On my 35th birthday, my friend Peter gave me a commander mallet that he made himself from an 8x8 piece of western larch and a hardwood handle. Below, you can see me holding the commander while standing next to Peter.

My dad also sent me some really cool tools: a complete set of 3 very nice calipers: interior, exterior and a point-to-point. He also sent me a nifty centering ruler for quickly finding the center of a timber. Thanks, Dad!!!




Below are some pictures of my workshop. You can see that I haven't stacked all of the timbers on stickers yet. I'll probably get to that next week.

Jon has been doing an excellent job milling, and every week or two I've been picking up 10 or so freshly-milled timbers. Immediately below you can see a pile of hastily-stacked timbers, mostly 4x7s of various species, including a couple doug fir 7x7s.

Below, you can see a hand-made carving bench made by Nils Peterson. I've been making pegs from Birch and Tamarack using the carving bench. Here, on the bench, you can see some roughed birch pegs that I am about to shape with a spokeshave.

Jon has been making nominal 2x4 and 2x7 boards and planks when he mills. Below, you can see them up on stickers in my shop:

Jon has been doing a great, great job milling these timbers. Below, you can see some 7x9, 4x7, and 7x7 fir and pine timbers on stickers. The ends of these timbers are a bit grimy, since I didn't cover them properly when I transported them from Troy to Moscow, and they got road funk on them. I have since learned my lesson, and have employed tarpology to protect them from road grime.

Below, the unstacked/unstickered timbers to the left are the most recent. These were made from the spruce that we recently removed in our backyard. The timbers are beautiful, although a bit knotty. Spruce is light: light in color and light in weight. Its amazing how insubstantial a spruce 7x7 is compared to fir and even pine.