Update On Our Site

Ok guys. As you may have noticed, things have gotten a bit fluid around here. We have added some cool new features, folks have joined, folks have left, and the world goes round and round.

First of all, I am honored and humbled that woodworkers have decided to call us home. Thank you.

I just wanted you all to know that yes, we are a bit slow, but as far as sites go, we are about on par with our traffic, if you perform a simple extrapolation of numbers, we are doing fine actually. We are about 350 members strong. We have a hand full of regulars, a hand full of folks who visit a few times a week, and then some here and there that drop in from time to time. No different then any other site. This is summer time, people are outside until dark now, not sitting behind a computer. And this is the time of year when all our mid west and eastern friends become really productive in there shops. A lot of our woodworkers can't even work in their shop/garages during the winter, so what do they do for their wood fix? They come here and they visit a plethora of sites involved with woodworking to get their woodworking fix. Fall and Winter are nice and busy around here. Now sites with thousands of members are witnessing a serious summer slow down as well, but because they are a thousand plus strong, the slow down is not as noticeable as a site with just a few hundred folks.

As I stated in an earlier post, we are here to stay. We are not going anywhere. And we are going to keep taking steps to improve our site, provide richer content, and make our site more interesting for woodworkers who want a place to come and hang out, learn, and mentor others as well.

All this of course takes resources. And as those resources become available, we will expand, produce original content, and give our woodworkers a reason to return day after day.

Our plans for the future: In the near future, we are going to purchase a video camera for filming tutorials and "How To's". Also we are going to expand into video "Build Alongs".  These videos will be made available to our members and visitors and hopefully you'll find the material useful to carry your woodworking a step further. How would you like to see how a colonial blanket chest is made with one piece moldings, not built up moldings, but one monolithic profile shaped by a series of cuts on your table saw and a router table? Anyone have one of those old Keller dovetail jigs? How would you like to see one used to make endless dovetails, the Kellers can make DT's a mile long, just keep moving it down the line.

Or would you like to see a sure fire method to get those chisels and plane blades razor sharp? We'll cover the scary sharp method and of course the good ol fashioned stone.

Also, some of you might have noticed that little tab to the left of your monitor as your on our site, the tab called "USTREAM". Click on that tab and out pops a broadcast video channel. We want to feature live guest stars on this video chat. You'll be able to tune in and listen to a well known woodworker and designer, and hear about the tricks of the trade, you'll be able to ask questions via text chat in real time as the speaker is talking. We will have a show schedule that informs our members when to tune in.

We have made a presence on Face Book lately, we have met a whole lot of wonderful woodworkers who do just some of the most amazing work I have ever seen. And the folks I have interacted with are an absolute joy to speak with. Now if we can just get them here to see us grow!

Your's truly will be blogging about my favorite pastime, building chairs!!!! Follow me as I build some really cool rocking chairs, I am a student of Hal Taylor, one of the greats in the rocker building art world, and his classes are wonderful, and I will pass along some of my own experiences in the blog series.

So folks, just hang in there, this takes time, we have big dreams for this site. We have only been live for just over a year now. And there is quite a bit of action going on behind the scenes that you don't see, we are working on getting a solid foundation built for our site, between new tech features and working the bugs out, and fine tuning ourselves. This has been quite an experience, and we hope you all stick it out with us, and just watch us grow, and see us a year from now, or two!  I think we'll have something we can all be proud of.

 

Thank you all so so much for being here, I know you could be doing a ton of things with your time. So when you are on here, I am truly humbled that you found our site worthy of a sliver of time during your day to just drop in and say "Howdy".

 

Stay tuned!

John Morris