On Jan 15, 7:19*am, marc rosen wrote:
Hey All,
The first time I saw Tommy was when I was going through the Oneida
website to buy my system. *There were three clips presenting an Oneida
install in his shop and I was less than thrilled with his
"performance" and made a few wisecracks to my Oneida rep that I hope
she was not dating "that guy". *I recently met him at the Baltimore
show and he was extremely pleasant, and like Rico typed, he really
knows his stuff. *He gave me his website address which has several
"how to" links which I found very informative. *Some of these may be
redundant to many of you but for me they were better explained here
than elsewhere. *(http://www.thomasjmacdonald.com/)

Hey! I didn't just type it, I _wrote_ it!

When you see the expressions on the people's faces that are on
MacDonald's show, you can easily see that they like the guy. As
opposed to the expressions on the faces of the people when Bob Vila
was on This Old House - they were clearly thinking, "This guy is a
total douchebag."

He is a very skilled woodworker and a great person "in person" *I have
not watched his show yet because the only TV I watch is Jeopardy, the
first 5 minutes of Wheel of Fortune (to see what dress Vanna is
wearing) and Ravens' games (which I hope will continue until February
this year). *(And I hope that previous sentence does not jinx them
today. This message was typed at 0700 , several hours before their
game with the evil Pittsburgh Stillers.)

Are they related to Ben and Jerry?

I never watched New Yankee Workshop either because I don't care much
for TV but I hope his - Tommy's - show continues and that his passion
and skill can draw new people into our hobby/trade and also make folks
like me converts to hand cut dovetails and different construction
techniques.

Have you ever seen Roy Underhill's The Woodwright's Shop?
http://www.pbs.org/woodwrightsshop/v...000/index.html
He's another guy that has a great attitude and knows his stuff. He's
not overly concerned about how he comes across and has a clear, fun
approach to working with hand tools. You could do far worse to point
someone who wants to learn handcut dovetails, or the pleasure (and
speed) of working with hand tools, to his show.

Check out this upcoming episode:
"3007—Who Wrote the Book of Sloyd? Sloyd, the late 19th-century
Swedish system of learning woodworking was intended to develop
skilled, industrious and morally upstanding citizens. We’ll give it a
try, and hope it’s not too late for us!"
How can you not like that?! Further reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloyd
This part from that article is heart-rending:
"Sloyd (Slöjd), also known as Educational Sloyd, was a system of
handicraft-based education started by Uno Cygnaeus in Finland in 1865.
The system was further refined and promoted worldwide, including
adoption in the United States, until the early 20th Century."
Sigh.

R