Unexpected Post

Yesterday I had pretty much given up any hope of making my weekly post today. Thursday afternoon our Internet connection died. It flatlined. We tried rebooting the whole system. We tried bypassing the router. I checked the connection box outside. The tower on the roof looked fine. Not even a whiff of a connection.

My experiences with troubleshooting Internet issues with our provider have not always been good but we had no choice but to give them a call if we ever expected service again. (They are the only game in town for us by the way). Part of the problem is that we live in a rather remote corner of the province. Our home phone runs through our Internet connection so we can't just call and work with a technician. In the past, our troubleshooting procedures have required a certain amount of creativity. On one occasion we actually formed a chain of people within earshot of each other and a pair of walkie-talkies all the way to a local farmer's home so that we could troubleshoot over the phone. This time was simple. The tech actually listened to the procedures that we'd already gone through to try to solve the problem and he decided our tower top modem had died. He put in a service order and we were supposed to have a repairman visit within 24 to 48 hours. To our surprise, this guy arrived this morning within less than a day. The muddy road had frozen overnight so we didn't even have to hike in his equipment. As anyone can see we are back in business.

I'm off work all this coming week and a few days next week so expect something to happen at MFCP Woodworking. I'm hoping to at the very least make some footage for a number of upcoming videos for the YouTube channel. I'm hoping to spend some needed effort in promoting our giveaway. To date, I haven't been able to pay it a lot of attention. There are a lot of things on my plate but there should be time to get a few things done. I may post something midweek. We'll see how it all plays out. For now, I'm just glad to be back online.

Hair Stick Giveaway Update

Last week we announced our first promotional giveaway and it is moving like a herd of turtles. We had hopes of getting enough response to do an early draw but that doesn't look like it will be the case. At the rate we are going I'm not expecting to get more than 25 entries much before the closing date if we even get that many. With that in mind, the draw or draws will take place on January 6, 2019. The winner or winners will be announced on that date.

We are not going to let this discourage us. There are enough responses already to make drawing a name out of the hat necessary. This is after all our first go at this so we are regarding it as a learning experience. On the bright side, there are still three weeks left before the draw so with a bit of work this still could reach a level where we can consider it a rousing success. The company where I am currently working will be shutting down for a week and a half during the holidays here so I will have more time to pay attention to this.

For anyone who hasn't yet entered here is the link to the video: https://youtu.be/ox9324EzJG8

Free Hair Stick Giveaway

As promised last week we are having a promotional giveaway. If you want to participate here's what you need to do.

1)  Go to our Youtube channel and view the video. https://youtu.be/ox9324EzJG8

2)  If you aren't already subscribed, subscribe and click the notification bell. Winners will be announced on the channel after the draw(s). We will try to get into contact with winners but if we can't another person's username will be drawn.

3)  Comment on the video. Tell us you want to win the hair sticks and tell us what colour you want.

4)  Share the video either on Facebook, Twitter or any other social media. We would like this video to reach as many interested people as possible.

That's all you have to do. If you are a winner message us if we haven't been able to message you asap so that we can get the appropriate shipping information.

We are hoping to get at least twenty-five respondents and will hold our first draw as soon as we reach that number. Usernames will be drawn out of my cowboy hat. After four weeks from today, we will do a further draw if there have been more than twenty-five respondents. If there are a large number of respondents we will do a third draw at that time as well.

For everyone interested good luck in the draw. If this is successful will do regular draws in the future when we introduce more products. For what is currently available have a look at our rustic hair stick page.

Upcoming Promotional Event

Exceptionally tiring day today. Right now there is a lot of windfall laying around the neighbourhood because of a couple of severe windstorms. We are in constant need of firewood so it was one of those make hay while the sun shines kind of day. Cutting, hauling and chopping up wood is really tough work and I'm paying the price. Will stay warm for a while though.

The idea of having a promotional giveaway on Youtube involving hair sticks has been on the back burner for a number of months. Longterm if it is successful we'd like to do a giveaway on a monthly basis. It would boost our Youtube channel and gain us some much-needed exposure. I was considering carving a new style of hair stick for the occasion but after thinking about it I think it would be easier just to keep the whole thing as simple as possible. Somehow in the coming week, Wesley and I get to record a short video for this promotion. I plan to offer a pair of our triangle profile hair sticks. I have hair sticks in stock and money to ship them anywhere in the world in my pocket. Really just a matter of putting together the video, getting it posted and then promoting it as much as I can.

We'll see if we can manage this for next weekend. Thanks to all for the sharing on Facebook and Twitter it is helping.

Adding a "Beekeeping Supplies" Page

There are a few very difficult to get items for Warre hives that we took the time to design and make for ourselves. Those items will be offered here. It doesn't really mesh with the other products that I currently make or am planning to feature on this site but we felt that there might be sufficient interest from beekeepers dealing with the same issues. So we made a page for it and while they are not easy for me to make right now (read the info on the page) they are with some negotiation available.

Not a very long post today. The views, likes and shares on Facebook and Twitter are greatly appreciated. I'm trying to post once per week and there is a clear upward trend in how many people our social networking efforts are reaching. A big thank you to friends and family.

Introducing a New Colour to Our Palette

I promised myself I would accomplish a couple of things with my woodworking this past week and those items will be accomplished once I post this today.

For starters, I have been unhappy with the available colours. I had cherry wood hair sticks but no colour remotely reminiscent of a traditional cherry finish. The cherry stain that I purchased and still offer barely colours the wood much more than highlighting the grain. I'm sure customers will like it but for me, I think of a cherry finish with that old-fashioned rich reddish brown colouration. I have found a stain that gives me what I was looking for. The website will only officially offer it on the black cherry hair sticks but if someone makes a special request I will apply it to any other kind of wood I offer. I just don't show it here because I don't want to misrepresent one kind of wood for another. This is done with cherry all the time. I worked for a rocking chair manufacturer that sold chairs with a cherry finish. No piece of actually cherry wood every went through that factory. The underlying wood was always maple or birch. They are quality hardwoods but they are not cherry. If you buy furniture in any large store unless it is specifically advertised as cherry wood it's just a cherry finish. My black cherry hair sticks are actually made from cherry wood.

I did get some photos of maple hair sticks added to the hair sticks page. I have to put in some more pictures yet but the page is really rounding out.

I have a goal to make a post every week. A big pat on the back for myself for making this two weeks in a row. I have something in mind already for next week so hopefully, I can build up some momentum and see things start to take off.

Update November 11

Haven't written on this website in quite a long time. It isn't because I haven't been working on building this business. It's that I've had so much more on my plate. The plan now is to post some kind of update every week starting today.

Quick updates here: I did make a short slideshow to show off the types of hair sticks that are available. I'm not able to produce them very quickly right now but everything showing on the Rustic Hair Sticks page is available. If they aren't in stock I can make them and I can give a time frame for when they can be ready.

I rough carve all my hair sticks while the wood is still green. The reason is that it is a lot easier at that point. They don't sand or finish well while the wood is green though so I stock the rough carved ones more than at any other stage of production. I recently succeeded in stocking over a hundred pairs of every major type of wood I carry.

Finally, I'm preparing to introduce another colour stain. Not sure if they'll be ready next weekend. The stain has been applied but I have a whole run of other sticks currently in the finishing jigs and they have to get out of the way before these can be finished. I don't have time to make another jig right now.

That's it for this week. Plan to write more in a week.

Researching My Hardwoods

This pretty tree gets my attention every spring because of its beautiful blossoms. Outside of that, I hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about it before this year. Every year it blossoms first. The apple tree blossoms are not out yet and neither are the wild black cherry or the pin cherries. I didn't recall seeing any fruit on it so I figured it must be similar to the cherries in some way. My wild guess was Serviceberry and it turned out to be correct but I did have to look it up to be certain. Not seeing the fruit has more to do with the local bird population than their similarity to the cherries though. I may be able to get a little bit of the wood for hair sticks but it will be very limited.

While puzzling about one of the few trees in our woods that I hadn't positively identified yet, I wondered about the hardness and strength of the various woods I am working with. Some of them are a little out of the ordinary and the resulting information was a bit of an eye-opener in some cases.
Here is a list of the hardness values on the Janka hardness scale (Only the hardwood trees available in my neck of the woods are listed):

Black Willow            430 lbf
Speckled Alder          Unknown but similar to the Black Willow
Red Osier Dogwood Also unknown but again similar to the Black Willow
Gray Birch                790 lbf
American Elm          830 lbf
White Birch              910 lbf
Red Maple                950 lbf
Black Cherry            950 lbf
Mountain Ash        1210 lbf
White Ash              1290 lbf
Apple                     1730 lbf
Serviceberry          1800 lbf

lbf is short for pounds of force. The higher the Janka hardness test number the harder the wood is. After carving seasoned Applewood, I wasn't surprised at its high score. I didn't expect it to be even harder than Rock Maple which comes in at 1450 lbf. There are two species of poplar growing in the woods here but I haven't checked them out very closely. They don't have good strength and they aren't very good firewood. I'll check them out more closely sometime in the future.

Finally got an order form set up

It isn't perfect but it has been created and it is on the Rustic Hair Stick page and it is functional. Building the form itself wasn't all that difficult once I started working with the program. Where things got challenging was making the actual website button. I had a bear of a time hitting on the right phraseology to search for what I wanted. I finally hit on the right wording and found Da Button Factory. From there it was pretty straightforward. I believe this makes the website officially open for business.

I will add a page showing how the form should be filled out when I have time. It shouldn't be that difficult for a customer to figure out.

Whittling With My Boys

Instead of getting some free labour out of my boys rough carving hair sticks, I brought some applewood sticks cut for carving letter openers. We worked at this in their apartment while my daughter had her violin lessons in town. We try to combine trips as much as possible.

I had intended to rough out two of them before our session was done but only completed the one in the photo. We videotaped most of the session so at some point we should have something to post about it on the Youtube channel. Sheldon finished rough carving his letter opener after we left and Brandon still has to finish his. We'll sand them down finish them and post about the results later. It was a good lesson for them. The fact that they'll finish with a useful attractive tool will be a big confidence builder.

Applewood & Red Osier Dogwood

One of the things I enjoy about making a project as small as hair sticks is that I can work with different kinds of wood that I otherwise can't get in sufficient quantities. Applewood is a case in point. It is probably the hardest and best quality wood I have available for making hair sticks. I've been able to get a small amount of it this spring because there are a lot of old half dead neglected apple trees growing in the bush around where I live. I cut some of the suckers off of them. Then I happened across the apple tree volunteer growing in the ditch on the edge of our road (pictured above). It needed some structural pruning which as you can see has been done. After the apple season is over this fall, I will prune it down to proper orchard standards. The resulting brush yielded quite a bit of material for me. That will have to do until later this year because I have no plans to try and harvest more applewood until the fall pruning season.

My oddball choice of wood for hair sticks is Red Osier Dogwood. This stuff has rich red winter bark and is used as an ornamental perennial is some landscaping designs. It's only commercial use that I can find is basket weaving. It grows wild here. This is a bit of an experiment but I think it will make an interesting bark on style hair stick. Because of last fall's ditch clearing, I couldn't get a lot of quality material. I'm curious to see how popular they will be. If they prove a hit, then next spring I will make sure that I harvest a lot of it. The supply sources should have bounced back by then.

I'm in the process of carving all this material. It's best done while the wood is green. Unfortunately, it doesn't sand or finish well until it has had a chance to season. I expect to be able to offer some of these sticks within a couple of weeks.

Progress Report

I should have been writing updates here regularly but I've been dealing with a lot of other issues. This post may come off as a bit of a shotgun blast covering a whole bunch of stuff. I've been working hard to make this woodworking business a reality. If you check the Rustic Hair Stick tab, you will find products in stock and available. I have not yet managed to create a proper order form and I'm hoping to rectify that in the near future. Ordering right now involves messaging me at myfamilycountryproducts@gmail.com. Awkward at best but in the meantime, it will have to do.

Most of my work right now is trying to build up inventory so that I can make, finish and sell product on an ongoing basis without having to stop because I'm short of anything.

Hoping this weekend to put together a video announcing that we are open for business, demonstrating how to carve our triangular cross-section sticks and doing a small give away.

There are a number of up and coming projects in the works so I should have lots to talk about here. Stay tuned there is more to come.