows™ environment I could not build and test a site on my local machine like I can for HTML sites, it had to be done on-line from my leased web server space.

That went well and I learned quite a bit. One of the most important things I learned was that I was NOT up to programming this thing to run the woodworking site the way I hoped it would. So I found Chris Eden of Absolute Solutions. He lives in Bristol England and is one of the Zen-Cart project programmers. He knows this thing inside and out and has been very helpful in getting the new web site up and running. We have a long way to go before it is fully functional, but what we have up works well. We’ll add new functions as we can that will make life even easier for Smoky Mountain Woodworks and our customers.

What we have accomplished to date is to replicate the look and feel of the old web site – because customer feedback indicated that our customers really liked the ‘homey’ feel of it – while adding many new functions. To list them all would probably bore you to death so I’ll just point out the most major improvements.

We can now “build” a product within the system by listing all the materials and hardware used in that product in a hidden section of that product’s listing and the web page will update the price of that product as prices for our materials change. By doing so, the product listing pages will actually provide cost estimates to our customers based on your preferences. The price listed on the page is a ‘starting at’ price, make your option selections from the drop down lists to customize the piece, then add it to your shopping cart to see the new estimated price. You can then delete that version and continue shopping or leave it there and continue to set up a different version. Add multiple versions to your cart to compare their pricing.

We are able to offer a richer variety of options to our customers and (hopefully) not make it so confusing.

Our new payment processor, tied to your customer account, allows us to simplify the periodic payments that are required. Once you enter your credit card information to pay the deposit, we will not have to ask you for it again for the remaining payments. We will e-mail you for approval, but you will not have to go through the whole rigmarole of logging in and entering your card number and address each time. Just say, “Yes, go ahead.”

And you have access to your customer account to review your order’s status and communications to date and to review or update your name and address information. This area is securely password protected, and all credit card information is encrypted and stored in a separate database on a completely different server from the web site.

Navigation has been simplified because important information is now displayed in small boxes along the left hand side of most every page. Information such as definitions or detailed discussions of a topic or word are still linked to the text of each page and those words change color when you place your cursor over them, but otherwise blend in so they are not distracting while you read.

As it always has, our web site offers a tremendous amount of information to those who wish to seek it. Much of this is supportive in nature, but some is critical and we’ve tried to insure that each buyer will see the critical information needed to make informed decisions.

As I said, this is a work in progress, so look for more improvements in the near future. We hope that you will enjoy our new web site. Your comments are welcome.

Till next time,

Doug-Bob

An Auspitious Start

This month is off to a rather bad start.

The power went out about 2:00 this morning. Not a big deal since we can sleep in the dark just fine, and I don't need an alarm clock to get up on time. But since it's still dark when I get up to start my day, it was a problem then. The power came back at 6:00 and I was able to get my monthly invoices out and get started in the workshop before the electricity flashed several times and went out again.

It was light now -- about 8:30 -- but I have become rather dependent on the power tools to get my work done. There was a time when I didn't need electricity at all for woodworking, but that was long ago.

So I went out to the barn and got the weed whacker (gas powered) and did some trimming around the yard. Still no power when I was done, so I fired up the tractor and began mowing. But the tractor wasn't running right and it kept getting worse until it finally died and wouldn't start again at all. So I left it where it died and walked back up to the workshop. The lights were on again, so I went back to work.

About a half hour later, Tim came in. Tim lives nearby. He said, "I heard you trying to mow, and heard that your tractor was giving you trouble. Don't know what it would be just from listening to it, but I know you want to finish your mowing before it gets hot, so I brought mine over. You're welcome to use it if you want." That's Tim for you; the man has a heart of gold, there isn't anything he wouldn't do for or loan to a friend.

So I used Tim's tractor to finish up. It was a nice one too, he'd just gotten it. Tim buys, repairs and sells lawn equipment. This one looked to be practically new and it had an automatic transmission, something new to me on a tractor.

As I was coming down a slope toward the barn, I mowed over the top of a new nest of yellow jackets, which swarmed out and nailed me good. I was wearing my straw hat, so that protected most of my head, and my pants were thick enough that the bees couldn't get through them, but the tee shirts I wear for working in the shop are thin, they went right through that and stung me all up my right side from my waist to my shoulder, my neck, the back of my head, and my left hand, because I was reaching over my shoulder with that hand trying to shoo them away. So they nailed that several times.

In an attempt to get away from the bees I jumped off the tractor and put some distance between me and they. It is fortunate I was driving Tim’s tractor, not mine, for his automatic requires that the operator keep a pedal mashed down to control direction and speed. Let up on it and it stops. And it has a dead-man switch under the seat, leave the seat and it kills the engine. My tractor has neither, so it would have become a run-away if I’d bailed off of it like that.

Mom's house is right near the barn, so I stopped in there and asked if she had any Benadryl; an OTC antihistamine that is good for combating the effects of bee stings. She did not. So I went home and called Marie, who got what I needed and brought it to me.

Now; I've been stung by most every insect there is – except maybe a scorpion. Some are worse than others, but these danged yellow jackets are by far the most venomous lil buggers I've encountered. While Marie was on her way here, I jumped in the shower and ran straight cold water on the stings to knock down the swelling as much as I could -- and our well water from 400 feet down inside the mountain is ICE cold right out of the tap. I stayed there as long as I could stand it; which wasn't real long I'll have to admit. It got to where I was shivering so hard I couldn't stand up, and I was going numb from the cold! But it helped.

When I got in, my left thumb and the two fingers next to it were so swollen I couldn't bend them. The icy water got two of the fingers back. My thumb took two hits from the bees, so it is still swollen up like a sausage and my hand looks like it's been snake bit; very swollen, red, and hot to the touch. The stings along my back and neck hurt, but won't interfere much with my ability to function. The hand is going to be a problem.

I took some Maximum Strength Benadryl and laid down for a bit to let it do its thing. I went back to the workshop later, but the Benadryl made me so groggy it would have been unsafe to operate power tools. One moment of inattention and I’d have a much worse problem that a few bee stings to contend with. So I took the day off, took my Benadryl every 4 hours and puttered around in the house.

By the next morning I was doing much better. So much better I decided to forego the Benadryl and it’s accompanying grogginess. A little hydrocortisone cream for the itching and I headed out to the shop.

This was SO much better than the last time I got stung. Then I suffered fewer hits, but I allowed nature to take it’s course and it took 4 or 5 days to get to this point. I’m definitely going to keep some Benadryl in our medicine box from now on. I’m sure this won’t be the last time, and next time it may be worse.

That’s all for this time. We hope you are healthy and happy, for those are the true riches in life.

Doug
Smoky Mountain Woodworks
Custom designed, solid hardwood furniture.
http://www.smokymountainwoodworks.com/

Springing into the new year

It has been a wet spring here in the Great Smoky Mountains with unusually high temperatures for so early in the year. This combination has yielded some pretty sultry days during May. Early June has been considerably cooler. In fact, as I write this I’m wearing a robe to keep warm enough this morning. This brings hope that perhaps we will not poach like eggs as summer descends upon us.

Our work has been fairly routine over the past few months; little has happened that I felt would be of any interest to you, my readers. So it has been a while since I’ve posted anything here.

I would like to thank those of you who have taken the trouble to contact me about your feelings toward this blog. All but one such conversation have been very gratifying.

Last year we launched into a major re-work of our current web site. Because we get many favorable comments about the look and arrangement of our current site, we want to retain as much of this as possible. But we need to add some new functionality that will help our visitors with pricing on a piece of furniture they are considering.

Most of the furniture pieces we offer can be ordered in a wide variety of woods, finishes and hardware choices. The choices you make will affect the final price of the piece you're ordering. The price displayed with each item is the price for that item with the pre-selected options. Naturally, changing those options will change the final price. This means many, many price bid requests from people who just want to know what a certain piece will cost in a different wood, or with a different finish.

Of course we could just figure what each piece costs if the most expensive of each option were selected and use that as the cost, regardless of your choices. But this seems dishonest to us. After all, this could mean a difference of several hundred dollars in the final price of a large piece of furniture. Why should you pay for expensive options if you’re not choosing them?

Why would the price change so much?

The price of some lumber species fluctuate considerably depending on availability. Because we buy most of our lumber directly from a local sawyer/broker we get the best price possible and can pass that savings along to you. Species like cherry and walnut are always in high demand and in short supply and will be more expensive than more plentiful woods like red oak. The cost difference can be considerable.

As a side note here, I have considered buying a small log mill to produce my own lumber directly from logs. But to do this most efficiently would mean that I’d have to be out buying those logs as standing timber, harvest the trees and mill the lumber, then move the lumber back to our workshop to be stacked and dried. I simply don’t have the time (or knowledge) to do this. The broker we deal with; Tommy, does. And he treats us fairly. It costs us less to have Tommy and his sawyers supply us with lumber than it would to produce it ourselves.

Some finishes are more difficult or time consuming to apply than others, and will therefore add a higher price to a piece of furniture if selected. We have posted a new discussion topic in the Library section of our web site that explains the differences between the various finishes we offer.

Knobs & pulls for furniture are available in a vast number of finishes and metals. Some are quite inexpensive and add little to the over-all cost of a piece of furniture. Others, particularly those made of solid brass, silver or pewter, are so expensive that they can add hundreds of dollars to the construction cost. Our 'Standard' selections are pieces we've found that offer a good value, that is: a good piece of hardware for a reasonable price, not necessarily the cheapest available.

Those who are on a tight budget and need to cut costs where possible and those who want and can afford to have the best available will be free to choose the 'Custom' option in the hardware selector and stipulate knobs and pulls they've found that suit their needs. The 'Custom option removes the cost of pulls and knobs completely from the on-line estimate. We will bill you what it costs us to acquire the pulls you select. However, if you are comparing prices among furniture makers, please bear in mind that our price in this instance will NOT include the cost of your custom selected pulls or knobs.

Our bookkeeping software keeps track of what we pay for materials and uses a weighted average cost to calculate the invoice for each piece we build. Our new web site will use these figures to adjust the price displayed on the item page as you make your selections. This will allow you to see in real time how your choices will affect the price of a piece you're interested in. At least within the scope of the options we offer. Making a piece larger or smaller or using some non-standard wood will still require asking for a bid. But, this should reduce the amount of time we are currently spending filling bid requests by quite a bit.

Our initial version of the new site will be on-line soon. For a preview, Click Here, but remember that not everything is working just yet.

Thanks for dropping in!

The Milestone

Today I turn 50 years old – a half century of life and vitality on this Earth. If I were a car I would qualify for Antique Status. Luckily, I’m not a car.

This morning I have been reflecting on my life. Having a naturally depressive personality, the things that spring into my mind first are things like the fact that I can not say, “I have 30 years of seniority with the company I work for.” Or “I’ve lived in this community all my life.” But then I realize that neither of these are common situations these days.

The only people I know who can actually say they had even 20 years in with the same company are 80 years old. The social situation was very different when they were part of the work force. Longevity and loyalty meant something then. Today workers hop from position to position almost as often as they change their clothing as they search for bigger, better, more. But then, employers have no more of a commitment to their employees than their employees have to them, so it’s perfectly just.

Marie was born and raised in St. Louis and lived there for 45 years before I dragged her off to the mountains of Tennessee. She thought it would be a difficult adjustment for her. It wasn’t. In fact, after a year here, she said she’d never go back to living in a city again.

I’ve been a vagabond since birth. My family never lived anywhere for more than 2 or 3 years maximum, and generally for only one year before we were moved again. It’s in my blood. Not being a long-standing member of a community has never been a concern to me before. But since we’ve gotten here to the mountains I’ve started regretting the fact that I can’t make this statement. Although, most of the people I know who can claim to have been born and raised here left for 20 to 30 years to seek gainful employment and came back when they retired. The young people today still seem to be in a big hurry to grow up and go somewhere else.

They will learn – and they’ll be back one day.

I have worked for more employers than I can count, doing every thing from mopping floors to managing a multi-billion dollar per year business. Well, managing a piece of it anyway! I can say that, for the most part whatever, I chose to do for employment I excelled at it and it was generally outside forces that separated me from that employer.

A good example was my stint with Professional Maintenance in Peoria Illinois. I took a job with them as a night janitor while I was in High School. It wasn’t glamorous work, but I applied myself and did the best job I was capable of regardless of the task I was assigned. As a result I received better and better assignments, I was promoted to Lead of a work crew, then a bigger crew, then I was made the Lead of the crew that did promo jobs where the company was wooing a new client by showing them how much better our work was than their in-house staff or current contractor. Eventually I was promoted to District Manager, in charge of all accounts in the Peoria district. This included some prestigious accounts like the Bell Telephone Towers building. All before I had reached the age of 21. I was the youngest DM the company had ever had.

I do realize that a booming economy and the company’s need for effective leaders had a large part in my rapid advance. In slower times this would not have happened. In fact I was laid off from this job because slower times came. Clients began trying to cut their expenses and contract cleaning services were often one of the first cuts made. As clientele dwindled, districts were combined. I lost mine to a man with much more seniority than I.

There were other such jobs: the newspaper where I started as Supervisor to a section of the city’s newspaper delivery boys and girls. I worked my up through the paper, and into the corporate office ultimately becoming Production Manager over the corporations three newspapers and it’s book division. There was the riverboat casino where I started out as a lowly token seller and ended up as Deck Supervisor and the top runner for the next Assistant Shift Supervisor opening before the whole thing toppled like a house of cards.

But most of my occupations were more mundane. Usually managerial in nature, but not always such sky rocket performances. On no occasion, however, have I been fired for being a failure. That in itself could be counted as a success – perhaps even a mark of distinction.

There are no bronze plaques or statues attesting to my having made a difference. In fact if I were to return to any former employer now, I doubt anyone would even know me. Mostly because the staff I worked with will have all gone elsewhere as well. But I know.

Regardless of where I worked to earn a living, I was also involved in woodworking. It was a hobby at first, then became a passion. It allowed me to own furniture I couldn’t possibly afford to buy. It provided me with quality gifts to give friends and relatives, and it challenged me to grow and learn and become more than I was.

No, my name is not as well known as Sam Maloof, Auther Formsby, or Norm Abram, and it’s a very good possibility that it will never be. But that’s fine with me; I don’t do this to become famous. I have a file box crammed full of the many hundreds of orders and letters from the customers we’ve served. Many of whom told their friends about us and they ordered something as well. Their glowing comments are all the fame I require. I am gratified just knowing that my furniture graces the homes of hundreds and hundreds of families. Perhaps it will be handed down to the next generation as a cherished family heirloom.

That is a legacy of a sort – even if they forget my name, my furniture will stand as a mute testimony to my having been here. A few clients have actually asked me to sign their piece of furniture – somewhere inconspicuous – because they felt it was a work of art and deserved to be treated as such. I blush at these requests, but am gratified that they feel this way. It gives me courage enough to look forward to my next half-century. Perhaps, like a fine wine or a pot of home-made soup, I’ll just get better and better with age.

Heating up the Holiday

Sometimes the simplest gestures can make all the difference.

Some friends gave us a wood stove (more like a wood burning furnace) that they no longer needed and we installed it in the workshop. I planned to run the pipe straight up and through the roof. That seemed the simplest plan. The lumberyard had an installation kit that had "everything you need to seal up around the stovepipe" for about $50. When I asked about insulation so I don't burn the shop down, the guy said, "Oh, yeah, you'll also need a high-temp adaptor for that."

"And how much is that?"

"About $200.00"

AAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

My neighbor suggested just busting a hole in the block wall, mortering an 8" drain tile into the hole and running the stove pipe out through the tile. I envisioned myself, a sledge hammer and a block wall... Images of Berlin a few years ago came to mind. Hmm... no, there must be a better way.

We have three windows in our workshop. Sort of. One is a good window in the end wall above our stationary workbench, and is irrelevant to this discussion. Another good window is near where I wanted to install the stove. It lets in light, but offers no view other than the dirt and grass sloping sharply up beside the shop. That's part of living on the side of a mountain. Opposite that window is a window-hole that I boarded up with a removable shutter so we could open it in the summer for extra light and ventilation, but remains closed in the winter because the window was broken out, frame smashed and I can't find replacement windows the same size.

I thought about moving the stove over to the opposite wall and running the stove pipe out through the boarded up window opening. But because of the tool arrangement, that would be very awkward. What to do, what to do?

So Marie says, "Why don't you leave the stove where it is and move the window. That way you have the heater where you want it, we get more light and our view out over the valley."

Duh! No wonder she's the boss.

It wasn't quite that simple -- nothing ever is -- but it did work out. I used a panel of cement board (Durock - fire proof) to fill in where I took the good window out of the back wall, cut a nice neat round hole for the stove pipe through that and we now have wood heat in the shop. We also have a lovely view down our front "yard" and across the valley to English Mountain, as well as a good view of the sunsets in the evening.

Before the wood stove, we used a small propane furnace as our primary heat source. I turned it down at night to keep the shop at 35° to 40° -- just enough to keep supplies from freezing, and around 60° during the day. Warm, sunny days helped considerably to stretch the fuel supply, but on average we were filling our 40 pound propane cylinder once per week, at $18 per pop. But the cost of propane is up from last year almost 50%. Now we use the propane just at night, and the same cylinder has lasted us 3 weeks -- including the recent cold snap where it was getting down into the teens at night. In normal temperatures, it will last even longer. That helps a lot.

Of course the trade-off is that we have to go wandering through the woods gathering up firewood once a week. And a lot of what we bring back is in the form of large branches and small logs that have to be cut up, but Mom gave us an electric chainsaw she brought with her when she moved from Nebraska. I have no idea what they were going to do with it. It had been used once by my half-brother; Brian. He neglected to set the tension on the chain before using starting it up, so it jumped it's track right way. Disgusted, he stuck it back in the box and never touched it again. It works fine if you do it right.

So our mornings are scented with the fragrance of wood smoke, the shop is warm and our forst gets cleaned up of deadwood. It's all good, and we're grateful for it all.

Merry Christmas!

The Old Homestead

Living in a semi-remote mountain area is a mixed blessing.

I call it a ‘blessing’ because it is primarily a good thing. It is for us at least. The beauty and grandeur of The Great Smoky Mountains region is breath taking. Especially at this time of year with the changing leaves. The peaceful serenity here is blissful. And the people in these parts are truly the salt of the earth. Mostly descendant from Scotch-Irish immigrants who settled here during pre-civil war times, they have their quirks and peculiarities – like any one. They’re ‘Mountain Folk’ from way back. They have their own way of doing things and thinking about things. But if you take a little time to get to know them and don’t come in determined to “reform” them over night, they’ll welcome you into the fold and be some of the best friends you could possibly want.

Being raised as an Air Force brat, I’ve lived in 20 some-odd places all around this country, and others. And of all the places I’ve been and seen this place is the one I love best. Everywhere else I’ve lived we always enjoyed getting away on vacation – going and seeing someplace different. But since being here, I don’t long for different sights. When I must go away, I enjoy getting back home. This is the first place I’ve lived that I actually called “home” for my other residences always seemed as temporary as they were. Even after being grown and out of my parents house, I knew that where I was would be temporary so I didn’t make much effort to put down roots. And when it was time to move on, it was no hardship. But since settling here I can’t imagine going elsewhere.

Of course this is not the life for everyone, so those who prefer the seashore, or mid-western farmlands, or the deserts of the southwest are welcome to pursue their desires.

In St Louis Marie and I owned a house and workshop in a 1/8 acre lot. From either our front or back porch we could see 6 to 12 other homes. And they could see us. Here we have 4½ acres of wooded land. To us it seems a palatial estate, though by local standards it’s a pittance. Around here you’re not a real “land owner’ unless you have at least 25 acres. It’s a mountain folk thing. Many of these people are descendants of families who owned entire mountains each. As the young’uns grew up and married, parcels were given to the newlywed couples. There are still a few large tracts of land owned by single family lines, although many were forced to sell family land to outsiders when hard times came and they needed money.

The remoteness that I enjoy so much would drive some people bonkers. Not to over state the case, we are NOT up on some craggy bluff 20 miles removed from the nearest living soul. We have neighbors. We just can’t see them, or hear them – most of the time. The only house I can see from our place is the one we had built for my mom and step-dad when they moved out here a few years ago; its on our property around 100 feet down hill from our place. Close enough I can get there quickly and easily when needed, but far enough away that I don’t wake them if I go out early in the morning to work in my shop– which is another 50 feet or so away from them. The other neighbors are not visible because of trees and rises, but are within walking distance. Tim & Katherine are across the drive from Mom, their daughter and son-in-law live in a small home on the back side of their property. Earl & Wilma are across the hard road. Judge John Bell just built a new home across the road as well, but it’s at the end of a half-mile long driveway that snakes through the trees and over the ridge a bit. If you didn’t know he was there, you’d never know he was there. The Balls, Iveys and Crumms live along the road in one direction, the Watts, and the Munns in the other. Some of these names are families that have been here for almost 200 years. A dozen or so families live within a mile in each direction of our home – easy walking distance should we feel like going visiting.

We all live on Little Piney Mountain, along a single two lane paved road. A very good road, comparatively. I’ve been on many in the area that are barely a single lane, twisty, gravel paths scraped into the side of a near vertical mountain face with a sheer drop-off that plummets hundreds of feet. No guard rails. No place to pass on on-coming vehicle. Piney Mountain Road is an expressway compared to those. Still, the truck line we use for furniture delivery refuses to come up here with their semi’s to pick up our shipments. The big chickens!

Big Piney is just behind and a north of Little Piney, then a couple more whose names escape me just now, and we come to Rocky Top. Yes THE Rocky Top immortalized in song. It’s surprising how many songs were written about this part of Tennessee. The other direction is Halls Top, then Stone Mountain. Across the valley, west of us, dominating our view is a long massive ridge called English Mountain. There is a notch on the southern end of English Mountain called Sunset Gap which is reputed to have the most spectacular sunsets on the planet. The reputation is well deserved. To the south are The Great Smoky Mountains. Through the floor of the valley runs the Pigeon River, carrying cold run-off from the creeks and streams that originate in the Smokies to the French Broad River, which eventually connects to the Tennessee River.

These geographic features shield the residents of this valley from storms. Working like a bug deflector on your hood, bad weather is forced up and over. We rarely suffer the ravages of storm winds like Knoxville and Morristown; the nearest cities outside of our valley. Although residents of the bottom lands get mighty wet when heavy rains fall and “The Pigeon” can’t carry it away fast enough. Being about half-way up our mountain slope, gentle convection currents work to keep my neighbors and I warm in the winter and cool in the summer. We’re almost always 10° more temperate here than the town of Newport which occupies most of the floor of the valley.

Newport begins about 5 miles from where I sit and is a town large enough to serve our most immediate needs, yet small enough to be friendly. Here we attend church, buy our groceries, household supplies and gasoline, do our banking, and are involved in a variety of community organizations. It offers a variety of restaurants if we want to eat out. It has a movie theatre if that’s what we crave, and a Theatre Guild that puts on theatrical productions several times a year should we desire ‘culture’. And it offers a variety of shops and stores to serve us when we feel the need to browse for something new – or new to us.

The only real deficiency comes in the department of our business needs. Not office supplies; that’s covered, but the hardwood lumber, specialty hardware and tools that I use to build our furniture are not available here. For those we had to look outside our valley. And that forced upon us some new ways of doing business.

When we lived in St Louis, I had three woodworking specialty stores within a 15 minute drive of my home and shop. Each carried a wide variety of dressed hardwood lumber, furniture hardware, woodworking tools and finishing supplies. When I needed some lumber, or a set of drawer pulls, or a replacement part for a tool, I went and bought what I needed. No problem. But when we got settled in here, the biggest ‘culture shock’ I encountered was getting used to not having these supplies ‘at arms reach’, so to speak. The biggest adjustment was in finding lumber.

Oh, sure, there are three lumber yards in the area. But they carry construction lumber: 2x4s, rafters, pressure treated deck boards. Some have a limited supply of oak, but its pre shaped for use in stair treads and quite expensive. Ask for cherry or walnut lumber and they give you a blank stare. Why would they want to carry that?

Think you can buy a replacement mortising chisel or brad point drill bit at the local hardware store? Not on your life. They have no demand for such things, why carry them?

So I set about locating sources for the things I would need to keep the business going. What I can buy locally – common screws and finishes mostly - I do. Most of the small stuff: hardware and fixtures, specialty screws, specialized hand tools and such I mail-order. The Internet makes that easy. I just had to learn to keep ahead of my needs – which was difficult when you’re used to being able to just pop over to Woodcraft and pick things up when you needed them.

I found a couple of suppliers of good, dry furniture grade lumber in Knoxville. But Knoxville is an hour away from here by Interstate (which I strongly dislike) or an hour and a half by back roads. Making a lumber run now took a half day at least. So to make it worth the trip, I had to start buying a truck-load at a time. Paying retail -- or near retail – prices for this amount of quality lumber requires a goodly bag of coin and tended to put a serious crimp in our budget.

So I started working with local sawyers to buy fresh-sawn lumber which I stacked and air dried myself. We now have a fairly good sized private lumber yard from which to draw supplies as I need. We carry 8 different species, around 7,000 board feet total. As I use what I have, I buy new to replace it so it will be dry when I need to use it.

So we are again able to avoid going to The City except for a few times a year, which is almost like an adventure. “Put on some clean duds an hitch up the wagon Paw, we’ns is a goin to th’city!”

But when the adventure is over; after we’ve wound our way through Chestnut Hill and the back side of English Mountain looms, I sure am glad to be coming ‘home’.

Mainstream Melodrama

I awoke early this morning about, 4:30. My internal alarm didn't care that today is a holiday.

I got up and wandered into the living room to do my stretching exercises and have a bit of prayer time, then on into the office to boot up the computers and see what awaited me this day.

As usual, I wiled away the early morning doing web site stuff and bookkeeping. About 8:00 I went into the kitchen and fixed breakfast: scrambled eggs, turkey-sausage, muffins, banana, hot tea and cranberry juice, placed it on our Bed Trays and took it into the bedroom to serve my beloved.

Our breakfast tray tables are one of the very first sets we produced, many years ago and they’ve seen a lot of use. They are just as lovely and sturdy as the day I built them. I used to cook and serve breakfast in bed once a week, every week, but lately we’ve had precious few days, even on weekends, where we could afford the time for this. Today is different. It’s Labor Day and we specifically planned to take some time for ourselves. We've earned it.

As we ate, the sun was just coming up over the mountain crest behind us, spilling its golden rays across the valley. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves. Through the bedroom windw we could see a squadron of Gold Finches flitting amongst the trees, their bright yellow bodies bursting with color when the sun’s ray found them. Other birds chirped and twittered melodiously.

It was a beautiful, peaceful mountain morning.

But not far from the forefront of my mind was the knowledge that just a few hundred miles from here, cities lie devastated, hundreds of thousands of people displaced and – at least temporarily – homeless. Perhaps thousands have died. You’ve seen the reports, I don’t need to tell you about that. But it was a sobering thought, and I recounted my blessings.

After breakfast I went to work, as I do most every day. Yes, it’s a holiday; but I am not quite caught up, so I must get some things done. But it will be a short work day. I have to lacquer 6 TV tray tables. Once that’s done, I’ll go inside, stretch out on the couch and listen to an audio book. Who knows, I might even take a nap. Such hedonism!

As for new stuff this month: we have made a few changes to our policies. These come as a result of a problem we’ve been having recently.

First, I must admit that we’ve become spoiled. In the past, our customers tended to all be intelligent, thoughtful people who were capable of looking at the facts presented and making informed choices that met their needs and desires. We rarely had to take them by the hand and lead them through the process of ordering a piece of custom furniture.

But, since our web site has attained very favorable placement in Google, we’ve been getting more and more people who don’t seem to bother reading any of the information presented to them. And we’ve had an increasing number of people getting huffy with us because they misunderstood some aspect or another of the process.

Therefore from here on out all LTL truck deliveries will be considered residential, and a lift gate equipped truck will be ordered on all orders weighing over 100 pounds.

We are also ‘prequalifying’ those requesting a bid on a piece of furniture. Once they tell us in writing that they have been to our web site, have looked at pictures, pricing and estimated delivery time on anything similar to what they want built, and have looked at our policies, we will spend the time – sometimes as much as 5 hours – producing a design sketch, taking off a materials list, searching out unusual hardware needed and producing a cost estimate. We’ve wasted too much time doing these things for people who “had no idea…”

We’re still trying to figure out how to prevent people who wander into Smoky Mountain Woodworks from mistaking us for Amazon.com and expecting to receive the item they ordered in a week or so. There have been three such people in as many weeks. One of these ordered a pair of Pin Rail Shelves. We processed her deposit, e-mailed her invoice and placed her on the production schedule for around next March. Two weeks later she wrote the cursory note of “WHEN IS MY ORDER GOING TO SHIP?!”

In discussing the matter with her we found that she did not see any production time indicators on our web page, she did not see that her order in the shopping cart was a deposit on custom built shelves and she did not see the delivery date on the Invoice. She saw a picture, clicked a button and entered her credit card number.

This, of course is entirely our fault for being so unclear. So we produced her shelves by working them in around other orders. When it was time to pay her balance, she argued that she had seen a payment to us on her credit card bill, she was sure she’d paid us. I explained that this was her deposit payment, the balance and shipping was now due. Then she claimed she could not find her listing in the production schedule. I instructed her to look way down there near the bottom, not at the top. She had no right to be at the top. It took another week for her to figure out how to make her final payment.

If this is what it means to become ‘mainstream’ I think I preferred being an obscure web site.


Moving on…
We’ve added a new product. A customer had us design a heavy duty version of our TV Tray Tables. It’s designed along the same lines of our classic tray tables, but more robust.

Another new product that is under development is a variation of our CD End Table that will accommodate the book shaped DVD cases that most movies come in these days. Be watching for this…

So much for this edition. Hope you enjoyed your Labor Day!

It’s not what you know, but who.

That’s what they always say anyway. I’m not sure it’s entirely true. After all, if you know nothing at all of interest, knowing a lot of influential people who knew that you knew nothing wouldn’t benefit you much. Would it?

Either way, I may not be the best example of this saying as I spend the vast majority of my time squirreled away in our workshop making sawdust. Because of our workload, my presence is required here. But I do get out and involved in outside projects as I can and people know where I am and call upon me regularly.

Marie is our “people person”. She handles most of the face-to-face stuff and she’s good at it. Some things we attend together, but most of the local meetings are handled by her alone.

But, between us, we have come to know a considerable circle of people. Some of them quite influential. This is a situation new to us. In our previous lives, we did our jobs then went home and kept to ourselves. Being public figures never appealed to us at all.

When we came here, we knew very few people. But those few introduced us to others, and those opened doors to still others. A few of these people have been key in getting our business up and running after the move. I’ve talked about them before, so I shan’t rehash it again here.

But lots more were simply open and helpful to us in a way we had not experienced in The City. Wilma Webb is an example.

When we met her, Wilma was running a candy store. Scrumptious hand made chocolates. I *love* good chocolates. We had made up some wooden gift boxes sized to precisely fit around a 1 pound box of chocolates. They were nicely finished and had a picture of chocolates on the top. Quite unique, and we hoped Wilma would be interested in buying some to sell in her store.

In talking to her about it, we found that the art & craft items she had for sale in her store were on consignment from local artists. But she didn’t charge them any consignment fee. Whatever she made on them went to the artist. In St Louis, consignment fees typically ran 50% to 70%. This amazed us. But she said, “If the crafts draw some folks in that wouldn’t have stopped otherwise, I get an opportunity to sell them some candy that I wouldn’t have had. These artists and I scratch each others backs.”

We ended up putting some things in her store, but the biggest help to us was the way she started rattling off other places we should go and people we should talk to. She had lived here all her life, had owned and sold off a flower shop and two restaurants – all still bearing the name of “Wilma’s” as well as the candy store. She knew her stuff. And she freely shared her expertise with us.

She was the first of many such people we’ve met. And we are grateful to them all.
As a result, I run a small side business using my skills as a web site designer to help local businesses who want to get onto the Internet, but can’t afford – or trust – the ‘professional’ design firms. I don’t advertise this service, but word of mouth keeps me busy. I’ve done work for several businesses and have at least a couple of sites under development most of the time.

Marie was elected to serve on the county’s Tourism Council, I serve as it’s web master, and we keep busy helping the county market it’s many tourist opportunities. As a result, we hob-nob with local and state level officials quite often.

We are active members of the Chamber of Commerce which is now part of the newly formed County Partnership. So we have contact with and access to many of the most successful business persons of the community.

And we assisted in getting Treasures of Appalachia opened up and serving the many talented people we’ve run across here who have no viable outlet to sell their work in this county other than public craft shows. We serve as officers on the board of this non-profit corporation. I serve as a volunteer shopkeeper one or more days per week in the gallery, and take care of the bookkeeping. Marie alternates weekends with Varena and serves as Visual Marketing Director. Treasures has grown over the three years it’s been open and is serving a vital need in the community. We are proud to be a part of it, and happy to have befriended so many talented and creative people.

Many other opportunities to serve the community come along regularly and we always do what we can to help out. We feel it is important to be active in our community, a community that welcomed us so warmly. As a result we are rarely bored. But we lead happy, fulfilled lives. And that is a good thing!

Making More Changes.

If you arrived here because you had bookmarked this blog as the source of the daily In The Shop progress notes you are, no doubt, confused.

Where are the shop notes? I moved them over yonder.

Why? Because I like to keep as many people confused for as long as I can as often as possible. Nah, not really.

Several months ago I tried spiffing up the In The Shop section of the web site. My goal was to make it an information central for anyone with an order placed, a place they could go any time to see not only their order status, but – if it’s under construction – how far along it is, how far it has to go, a progress picture, and even the ability to review their invoice and account status. Once it ships, they have the ability to track the package and know exactly where it is and when it’s expected to arrive.

Because the new detail pages present personal information, I had to come up with a password protect function to offer some resistance to folks who would exploit that information.

I hoped that providing all this information would be one of those value-added features and that our customers would enjoy the “warm & fuzzy” experience that it offers. It would therefore be worth the amount of additional time required to maintain all this.

It was also my expectation that by this time I’d be back to working on one or two projects at a time. I am not. We’re still working on 4 to 6 at a time.

As it turns out, most customers don’t even look at their detail page except for when it’s time to make the final payment. Those who do look tend to complain about the password utility.

The time spent photographing the items being built, producing and updating a production steps list and posting invoices to be viewed would appear to be wasted time. Time better spent on other tasks.

Therefore, I skinnied it down some.

• Our bookkeeping software has the ability to e-mail you your invoice as it is generated. It will be your responsibility to file that away for future reference as it will no longer be available on line.


• Photos and general notes will be available from the In The Shop listing page -- click the Construction link
  
• The ability to make on-line payments will be available when it's time, click the Awaiting Payment link.
  
• Our UPS account allows for the tracking number to be e-mailed to you as we process the shipment. Old Dominion shipping can be tracked by clicking the In Transit link in your order.
• The production steps and progress notes took a considerable investment of time to keep up with. Two weeks ago I tried converting from individual discussions to a general Shop Notes sort of thing and moving it here. But I don't really want to congest this rants & ruminations blog with all those daily summaries, so I set up another blog to handle those and deleted them from here.

If you do not see the links described above in your order's listing, then that function is not currently available.

This will make maintaining the In The Shop section much easier.



We will also be raising our labor rate in early August. If you’re “on the fence” about ordering a piece, you may want to consider getting it in before then.

Why the increase? Every How To Run A Business book I’ve ever read (and I read quite a few) offers an axiom on pricing your work. Each words it differently but all say the same thing. My favorite version is: “When the demand for your product exceeds your ability to produce it – raise your prices!”

Our production wait time is still running around a year. This is too long. It’s exasperating to our customers, and stressful for me. I tend to work myself to death trying to get caught up. Three to four months would be acceptable. Six months the maximum. So we will continue to try and find an equilibrium point. Once we find it, everyone will be happier. Well, most everyone. ...You can't please all the people all the time...

That’s what’s new. Thanks for dropping by to see what’s going on.

Doug-Bob

But I Want It NOW!

Can you believe it’s June already? Where has the year gone? But June it is and we’re seeing some savvy shoppers checking with us about special pieces of furniture that they want to give as Christmas gifts.

Once again TV Tray Table sets are a hot topic of discussion. And if you check our production schedule you’ll see that many sets are already on order. In fact we have enough orders queued up that we are already past the cut-off date for Christmas delivery.

This fact has chagrined at least one of our customers who attempted to order TV Tables for Christmas delivery in October of last year. Couldn’t do it. So he decided to get a head start on it this year and order in June. Seems reasonable, but… sorry.

It is gratifying to know that our work is in such high demand that we have almost a full years worth or orders piled up waiting to be done. But it also saddens me to have to turn anyone away. To ease the disappointment people feel, we do offer a collection of links to other quality furniture builders web sites in our Resources Section and we encourage anyone whose needs we can not meet to look here first for alternatives.

Frequently asked questions along this topic include:

Q: If I pay you extra will you put me ahead of the others?
A: No.
This just would not be fair to the good people who have been patiently waiting for their turn. If YOU had been waiting for 6 months and were finally 2nd from the top of the list and we slid someone in ahead of you because they offered us more money than you did, how would you feel about it?

Q: Can’t you put on an extra shift or work longer hours to get the work done more quickly?
A: No.
Smoky Mountain Woodworks is not a factory. Not even close. There are a lot of factors to consider, most of which probably wouldn’t interest you in the least, but the bottom line is that we generally work from 7:00 am until 10:00 pm six days a week as it is. Granted, not all of this time is spent making sawdust; there are administrative duties and logistical chores to do too. Bottom line is that we’re not out fishing – although sometimes we’d really LIKE to be!

Q: Isn’t there anything I can do to give this as a gift this year?
A: Yes.
You can call up the large version of the picture of the piece you want to make a gift of, save it to your computer then pull it into a Word certificate template or a card making program and produce a nice gift certificate to present to your loved one explaining that the piece pictured is in production and will be delivered directly to them as soon as it’s complete. It may lack the OOoohh! value of plunking a actual set of cherry tray tables down in front of them on Christmas morning, but it’s better than putting off the good gift until next year and trying to come up with a make-do gift for this one.

Q: Are you doing anything at all to reduce the wait time?
A: Yes.
We are looking at several suggestions that have been made. One is to double our prices. Another is to stop taking orders at all when the wait time exceeds six months. And another is to build a factory.

The problem is that we can’t afford to build a factory. If we double our prices we will be making more money, but the orders will fall off and we’ll end up making about what we are now in the end. And refusing to take orders because of extended wait time just ticks people off. They’re still waiting, but now they’re waiting to be able to place their order not to have it produced.

We are now working on a solution that combines these suggestions into a little easier transition. Hopefully we won’t make anyone mad, we won’t work ourselves to death, and we will be able to improve the work flow and control costs better. Wish us luck!

Are You Keeping Busy?

There was a time when, “Hey, how’s it going?” or “What have you been up to?” was just something you said when bumping into an acquaintance you don’t know well enough to ask a more pertinent question, like: “How did your daughter’s soccer try out go?” or “Has your wife recovered from her gall bladder surgery?” or “Did your dog ever pass that rare antique coin he swallowed?” And the expected response was something like, “I’m fine, and you?” or “Not much.”, or “The usual.” It’s called small talk, exchanging pleasantries. Filling an awkward silence where you feel obligated to say something, but don’t have anything substantial to say.

But in the past couple of years I’ve noticed an increasing tendency to answer a polite inquiry with a barrage of unneeded, indeed unwanted, information. One woman I know will go into an hour long rag about all her health problems. She will without hesitation hike up her blouse or tug down the elastic waist band of her pants (worn, I’m sure, for just this purpose) to show off her most recent surgical scar. This would be one thing if she were Heather Locklear or Ann Margaret, but she’s not. She’s old enough to be my mother. And looks it. “Whoa! Dana, too much info! See ya later, much later, and preferably much less of you.”

More and more an inquiry is answered with something to the effect of, “Oh, I’ve been busy. I’m so busy I hardly have time to breathe.” At first I wasn’t sure how to respond to this. Should I say, “Oh, I’m sorry you’re so over burdened.”, or “Oh, I’m so glad to hear it, because that must mean that you’re making money hand over fist and will easily be able to make a generous contribution to this years Red Cross fund raiser!” I think they expect the former, but I like the latter: it catches them off guard and I do enjoy that perplexed look on their faces.

But I have gotten really tired of hearing people complain about how busy they are. Many of the people I talk to are retired. While most retired folks I know do say they are busier now than when they were working, they are doing things THEY chose to do, not tasks that were assigned to them by some slave-driving employer.

“Oh, I’m just so busy, I hardly have any time for myself any more.”
“And whose fault is that?”

Now it’s gotten to the point that when you get a group of people together, they jump right in with,

“Have you been keeping busy?”
“Oh, my, yes! I’ve got so much work…”
“And the other fellow will come right back, “Yeah, me too. I hardly even sleep anymore I’m just working all the time.”

Well, some do, some don’t.

Penny is retired. She’s a sculptor (or is that ‘sculptress’) who keeps a steady flow of her art work coming through our gallery. In addition she volunteers one day per week as a shopkeeper for us, another day at a local welcome center, and is an active volunteer for the Friends Of The Animal Shelter, and the F.E.C. club. She has children and grandchildren to visit with, a home to maintain and a husband to care for whose health is not always the best. This is a busy lady. But even at her age she is a vital, energetic woman. I think she is so because she keeps busy – I mean genuinely busy – doing things she enjoys.

Jeb works for an Internet Service Provider that also hosts web sites for some of the local businesses. His job is to maintain those web sites. I know several of his clients, and they know that I know Jeb. They often tell me that they’ve asked Jeb to make a change or a correction weeks or even months ago, but he hasn’t gotten it done yet. They like Jeb, he’s a nice guy and they don’t want to make trouble for him, but he’s so slow! When confronted about this, Jeb points to a pile of papers on his desk and recites the litany, “I’ve just got so much work to do, I can’t get it all done.” But I did notice that the same paper was on the top of his pile for three weeks running. Perhaps if he spent less time telling everyone he sees about how busy he is and more time working on that pile, he wouldn’t be so over burdened.

Both are busy, but Penny accomplishes a tremendous amount, Jeb never seems to finish anything, he just starts new tasks. And complains a lot.

I know several people who complain about being too busy but also know every up-to-the-minute detail about all the popular TV shows. How much time do they have to spend sitting in front of the TV to acquire that much data? Is this part of their oh-so-heavy work load?

I’ve found myself falling into the lament a few times and have become determined not to follow that path. When asked if I’m keeping busy I answer, “Yes I am. But I love what I do, so I look forward to all the challenges that are ahead of me and feel blessed to have such job security.”

I’ve noticed that people aren’t making small talk with me as much anymore.

Till next time, be good, keep busy and thank you for your patience.

Doug Bob.

Alone again -- Naturally

When I first started my woodworking career in earnest, many years ago, I was a young man with a dream. I planned to go sailing about the world on a 28 foot Bristol Channel Cutter, earning my way by doing carpentry work in the ports I visited. I refined my tool kit to a selection of the essential hand tools that would fit into a pocketed oilskin tool roll about the size of a big duffel bag. With that, a knock-down work bench, and a fair bit of ingenuity I felt confident I could accomplish my dream. Alone.

I practiced by building furniture for friends and neighbors using just this kit in my back yard. I got to be pretty good at it.

Then I bought a sailboat. Not the Cutter I wanted, I lived inland and needed a boat that could be used on the local lakes yet would handle like a bigger boat. I did some research and chose the Victoria 18. With a full keel, 550 pounds of lead ballast and a sloop rig, she would respond and handle on the lakes like a large boat would on the ocean. I had already taught myself the basics of sailing using a Sunfish. I traded the sunfish in on a Victoria, christened her Pegasus and set about learning to handle a real boat.

Pegasus came with a small outboard engine, but I loathed using it. I didn’t even take it with me most of the time. Instead, I learned to SAIL the boat. I learned to tack my way up the narrow channel to the marina, learned to watch the water for wave patterns that indicated wind shifts, and to maximize whatever winds were available. I went out sailing in all weather from near calm to 35 mile per hour winds that whipped the lake to huge, foam crested waves, spray stinging my face and the wind howling through the rigging. Pegasus seemed to enjoy the rough weather sailing as much as I did. And I learned a great deal about sailing single handed.




I did have a little Welsh Corgie named Brandy, who enjoyed sailing with me in fair weather. I trained him to stand on the foredeck as I worked into the dock, foreline in his mouth. On my command, Brandy would jump over to the dock, run around a cleat and jump back into the boats’ cockpit where I sat and give me the rope. I’d then snug it up, stopping our forward motion and drawing the boat up to the dock gentle as a falling leaf. This little maneuver tended to leave the spectators on the dock staring gape-jawed. It was great… once we got it down pat. There were a few scary and embarrassing moments along the way.

I thought I was well on my way to accomplishing my dream. But then I fell in love with a young lady, and this young lady had no intention of bobbing around the world in a boat.

Rather than trading the Victoria in on a Bristol Channel Cutter and going off to see the world, I kept the Victoria and spent the boat money on building a woodworking shop.

In retrospect, I should have held onto the dream, and let go of the girl. But that’s another story.

Because The Young Lady wanted a fine house filled with expensive toys, the woodworking got relegated to a part time hobby and I took on a full time occupation with its more predictable pay rates. I divided my spare time between tinkering with furniture and sailing. But The Young Lady discovered that not only could I build lovely furniture, but that I could do so much more affordably than buying commercial furniture of the quality she demanded. Thus furniture production became a priority over sailing and Pegasus sat on her trailer; neglected, decaying, and lonely. I hated to see that happen to her, but just didn’t have the time even to keep her maintained let alone taking her out sailing. So I sold her to someone who had long admired the boat and promised to take good care of her.

In retrospect, I should have held on to the boat, and sold the girl. But…

Over the course of my years my life has endured many changes. I’ve attempted a number of different career choices, some with more success than others, and lived in many different locations. But through it all, was my woodworking. I kept at that no matter where I lived or what I did to earn a living. Eventually, I decided to earn my living entirely from the woodworking.

Divorce cost me my first workshop and everything in it. Time to start over. And I did, but not alone this time.

When I met Marie I was living in an apartment, with no space for a shop and being bled white by the divorce, I had no funds to rent suitable space and buy tools. But I was teaching woodworking at a local Rockler store.

While on a vacation, we stopped at a visitor’s center on the Blue Ridge Parkway that houses a store for local artists. Marie was marveling at some lovely turned wood bottle stoppers and saying that they would probably sell well to the wineries back home in Missouri. Yes, Missouri actually has quite a few wineries. I commented that I could make those if I had a lathe.

So she bought me a lathe and a basic set of turning tools and I began making bottle stoppers. We did indeed sell them to local wineries. With the proceeds we bought more tools and built more things. It mushroomed from there.

Back in business.

When we moved from St Louis to the mountains of East Tennessee, we brought the tools with us and bought a mountain side property with a small workshop already in place. Over the next three years we built it up and earned a reputation for making quality furniture. Along the way several people have come to help out.

Marie and I worked together here full time right from our move. But we encountered some extra difficulties one year and it was decided that Marie would seek employment to be sure the bills got paid while I continued to keep the woodworking going. The difficulties were temporary and orders began flowing in again, but Marie chose to stick with her new job, just in case.

We moved my Mother and Step-Dad out here, setting up a double-wide for them on our property – we have plenty of space here. I wanted to keep them close so I could help them, as they’re getting on in years. Mom helps out as shopkeeper in our gallery. Pat tried helping out in the workshop, but it wasn’t something he enjoyed.

We met Brian and Linda Hinschberger while buying Mom & Pat’s house. Linda was our salesperson, and mentioned that her husband also does woodworking. We got together and he has been very helpful, but now he’s finally gotten a shop of his own set up in a huge old barn on his property. I’m a little envious of all that space, but wish him well as he heads off to create his own company. I’m sure we will continue to help each other, but it will be different.

My nearest neighbor, Tim, has been a big help too. He’s retired and has no furniture making skills but has done carpentry work. He built us a wonderful little storage barn. He has a good eye for detail and is willing and eager to learn. He’s been very helpful, but now we find that he has stomach cancer and will soon be going on to join The Lord.

That leaves just me; once again a one-man shop. Back where I started, but content with that... for now.

As I get older I find I can’t do as much, as fast as I once could. Orders are piling up rapidly and I’m falling behind. I could just hire someone else, but there are problems with that. One is that there are cultural differences here that make it difficult to find reliable help. At least reliable as I define it. Mountain folk are wonderful, kind hearted people but they tend to view things differently than people brought up elsewhere. And since I’m here playing in their sandbox, things get done their way. But I have an idea.

Due to lack of budget, our local schools offer little in the way of art or industrial arts classes. I’d like to offer my workshop as a remote-class for industrial arts. This way I could enlist the aid of a few students to get things done and pass along what I know while I am still able to do so. Who knows, maybe I could find an apprentice who would take over when I can no longer do this.

The schools say they are interested. But first, I’ll need to build a larger workshop with space to accommodate a group of students without tripping over each other – and bring the shop up to OSHA codes.

I’m working on that now. Wish me luck!

Till next month,
Doug-Bob

Good Mountain Morning!

The fragrance of wood smoke scents the crisp January air as the rosy glow of dawn creeps across clouds over the mountain top, raked by the bare branches of winterized hardwood trees. I grab another armload of firewood to carry it inside the workshop and lay it on the warming rack above the woodstove that heats the workshop. A bright fire is blazing inside the stove. It’s a good start. That will soon take the edge off the chill in the shop.

I pause to look out across my “front yard” which slopes down the face of Piney Mountain. The town of Newport TN, a collection of specks of light from here, occupies the valley floor. On the other side English Mountain looms, shaped like a great sperm whale swimming lazily through the grey morning mists.

If, five years ago, anyone had told me that I’d be starting my days chopping and carrying firewood in order to stay warm while I worked I’d have told them they were nuts. We lived in the bustling metropolis of St. Louis then. I had a small workshop out behind our house – with a propane furnace. We had an eighth of an acre city lot, and it seemed like a lot of space at the time. Our house was a comfortable two bedroom bungalow; nothing elaborate or pretentious, but quite nice. Marie worked as an Administrative Assistant, I did my woodworking.

Then God put the idea in our heads that it was time for a change. It seemed rash, but it seemed right too.

We gave away or sold most of what we owned – except the tools – in a matter of days. Even our home sold to the second looker on the second day it was on the market, despite our real estate agent’s desperate pleas that it was way over-priced. We knew what we needed to get to finance the move… and we got it. With no quibbling too, she just said, “I’ll take it.” and the deal was done. Another sign that we were doing the right thing.

We ended up where we are by some intervention as well. We were looking for something completely different. We looked at a lot of possibilities. Only one was a serious contender, and that wasn’t ideal. Then, on a whim we stopped by this place because the listing said it had a workshop. Here we met Earl, the property owner. He was perfectly willing to answer all of our questions, show us anything we wanted to see, explain anything we didn’t understand. This man of seventy some odd years even walked the entire property line of a nearly five acre mountainside tract with us. On some of the steeper slopes, I was lagging behind, huffing and puffing. Earl strode on ahead not at all bothered by the terrain, as if he’d done it all his life. Because he had.

Earl changed our minds about what we were looking for. Not because he was a slick salesman, which he wasn’t. But because our encounter helped us see the advantage in doing what was needed when it was needed, not when it was convenient or comfortable.

Earlier a chance conversation with a clerk at Wal-Mart led us to the Chamber Of Commerce, seeking a map of county roads. Here we met Tom Rosberg who has proven invaluable in this venture. Among his good deeds was to hook us up with L.C Gregg.

We needed a bank that was willing to take it on faith that two middle aged people moving from out of state, with no jobs, little savings or property, but lots of desire could open a new business and make it work. Most wouldn’t. L.C Gregg did. His bank granted us the mortgage to buy this property, once we made the decision.

Marie and I came back here that evening to watch the sun go down over English Mountain from a spot we felt would be a good place to build our house. It was the most spectacular sunset we’d ever seen. That’s when we knew this was right. God had said so.

We still haven’t built our house. We live in a single-wide mobile home that came with the property. But we plan to build, one day, when we can afford it. In the mean time, our bills are paid, we’re warm and dry, and we have food on the table when it’s time to eat. That’s all we ask.

I drew a deep breath of the crisp morning air, and went inside with the wood. I love it here, you couldn’t drag Marie or I either one back to life in a city.

The fire blazed, the shop was warming nicely. Time to go in for breakfast.

* * * * *

Harried Holidays

Seasons Greetings!

This fall was our first Christmas season after switching to producing exclusively furniture. I expected it to be rather calm and serene. After all, who buys furniture as a Christmas gift?

Wrong again!

Apparently, a lot of people give furniture as gifts. Most of them don't shop very early, and they all want their order delivered by the big day. We've turned down several people already, and I'm sure there will be more in the two weeks that remain. We should have turned down more, because we've gotten ourselves into quite a pickle due to some faulty thinking on my part.

We fell behind on production months ago when I got hurt and could only stand up for short periods of time. I must say that people have been very patient with me, and I appreciate that. Then folks started writing to say that they noticed that their order was overdue already and we hadn't even started on it yet, and wanted to know when we planned to get it going. I decided to try to keep them happy.

My thinking went something like this; lets say, just for example, I have 6 projects to build each requiring one week of shop time. In six weeks, all of these projects should be built and out the door. Problem is that 4, 5 & 6 are concerned that theirs hasn't been started. So, if we start all six projects, and work on each a little each day or two, we should still be able to build all six projects in six weeks and reduce our customer's discomfort. Right? Umm... nope.

Looks good on paper, but doesn't work out in real life. The biggest hindrance is that with that with that many projects going at once -- some of them large projects -- there are pieces-parts piled on most every horizontal surface we have. We can't use the floor because it's concrete -- which tends to transfer moisture to wood sitting directly on it. That's a bad thing. So we use tools, tables, and counters. But we need to use those tools, tables and counters. When I need to use one, I must first move whatever is on it to an unused spot -- generally the tool, table or counter that I was using just before. It's kind of like the old shell game. Work space, work space, where is the work space? I've spent more time in the past two months moving things from one place to another than I did working on them.

This was not a good idea, and we will not do it again. From here on out it's back to a strict policy of First In First Out.



We have added a new product to our line-up. A woman from Nebraska was in our gallery some weeks back, saw the Mission style rocking chairs we have in there and loved them. But she wasn't thinking in terms of a chair for herself, but for her granddaughter. "Do you have them in a child's size?" she asked.

I hadn't thought about that. It could be a good idea -- Matching rockers: his, hers, & the tyke's.
So she placed an order for one just on faith that I could do it. And I did. We've produced a ¾ scale replica of our very comfy full size mission rocker. All of the joinery and construction techniques are exactly the same as the bigger chair the parts are just scaled down, so this is not really a toy but a small piece of good furniture.

I thought about offering a ½ scale version as well, for toddlers, but at that age they grow so fast that they'd out grow the chair quickly. It could be used as a doll chair then, but it's a pretty pricy doll chair.

This version is proportioned so that younger children can use it, but they won't our grow it for years. How many years? That depends on the child. I know some 11 and 12 year old kids that could still fit into this chair, and I've seen some 5 years olds who couldn't.

Again this year our wine bottle stopper display racks are a big hit. We've sold completely out of the three tier version -- including an additional batch we whipped up just to make our production schedule even more crazy -- but we have a few of the two tier versions left. However, they're going fast too. If you'd like one as a gift, don't wait long or they'll all be gone and we can not make another batch until we get some of these other orders caught up.

So much for 2004. I'll check in with you next year.

Merry Christmas, and remember, Jesus is NOT the patron saint of 4th quarter earnings. Take some time to reflect on what this season is supposed to be all about; the gift God gave each of us, His son, Jesus Christ.

Lumber Lament

I am often asked about our lumber sources. Do we buy only from FSC certified sources who utilize proper forestry conservation practices?

The answer… well... I think so. Most of the area we live in is part of one of three protected forests. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, The Martha Sundquist State Forest and the Cherokee National Forest. To do any logging on controlled property, you have to get a permit from the National Forestry Department. I assume the NFD knows what they’re doing, but don’t know if they’re FSC certified.

A lot of times the lumber we buy comes from someone who drops a few trees on their own land because they want to build a house or expand an existing one. We’ll buy the logs, or the lumber from the logs, because I know where they came from.

Normally, I dry my own lumber. Some I get in log form and have it sawn, some I buy as rough sawn green lumber from a mill that gets a load of especially nice stuff and calls me to see if I want it.

Then I bring it here and “sticker stack” the lumber to allow air to flow through the stack and cover the stacks with tin roofing to keep the rain off. I had hoped to build a large lumber shed this year to keep the weather away from it completely, but that hasn’t worked out yet. It takes about a year to air dry 4/4 lumber but, if done right, the wood suffers less and yields a more stable piece of lumber than kiln drying does. These are just two of the stacks I have tucked away on our property. One is hickory, one is red oak. I also have poplar, cherry, walnut, maple and a little chestnut oak.

If I run out of “on-hand” stock, then I have to buy what I need from a mill or lumber supplier. A lot of what’s available locally is construction grade – used to build homes, especially log homes. Buying from mills is cheaper, but I have to spend a lot of time and effort picking through the stacks for the good stuff. Buying from a supplier costs more and the nearest one is at least an hours drive away from here, but their lumber is pre-sorted by species and grade, and all stored indoors. No slogging through the mud at a mill.

Clear cutting is not something that I've ever seen practiced around here. Because logs are available locally, mills rarely have to import logs from other parts of the country, so we have a pretty close eye on where the lumber we use comes from and are confident that we’re not endorsing or supporting anyone using poor conservation practices.

We buy a lot of lumber from these fellows. In fact the lumber from these logs is in our private lumber yard now.

For information about conservation organizations visit the
Conservation page in our library.

Check out our Lumber Suppliers page to find hardwood suppliers around the country. (None of our local suppliers have web sites)

The SMW Library (shshshsh... people are reading)

Our library section is a compilation of articles and links of interest to anyone who likes woodworking, wood, or things made of wood. There is something for everyone. Our topical index includes:
Glossary – A new feature that were adding which offers definitions and explanations of the terms used on our web site and in the furniture and woodworking industries. We incorporate links to these definitions from discussions on our web pages so that when you run across a term you’re not sure about, just a click will bring you an explanation, then simply click your BACK button and resume where you were.
Woodworker Showcase – This section rotates through articles that we’ve found about woodworkers doing clever and unusual things. If you have run across such an article and would like to see it posted here, send us the URL.
Hints and How-To's – A gathering of useful tips for woodworkers and those caring for wooden items.
Woodworker Wanderings – A collection of short travelogue articles written by our “Wandering Woodworker” before we got so busy about some very interesting places. Complete with pictures.Exotic Lumber Information – If you’re interested in having something built out of exotic lumber but don’t know much about them, use this resource to explore the wonderful world of exotics.
Domestic Lumber Information – A whole lot of useful information about domestically grown lumber. Some of this information is also available through a [Select Lumber] link incorporated into the shopping cart buttons of our products.
Sheet Goods Selector – Information about plywood, particleboard, MDF, chipboard, etc. What they’re good for, what they’re not good for, how they are made and how to select a grade.
Stain Color Chart – An extremely popular page on our web site. This page shows samples of the stain colors we offer on our products. We suspect that the Sherwin Williams people are sending people to our web site because THEIR OWN web site doesn’t even offer this feature. (as of this writing) We built this ourselves by scanning color samples made from their stains.

We also offer a series of link lists that give you direct access to sites related to woodworking in these categories: Magazines, TV Shows, Tool Manufacturers, Supply Catalogs, Hardware Stores, Hardwood Suppliers, Furniture Parts, Nature Conservation Organizations and Woodworker Associations. We are not affiliated with any of these sites, although some of them do post our articles or use our web site as a resource, so their being listed here is not so much an endorsement of their goods or services as it is a resource for you.

I will begin including a couple of links to articles in our library with each newsletter posting to allow you to sample the contents of our Library. But feel free to pop in and browse it any time you like. If you know of content or links that should be added, please drop me a note with the URL of that information.

Thank you and remember: He who laughs last, didn’t get the joke.