My name is Buddy, and I’m co-owner of McLaren Family Crafts in Franklin, Indiana.  I co-own the business with Margaret, my wife.  She does crochet, cross stitching, sewing, latch hooking, or anything that strikes her fancy.  Me?  I do woodworking and make fine writing instruments.  I plan to craft fine furniture and useful household implements, as well as crafting tools.  I’ve made a handful of writing instruments and other small turned projects.  I’ve also made some things for Margaret to use with her crochet and sewing, and I eventually plan to make woodworking tools like wooden planes.  I’ve taken a handful of classes at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking over the past few years, being taught by some of the big names in woodworking, namely Chris Schwarz, Graham Blackburn, Michael Fortune, and Barry Gross.

So what is the point of this blog?  A small part of me kind of misses blogging.  I had a LiveJournal back in the day, and I enjoyed being able to open up about what was going on.  I enjoy talking about woodworking, and I can sometimes find more time to talk about woodworking than to actually do woodworking.  Plus, I enjoy helping people, and that’s the main point of this.  I am by no means an expert, but my hope is that my experiences will help others starting on their woodworking ventures.

I’m going to stop here, though, because I don’t want it to take a year to read my posts.  Now you know who I am, what I’m doing, and why I’m doing it.  My next posts will discuss the project I’m working on now – a Roubo workbench. I will go through my design process and how I started working around some of the problems that I’ve encountered along the way.  Stay tuned!