Welcome to my photo blog of various “maker” things I am up to, mostly woodworking. The above picture is a sign hanging in my workshop, given to me by the family. It’s pretty cool.

About this site

Home Page

The Home Page is an reverse chronological listing (also known as “newest first” in non-geek speak) of the various projects I have taken on. As you go further back in time, the projects get a little more primitive…not that my more recent things are perfect, but you learn a lot over time in this craft. Some of those learnings I have actually managed to apply in my more recent efforts.

The home page, or home pages, are paginated into about eight to ten posts per page. As of this writing, there are about 40 posts in all, so that makes for four pages. See, I can do math!

Each entry has a summary of the project, along with a thumbnail pick that will drive everyone wild with anticipation of the upcoming experience.

The Posts

The posts are usually, but not always, broken up into the following sections:

• Background. Reasons why this project was done in the first place, along with cheesy stories to back up the rationale. This section is sometimes labelled Origins, or Introduction, to keep things fresh.
• Design. The planning behind the projects, sometimes include screenshots from whatever design software and processes I may have used.
• Construction. The actual build. Yeah, this section is kind of important, and also self-explanatory.
• In-use. I try to wrap up each post with a pic or two showing the piece in actual use, in its native habitat.
• Materials. A listing of tools and materials, and their suppliers, used in the project. This section for the nerdy amongst us.

In the early days, I did not take many pictures of the shop or the projects as they were in progress, so a lot of the pics will be of the finished product. I will be taking more “under construction” photos as time progresses, hopefully that will make the posts more interesting to those who like a bit of the “behind-the-scenes” thing.

Note: In any post, you can click on any pick and it will launch you into a mini-gallery where you can full-screen scroll thru all the pics in that post. This is not to be confused with the Image Gallery.

Image Gallery

The Image Gallery is an alphabetical listing of the best images from all the posts on the site, the top three or four per post. This is meant to be a purely visual experience, and it’s a fun way to go through things.

Note: If you see something of interest in the image gallery, you can click on the image caption to drill down into the original post. Also note that if you are viewing on a mobile device, an up or down swipe can close the gallery. That way you don’t have to hunt for the tiny “close” button.

Timeline

For an interesting layout of the posts in chronological order, be sure to check out the Timeline View. The “Posted” date at the top of each blog post is actually the rough date of when the project took place, and this view is sorted by that timestamp.

Categories

The Categories link shows the posts group by their categories and sub-categories. I am just getting these categories sorted as of this writing. For now, there are two major categories: Woodworking, which is where the vast majority of posts exist, and Home & Garden, which only has a couple of posts right now, but I expect more to go there as things progress.

Tags

The Tags link will display a tag wall splattered with every tag from every post. Click on a random one to see what fun that brings.

To all the fans of this website, pictured below, please be let me know if you find any bugs or other inaccuracies. This is very much a work in progress.

About the author

I have been focussing more and more on maker type things, including woodworking for the last decade or so. While woodworking is my primary focus, I also like to include other things…anything high tech or gadgety will do quite nicely. Also fair game are life-hacks, yard / garden / house projects and other maker things…but mostly woodworking.

Sometime in late 2016, I started to setup a workshop in the basement. Retirement was around the corner, and one of my father’s favorite wisdoms was to “retire to something, don’t retire from something”. My father is very wise.

I live in a rural suburb of Ottawa called Manotick with my wife Debbie and two boys, Riley and Ozzie.

Debbie took this great shot of the boys

Enjoy the Blog!

I am also a Pisces, which is silly because there is no science behind that stuff at all. The other thing you should know about me is that I am all about science. Actually, that one fact probably tells you a lot about me, from my political leanings, to my thoughts on religion, climate change, and more.

But if you must know, politics wise, I am fiscally conservative (you can’t spend money you don’t have), and socially liberal (the only thing I am truly intolerant of, is intolerance). Wait, TMI alert! Way too much information already!