We may receive a commission when you use our affiliate links. However, this does not impact our recommendations.
My job lets me see a lot of cool woodshops, but even I’m jealous of an amazing journey that’s going on right now by British woodworker Stuart Page.
Page recently graduated from a furniture-making course in Scotland and has received a grant from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust to research “Traditional Crafts, Furniture Making and Sustainable Rural Living” in North America.
What that really means is that Page is driving around the United States and Canada this summer and visiting the shops you’ve read about in the magazines and books and seen on television. He’s getting to sit down and talk to the woodworkers who run those shops. And he’s writing about his travels on his blog.
The blog, cryptically titled “One Hairy Arm Goes West” is a travelogue of his journey, which began is Los Angeles and will wind his way through the Midwest, Canada and the East Coast. All the while, he’s visiting woodworkers at every stop and writing about them on his blog.
So far, he’s posted several entries about his travels, including one on his visit to Sam Maloof‘s establishment and a more recent one on the College of the Redwoods, shown in the photo above from our piece last year on the college.
We recommend you visit Page’s blog and bookmark it so you can follow his travels. We know some of the visits that are coming up, but we don’t want to spoil the surprise.
P.S. I’ve also added the site to our Blogroll at left in case you forget this link.
Here are some supplies and tools we find essential in our everyday work around the shop. We may receive a commission from sales referred by our links; however, we have carefully selected these products for their usefulness and quality.
I just spent a week in Calgary at a Rob Cosman hand tool workshop with the "hairy arm" (Stuart). Not only is he a heck of a nice guy, with a great sense of humour, but he can generate stacks of expertly-made hand cut dovetail joints in no time.