Links Page

Wreck.norm cabalistas and other hangers-on web pages

I hang out on a usenet newsgroup called rec.woodworking, affectionately called the Wreck by its regulars, but AKA rec.norm, rec.wooddorking, etc. If your ISP doesn't allow you to subscribe to usenet or you haven't set up your newsreader client, you can also read the group and post from Google Groups.

As David Eisan put it in the FAQ he periodically posts:

This is an informal group with users of all levels of knowledge, from those who have yet to pick up a tool, professional woodworkers, authors of books on woodworking, woodworking magazine editors, principals of tool companies, and every level in between.

Paddy O'deen
Patrick Olguin is the dean of Wreckers. Author of the Crowbar FAQ, his contributions are too numerous to list here.

UnisawA100 (FKA Duke of Urls, Floyd Keeter)
Although Keith does not really have a web site, he is the founder and leading light of the Old Woodworking Machines site. Here is his Unisaw page. It seems that Keith has the very first Unisaw ever built, christened El Guapo.

Howard Ruttan
In addition to his woodworking pages, Howard did a survey of rec.woodworking participants. I helped him a bit with the interpretion of a few questions. Check it out.

Jeff Gorman
Jeff has one of the most informative web sites around, IMNSHO. I usually go there first when I have a technical question.

Groggy
Groggy's got a good page of book reviews & other neat stuff. Being a Strine, he likes to shill for Triton. :-) But then I shill for Lee Valley and General.

Thos. Watson, cabinetmaker (ret.)
Tom recently retired from cabinetmaking to take an office job. Make sure you check out his writings pages. I tried to get him named the wreck's Poet Laureate, but I got dumped on.

LRod's Woodbutchering page
Among a lot of other things, Rod caters to the fascination many people have for Norm Abram's (of New Yankee Workshop PBS TV show fame) tools. All his episodes have been indexed and most tools identified. If you wanna be jes' like Norm, this is the place to go. A labour of love.

Tom Plamann
Most wreckers just go Wow! when they see Tom's work. Check out the staircase.

Charlie Self
Pretty impressive CV when it comes to writing about woodworking. Or taking pictures.

Larry Jaques
No pitchers of the bow saur, but lots of other neat stuff, like t-shirts. He claims to be a Neander but has gone over to the dark side. He also shills for Harbor Freight.

JOAT
Need I say more?

Doug Stowe
Doug is a genuinely great person and has written some wonderful books.

Dave Fleming
Welcome to Sag Harbour. A lot of good stories about being a shipwright.

Spokeshave
John Gunterman has only made a brief appearance on the Wreck recently, but his website, devoted to a number of Neanderthal topics and his spokeshave specialty, is still up.

Dave Balderstone
Here's his workbench pics. One of these days, he too will have a proper website.

Andy Dingley
Andy does a bunch of really neat, imaginative stuff.

Silvan
Silvan is also a certified Linux fanatic. But purty funny.

Businesses from whom I have bought stuff online and have been satisfied.

Lee Valley Tools
Lee Valley Toys and Veritas, their manufacturing arm. Nice toys, extensive hardware selection, lots of gardening stuff too, and unsurpassed customer service. My only complaint is that they don't have a store in Whitehorse. My repeated attempts to lure Robin Lee to Whitehorse using caribou jerky have failed.

House of Tools
The place where us western Kanuckistanis get our power tools. I got most of my routers there, and I go into the store anytime I'm in Edmonton. I used to go to their Vancouver store, but that closed. However, our local Home Hardware (FKA Beaver Lumber) now carries the General tool line.

Dimar
I needed new blades for my Makita 2040 planer and didn't find them at the House of Tools. They would have had to order them specially. So I emailed Dimar and they responded on a Saturday. A phone call the next day to deal with the credit card stuff, and my blades were on the way. They don't normally sell retail, but they sold to me given that I am in what they considered a remote location.

Knight Toolworks

This is the crazy experimental plane I bought from Steve Knight. If the unusual design turns you off, you should note that most of his other planes are much more sedate. Steve is a regular on the wreck and makes really nice tools. I have yet to see one complaint by anyone who bought a plane from Steve. He tests his planes and you get the fluffy shavings when the plane gets to you.

Ace Tool Repair
Located in Smithers, B.C., Ace Tool Repair carries all kinds of hard-to-find parts for your tailed tools. Smithers is paractically next door to me, being at the Southern end of the Stewart-Cassiar Highway, a mere 1200 km away.

Doug Stowe
Buy his books if you have any interest in making boxes. Some great designs!

Garret Wade
All I ever bought from them was a set of nice German clamps which were on sale. Nice catalogue.

Patrick Leach
Patrick used to be a regular on the Wreck in the old days. Now he sells reconditioned old tools. I bought a #10-1/2 from him a few years ago. Great person to deal with.

Reference - Sites with good info that I have actually used

Old Woodworking Machines (OWWM)
Keith's baby. Everything about old woodworking machines. Old manuals, serial number references, and lots of stories and pictures about every imaginable old machine.

Swensen - Making straightedges from scratch
I followed Swensen's instructions (sort of) to make straightedges accurate to less than a gnat's ass (tmTW). He's also got other stuff on machinery maintenance.

Pat Warner's Router Pages
Pat Warner has written a few books about routers and has lots of good info, jigs for sale, etc. The place to go for router information.

Museo del falegname
Just a cool site with an atrocious English translation. I have to go there next time I'm in Italy.

Patrick's Satanley Blood and Gore
Everything you always wanted to know about Stanley planes but were afraid to ask.

Stanley Plane dating page
If you want to know how old that beauty you picked up for next to nothing is, this is the place to go. I dated the #7C Ken Mulloy gave me for Christmas one year to 1919-1921.

Riley's Low-stress computer furniture plans
Lots of desk plans, some free some not. Check out the "air-typing" page.

Sagulator - Shelf Sag Calculator
I once did a spreadsheet based on Hoadley's formulas, but this is much better. You can enter the species as well as the size of the shelf and see how much it will sag.

U.S. Forest Products Laboratory's Wood handbook.
Everything you always wanted to know about wood as an engineering material. A great reference. You can also get a hard copy form Lee Valley.

Romeyn Hough, The American Woods: exhibited by actual specimens and with copious explanatory text
Beautiful pictures of most North American woods in radial, tangential and transverse (crosscut) sections. You can get a hard copy form Lee Valley.