Wednesday, June 30, 2010

"The Best Two Bucks I Ever Spent"

That's what a friend said when he was telling me about the new Woodshop Widget application for iPhones, iPads, and iPods.

If you're in an electronic time warp that's stuck in 2001 (like me) and use the free cell phone that came with your sign-on agreement, you can still use all the woodworking-related utilities that Kenneth Woodruff and Marc Spagnuolo have worked so hard to put together. It's available for free on the internet.

Included in the features are: a board foot calculator; decimal to fraction conversions; wood movement calculations; shellac to alcohol proportions; squareness calculations; and lots of tips and links from Marc, The Wood Whisperer.

The wood movement chart is particularly amazing. Have you been wondering just how much a riftsawn board of Albizia will move in 50% humidity at 80ยบ? Check the chart; it's there.

Kenneth and Marc plan to add more resources to The Woodshop Widget, but already it has enough useful tools to help us in our own woodshops.