I've had the same shooting board for 12 years. It's a clone of the Lost Art Press plans (made of 1/2" baltic birch plywood) and has served me very well. But after a dozen years, it's pretty chewed up (mostly from being too lazy to flip it over when using it as a bench hook for sawing). So, over the last week or so, I took the time (and some pine scraps) to make a new one.

Happy New Year, everyone! Hopefully everyone has fully recovered from their New Year's Eve partying and is back in the shop. I certainly am. As with every new year, I try to tackle a few small but important projects (I call them "fixgasms") around the shop. The term is not exclusive to the workshop. A fixgasm can be anything that's been on the to-do list for too long and won't really take a ton of effort to complete, but will have outsized impact when done.

When I first built my wall-hanging tool chest, I had only a handful of moulding planes. Basically a quarter set of hollows and rounds, plus a wooden fillister (rabbeting) plane. So the little cubbies at the bottom were more than sufficient for both those and my couple of joinery planes.

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate! It's November 27, 2025 and things are in a weird place. It's been a busy year for me, professionally. Workflow is good; the pipeline is strong. And all I want to do is spend some quiet time in the workshop and forget about the chaos out there. It's important to take some time for ourselves, if we can.

For those who only know me as a woodworker, you probably won’t be surprised to hear that I also love Magic: the Gathering. I’m in my mid 40’s and my first pack of Magic was Unlimi…