Oh the delights of shop snooping.
Logan and I spent time at Grizzly Tools in Bellingham, WA. We did some filming with Shiraz Balolia (founder of Grizzly) and his shop at HQ. As you'd imagine, it's very well equipped. Even though my space is smaller than the footprint of his sliding table saw, I picked up a few ideas that I plan to incorporate.
Getting invited into the workshop of another woodworker is a near sacred experience. You see the personality of its owner reflected everywhere you look. I always come away inspired and with an idea or two to adapt to my own shop. Maybe it's a good idea to invite someone to see your shop.
Speaking of ideas, Logan expressed some frustration with the process of changing blades on the table saw. On some projects, he ends up switching back and forth between a combination blade and a dado set several times.
His solution: Table Saw En Echelon — Two table saws mounted side by side. In his view, one is set for sizing parts, the other houses a dado stack and they share the same rip fence. It's an interesting idea and totally Logan.
Several discussion questions come up: How legit is this idea? Would you consider having two table saws in your shop? Compare the side-by-side arrangement to a back-to-back set? Which is better?
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Questions, Comments, & Smart Remarks:
Milling & Jointing When I mill green logs on my bandsaw, do I do any damage by running the remaining log over my jointer to flatten before resuming milling-in other words, do I run the risk of heavy pitch (or anything else) on the cutter heads?
Complaints I've been subscribing to you magazine for about 35+ years, I will not be renewing my subscription. The past several years your magazine has gone downhill tremendously. The quality of the plans is no comparison what they use to be and that was one of the main reasons I subcribed. Plus, the amount of advertising that you shoved into the pages of the magazine it obscene. And I get the feeling that your wokeness is more of a priority than the quality of the articles in the magazine.
Phil Responds Reading an email like yours is tough, but I appreciate you taking the time to write. One of the things we pride ourselves on is the long-lasting subscribers that are part of what we do. If you wouldn't mind, I'd appreciate it if you could answer a few questions I had.
The Woodsmith staff is made up of quite a few devoted woodworkers. The projects we select for each issue is meant to reach a broad level of interest and skills. In what ways do you see these projects being lesser than in past years? Would you provide a few specific examples?
By way of explanation, Woodsmith includes 5 projects per issue. That's more than have ever been included in the magazine. I agree that including advertising in Woodsmith has been a struggle for us on the editorial and design side. However, it's a good idea to keep eggs in more than one basket, so to speak. Several years ago, we added pages — moving from 52 to 68 pages — knowing that advertising was coming. This way we had the same amount of projects and articles as in the past. Competing with all the free stuff online is serious business. So including advertising helps to keep our subscription costs as low as we can.
Please help me understand what you mean by this comment: "I get the feeling that your wokeness is more of a priority than the quality of the articles"
Finally, I invite you to come tour our offices in Des Moines, IA. I'd like to show you around the shop, studios, and have you meet the staff. It would be a good chance to talk about woodworking and how to get a new generation of woodworkers excited about the craft.
Stay well
This episode of ShopNotes is brought to you by Grizzly Industrial. Purveyors of fine woodworking machinery since 1983, buy direct & save at Grizzly.com
