On The (Vast) Silent Majority

I have been on the Internet since the early days.  By luck of birth and predilection, I get to say, "I was there when..."  The woodworking thing came many years later.

This post is on the differences in online verbosity between the general woodworker and the general technical professional.

I peruse a number of woodworking and technical sites on a weekly basis.  Frequent thoughtful (and not so much so) posting on tech sites is the norm.  In stark contrast are the woodworking sites.  My experience is that 20 responses to some posted content is a banner event.

There are, of course, exceptions.  The forums at Lumberjocks.com must be mentioned as one such exception.

When I started blogging, I naturally assumed that like minded folks would stumble upon the blog and offer comments.  A very naive assumption.  There are many reasons for the differences in loquaciousness between techies and woodworkers, but I believe the biggest issue is community size.  There are simply a lot more techies than woodworkers and techies by their nature are online all the time.

Enough sociological rambling.  The point I'm getting at is what for me is a natural medium of communication--online exchange--is not for most other folks, woodworkers included.

My naive desire for an interactive woodworking blogging venture has necessarily changed to become more of a public diary to myself.  The focus always has been on learning woodworking, featuring the mistakes made on the way and that is not going to change.  I am, however, going to branch out into other areas of Making.  Did I just turn a verb into a noun?  One more try:  I am, however, going to expand blog coverage into other areas of craft and making.  I may not be very talented, but I do try a lot of different things.

Woodworking is not going away, in fact, I just pulled a splinter from the side of my thumb that must have got there last night.  In addition to woodworking, I'll post other projects that are worked on.  Party on, Garth!

Heavy Sigh

Sometimes I wonder why I stick with this woodworking thing.  I'm working on a very large crosscut sled for the table saw.  This beast is nothing fancy, just 24"X40" of sliding plywood and two fences.

Unfortunately, the critical rear fence has eluded me.  Here is the second attempt:

The plywood was not straight after gluing the halves together, but I didn't expect it to be so.  I originally purchased an aluminum angle to serve as a stiffener/straightener.  The plywood had other plans as the aluminum angle was deformed to conform to the fence shape.

The next step was to buy a piece of steel to serve in place of the aluminum.  The plywood won again as you can see.  What you can't see are the six screws trying to hold it in place.

At this point I'm looking for other options.  Maybe I'll  hit Google/youtube to see what others are doing.  This afternoon project has turned into a multi-day fiasco.  So, I'll close as I began.  Heavy sigh.