Howdy Patriot Woodworkers! Coming off a two week pull from vacation on my end, I am surprisingly ready to go back to my day job and get to work this first work week of our New Year. I love being home with family, having our own schedule, and going places and sleeping in an hour while on vacation! But I must admit, I awoke bright eyed bushy tail and eager to excel this morning and I am ready to tackle the week ahead at the day job!

In my region all though, we are scheduled for a considerable amount of rain, so my time may be in the office instead of out in the field where I belong for a few days.

 

That being said, what do you all have fired up in your shops for this week? What projects do you have happening, what is on your Monday agenda. I love Mondays, always have. It seems like a new line in the sand to be crossed over and whatever is on the other side is ready for me to tackle and conquer and make peace with. The same can be said for the projects we all have lined up on our calendars.

John Moody our site administrator hits The Patriot Woodworker's up with the Friday weekend agenda, so now I am asking, what was the outcome of your weekend projects, and what do you have planned for the work week ahead!

 

While on vacation I was able to make some great progress on our new Patriot Woodwiki. We have been working on software research and testing for a year now, and I feel we have made great strides in this area. Our wiki is not currently open yet, but I think we have finally, finally settled on a wiki software engine, and a look and feel we may be happy with. You can view our efforts at The Patriot Woodwiki, and you can view a test article at Sam Maloof that we have been playing with at each wiki engine testing. We hope our wiki will become a great research resource for anything and all that has to do with woodworking.

 

Thank you for being here Patriot Woodworkers, and making us a great place to hang our hats!

 

Picture of the week: Black Powder Rifle by maker Micky Britt as seen at Contemporary Makers

 

Howdy John, well hopefully you wont be inside so much.

 

As for me and projects, I seem to be stuck on toys. I haven't turned much lately other than a few tops or Throw tops as some call them. It's a new thing for me, and I'm also trying to relearn how to throw them so they land right and spin correctly. I'll post a few pictures later on but here's one picture of the first one I made. I didn't know that they actually still had metal tips available for these so I made a tip from a piece of Marblewood. As you can see this one is already scuffed up LOL. All future tops I make though will have the metal tips installed. The main body of course is maple.

Love that flintlock by the way.

Nice top Charles! They look like they can be fun to make for sure. I noticed you have been Etsy for some time now, how are you doing over there?

I have had a few sales lately, had one today but had to cancel it due to a defective finish on a pen. I usually get 5 or 6 sales over the holiday and so I am pretty much on par.

Thanks for asking

 

The tops really are fun to make but a pain to learn to throw correctly, I have seen a few videos, but they all suggest different ways of throwing them, so it's like trial and error all over again trying to get it going.

After I get one made with the new metal tips, I'll try again and see if I can throw one and make a difference.

 

I have a DR appt. in the morning though so I will be out part of the day (bummer).

 

I'll be working on this more when I get home. Its 3 1x's glued together to make a blank for a top.