Mark Hedin and his beautiful wife, Carol welcomed Sadie Ann Hedin Sunday evening at 7:30 into this world.  Everyone is doing great, including big brother, Jonas who is taking his “Big Brother” duties very seriously.  Sadie was 21 inches long and weighed in at 8 + pounds.  Much too large for itty-bitty Carol.  I am sure Carol is relieved to have this part over with, and I’m sure Mark is glad that us girls are no longer, nagging him about how Carol is doing.  Sadie is absolutely beautiful with her chubby cheeks and dark hair.
 
As a side note, all of us feel blessed to have the Hedin family in our lives.  If only our world were filled with such dedicated, hard working, and kind people as these two.  It would certainly be a better place to visit….
 
Check back soon, I’ll bet we will have pictures from the proud pappa.
 
I am going to do my best to blog on Monday’s and Friday’s just to be consistent.  I know, I know…Good luck with that!  LOL!
 
This week we have Paul Schurch teaching “Stone Marquetry,” ” Making Beautiful Outdoor Furniture “with Tim Celeski and finally the “Great and Powerful” Michael Fortune, teaching “Getting the Most From Your Band Saw.”
 
Should be interesting…check back on Friday and see.
 
Blog to you later!
 
Karen

 As most of you know, school started April 2 and we have been going “Full Speed” since then.  Lot’s of new, and exciting changes here.  Namely, we have new floors in the classrooms and here in the cafe too!  Standing all day is going to be much more comfortable for everyone now.  The only complaint I have about the new floors is that they are hard to get clean.  I’ve scrubbed and scrubbed, but I canNOT get these flecks of “stuff” off the floor.  It looks like confetti.  I’ve complained to Doug and he just looked at me like I’m nuts.  What’s up with that?  Anyway, I just got disgusted and decided to leave them on the floor.  They’re EVERYWHERE and he’ll just have to deal with it.  He put it down there anyway.  Right after Marc spread this “goop” (it looked a lot like my hair gel , Doug walked around sprinkling the confetti on the floor.   He looked pretty silly doing it too!  But don’t tell him I said that.  He would be embarrassed.  Well like I said, he can deal with it.  Strange no one else has complained.

This week we have Jeff  Headley and Steve Hamilton, Stephen Proctor and Ray Key.  A great group of instructor’s and as always, the students are terrific.

That’s it for now I think.  I am going to try and blog at least once a week so keep an eye out for that.  You NEVER know what’s gonna happen next at the Adam’s place!  :)

Karen

Hi Folks. Anyone who’s been at the school knows that safety is job 1 each and every week for the shop assistants and instructors, so I hope you’ll forgive the fact that this post is a little on the late side, but as I spent our second week on the shop floor with Zane, Doug, Jeff, and Mark H. I know you’ll understand why I went “silent” – to put it simply…I was wiped…

While Chris and his crew were hard at work on their benches, things were a little (only a little..) more sedate in Michael Fortune’s “Developing the Idea” class. After all, it’s best to make a a minimum of noise when you’re hiding models from Michael in an attempt to keep him from “reconfiguring” it into an upside down, reversed version of your original idea! Kidding aside, it was a fascinating week watching the class advance their design skills while Michael stepped them through the design process he uses to create every one of his award winning creations. Everybody went home with lots of new directions for their furniture.

The correct answer the question “How many screws did Zane and Doug drive this last winter when they installed our new bench room floors?” was 7,263!

The closest answer was 7000 screws and was submitted by George Rodgers. Congratualations George, you’re our winner. Geoge will be selecting from our popular t-shirt collection, including: “Layout is Everything”, “MASW University”, or one of our embroidered MASW logo t-shirts. Wear it with pride, George!

We also had a runner-up prize awarded amongst the pool of answers that correctly pointed out that the floor was described as a one that floats on the high density foam panels. That’s true (the screws are driven into spacer strips between the foam panels to lock the 250+ panels in place relative to one other) so one winner was chosen from amongst the entries that  claimed that 0 screws were used to secure the floor. You guys got an additional chance of winning for making me laugh! And the  winner of the runner-up prize (another t-shirt) is Kenny Long. So congrats to Kenny.

For those of you who haven’t yet joined our mailing list, you may want to consider adding your name as it’s the first place we generally release MASW news as well as special offers that are only made to newsletter subscribers. To add your name, just shoot me an email to markwithak@marcadams.com and add  ”Subscribe to Newsletter” in the Subject line.

That’s it for now. Keep on making sawdust!

-markwithak

It was a busy week with all hands on deck with Zane, Doug, Jeff, and Hedin (Mark) acting as shop assistants. Marc Adams once again started our season with the famous (or is that infamous) Joinery class. Marc was joined by fellow instructors Alan Lacer and Matthew Hill teaching “Woodturning with Alan Lacer” and Michael Ashford with “Hand Hammered Copper Lantern With Michael Ashford”. It’s always nice to start the season with an all veteran crew and the week definitely was a smooth one.

It was fun watching the students progress through the week as they gained new experiences and new skills while gaining plenty of confidence along the way. Marc had his students moving at a fast clip as they progressed from sharpening to dovetails to mortise and tennons and beyond. It never fails to amuse the class that Marc’s definition of a “5 Minute Warning” (before the next demo) has actually been clocked at something around 2 min. 15 seconds (Tops!). In fact, the “5 Minute Warning” is losing about 10 seconds a year which means that in 15 years our students will need to be listening to the demo 10 seconds before they’ve stopped working at the bench!

Alan’s class was busy progressing through multiple tool handles and their first series of turned bowls. When I left on Wednesday, Zane was busy roughing out some truly giant enormous bowl blanks! And with Alan in the house you know that his students got to meet his favorite tool, the Skew!

Finally, Michael Ashford’s Copper Lantern class gained the distinction of once again being the loudest class (hearing protection mandatory!) class we offer. Not exactly something you would expect a woodworking school. But there’s no doubt that the hammering of an entire class at their anvils set new records. While it might have dissuaded folks from other classes from popping in, it certainly didn’t affect the enthusiasm of the participants as their lanterns quickly took shape. Given how few people are producing authentic Arts and Crafts style lighting, the students went home not only with a treasure but with the knowledge to continue an important tradition.

The final thing that everybody talking this week were the new upgrades to our shop facilities. The new floor in all the bench rooms as been confirmed as a really important improvement. To quote Alan Lacer, “on concrete my legs would be feeling it by Tuesday but here it is Wednesday and my legs and back are great!” Everybody else noticed it too. They also found new chairs in all the bench rooms with 3 inches of padding on the seats! That means it doesn’t matter whether you’re standing or sitting you’re going to be all whole lot more comfortable while taking classes here.

It’s not just our facilities that are improving, however. At Tuesday night Instructor Presentations Marc announced that we will be expanding our video coverage of the craft of woodworking as he has agreed to sponsor the woodworking podcast that yours truly produces – the iWoodWork Podcast. We’ll be making more videos (including interviews with MASW instructors) and more available to download to your computer’s starting later this month. To learn more about this podcast (or what the heck a podcast is) stay tuned to the blog for more details next week.

Well, folks, I think that wraps things up for this week. Check back next week for more excitement from the school!

-markwithak