-crickets-

Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?

:)

Sorry for the disappearance; it was nice getting emails from readers wondering if I got run over by a Zamboni or something.

My day job exploded with overtime when a third-party contracting company was found to be a <insert polite word for fraud>. As I'd peel layers of the project's proverbial onion back, I'd find more massive bits of ugliness requiring rework or plain restart.  When I go to the shop to work on Angle Madness, I like a big chunk of time to record and figure out the complicated stuff; tiny bits of shop time don't work well for that.  Plus, I was kinda tired.

So, I apologize for the disappearance, but I also didn't want to bug you with a "hey I'm busy" posting.

Recently, though, I got a chance to take a number of classes at Southwest Center for Craftsmanship including building a Queen Anne chest of drawers reproduction with Frank Klausz, a marquetry and decorative veneering class with Paul Schürch, and furniture design also with Paul Schürch. I'll be posting articles about each of these classes.

Since the marquetry class was the same one Paul taught here before. I sent Paul a private video where I described an advanced project I wanted to do in the back of the room with periodic guidance from him. He was all for it as he really wants to see the art of marquetry grow. I've started recording some of the special aspects of this project to eventually turn them into a video.

Further, mid-May, Michael Fortune will be conducting a chair and table building class here.  I recently took a class with him back in November that was more a lecture/seminar class; after this blog posting, you'll get a dump of some of the interesting things I picked up in that class.

I have been working on Angle Madness with limited time; I have numerous finishing experiments in place, which should be fully recorded soon.

Okay enough about this... next up, what I learned from Michael Fortune back in November's seminar lecture!

Oh, yeah, I hung around with Frank as much as I could without, you know, being weird. You learn stuff from close proximity.  A week after the class was over, I received this nice gift in the mail... thanks, Frank!