SPECIAL GUEST CHAT -- TOMORROW NIGHT! *LINK*

Please join us for this special evening with Adam Cherubini, period furnituremaker, historian and regular contributor to the WoodCentral Hand Tools Forum, as he and guest host, Chris Schwarz (executive editor of Popular Woodworking magazine) team up for this, the first of Chris's upcoming monthly hand tools chats here on WoodCentral.

The topic of Tuesday's chat will be "Arts & Mysteries: Working Quickly and Efficiently with Hand Tools," a discussion of how and why hand tool techniques have been lost and what can be done to rediscover them. This chat coincides with the publication of Adam's first column in Popular Woodworking, due out momentarily in the March/April issue.

To whet your appetite for this special chat, Popular Woodworking has granted WoodCentral an exclusive preview of a brand-new column that Adam will be writing for that magazine, beginning with the March/April issue, due out this month. (The file is a 352Kb PDF (Acrobat Reader) file, so it may take a couple minutes to download over a dialup connection.)

The chat will take place this Tuesday evening, February 22, 2005, beginning at 9:30 pm Eastern time in the WoodCentral Chat Room. The chat is scheduled to last one hour, but, as with all our chats, it can go on for as long as everyone's having fun.

I, for one, am looking forward to an illuminating chat with Adam and an inspiring series with Chris. Thanks to both of them and to Popular Woodworking for teaming up with WoodCentral to bring you this sure-to-be-informative series.

Adam Cherubini on himself:

I'm 41, an aerospace engineer, and a part-time period furniture maker. I volunteer at Pennsbury Manor where I demonstrate woodworking, circa 1700, once a month. I'm not a great woodworker; I'm just not great with my hands. My dad was a good woodworker. My brother is a good woodworker. I know what good is, and I know I'm not.

Because things don't come naturally to me -- because I struggle cutting joints and sawing boards -- I've compensated by researching (what I think are) sensible hand tool techniques. I have learned these things experimentally and intellectually because I have no choice. I don't dislike woodworking, but I'd much rather paint as a hobby.

I work wood by hand because its the only way to get the hand made furniture I

want for the price I'm willing to pay. I never considered working with power tools. I have no experience with them. And while I admit my complete ignorance, they don't appear to do what I need done. I have an electric wood lathe, and I'd like to someday use a bandsaw.