High Angle Block Plane   There’s a story about teaching told in Joe Posnanski’s great book called “The Baseball 100″. In it he tells the story of Honus Wagner who may have been the greatest shortstop ever. He was lightning fast leading the league in triples and stolen bases many times over. Wagner won eight batting titles. He was also baseball smart and generous to everyone around him. But some years after Honus had retired, in the 1930’s, he was asked to coach Arky Vaughn, the slugging but error prone Pirates’ shortstop. No one remembers the great Arky Vaughn.   Posnanski writes, “After a few days, someone asked Arky how it was going. ‘I’m not sure,’ Vaughn said. ‘When I asked Mr. Wagner what to do he said, ‘You just run in fast, grab the ball and throw it to first base ahead of the runner.’ But he didn’t tell

Apologies for my recent silence. Busy, you know, with things and then the ball gets rolling and when you finally look up it’s what? May? July?? And I missed those opportunities so I’m finally back with more musings. I’m building a new shop for myself now. Let me rephrase that. I’m paying folks to build me a new shop right now. They will make choices about lumber or nailing patterns or discarded chunks of good plywood that make me grit my teeth in dismay. And my response to them is always, “That is fantastic.” My motto for carpentry is ‘Get ‘er done’. I’ll worry about the fixes later. This new shop build got held up by Covid and lumber prices and then finding people to work at all. Having a roof and walls up right now is a huge accomplishment. The final design details I have yet to make. I