Mag Ruffman: My Favorite Woodworking Author

I need to correct a grave error.

In January I published a list of my favorite woodworking writers, but I neglected to include my all-time dearest , probably because her work should be shipped in a plain brown wrapper.

If you are Canadian, then you can probably guess who I am talking about: Mag Ruffman. She was the host of the “Anything I Can Do” show in Canada that featured wistful, gauzy shots of Ruffman driving through the country, taunting the viewer with ribald puns and sawing through boards in a romantic barn while working behind a Veritas workbench.

Oh, and she also played Olivia Dale in “Road to Avonlea,” which ran for seven seasons on television.

Though some might say that technically Ruffman is a home-improvement writer, I say to that: But her writing is so titillating. Recently I read a selection of her book “How Hard Can it Be?” out loud in the office, which is why I’m now scheduled for some sensitivity training with our human resources department.

That book is truly one of the funniest books I own. It might be the only home-improvement/woodworking book with a nude bath scene (and thank goodness, really. I’m not sure we’re ready as a society to see Norm Abram buck naked. Well, I know I’m not).

Here’s a quick G-rated excerpt about building rustic furniture from her book.

You can start creating your own romantic idyll with a few twigs and 2 x 4s. In fact, this is a great project for those new to woodworking because it’s “rustic,” meaning that even if your results fall somewhere between monstrous and butt ugly, you still rock.

If people criticize your garden screen, laugh mockingly, and say, “It’s rustic, man. It’s a choice.” Then try limping a little when you walk away, so they realize that things haven’t always been this easy for you.

Ruffman’s work on Canadian television actually was our inspiration behind our “I Can Do That” column in Popular Woodworking, which features projects you can build with hand-held tools and no workshop. And in fact, I put Ruffman on the cover of Popular Woodworking in February 2002.

She built us a potty cabinet (that matches her mouth…¦), and it is the single most entertaining story we have published in the magazine since I started work here in 1996. Reader response was tremendous. I received letters from readers who said they read the thing out loud to their entire family multiple times. I’ve tried to get Ruffman back in our pages a couple times, but our schedules haven’t worked out.

So Mag, if you’re out there and want some work, if your poutine funds are running low, drop me a line.

In the meantime, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of “How Hard Can it Be?” from a bookseller and check out her ToolGirl.com blog, which features some of her older projects and details on what she’s building, fixing or writing about these days.

– Christopher Schwarz

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