Drivel Starved Nation!

I would like to thank all of you for your generous support regarding my transition into retirement. It is not something that is easy to do, and there are days where I question my decision making abilities… but it is a done deal and I am committed, and looking forward to what the future might bring.

I have been informed that there are three new BCTW hires in the LA office and the week after the July 4th holiday, they will be in Portland for a week of training, so we are methodically attempting to make a seamless transition.

Consuelo is still as cranky as ever with baby 84 kicking around. FYI.

First and foremost, we will not completely move the office until all of our pre-orders are shipped. I was tempted to skip town with your money but several of you, actually all of you, are smart enough to track me down, so I will deny you the fugitive hunting experience. So there!

The one exception is the Pencil Precision. I redesigned that in late January and in March the new prototype parts came in. Unfortunately, all of my time over the past several months has been on the details of our acquisition by Harvey Industries. So as soon as we ship everything in July, maybe early August, I will close the office and move into the shop where the final touches will be made on my pencil making creation. (I fixed a step that I thought might be difficult for a six-year old, which was a big deal to me.) We will ship that in Q4 of this year.

A really cool thing happened here today. We were getting ready to post all 300 or so titles from our extensive woodworking library to our clearance section on the website. A walk-in customer introduced himself to me and shared that I was his inspiration to become a high school woodworking instructor. He then shared that Portland Public Schools Grant High School is re-opening the woodshop program–it was discontinued 25 years ago. That was awesome news.

Thirty minutes later all 310 books were in his station wagon gratis of BCTW. It makes me feel like a million bucks knowing all of these titles have found a home. He’s coming back next week for the two bookcases that housed them all.

Speaking of finding homes, over the next two weeks you can expect to see a bunch of pristine BCTW tools hit eBay, they too will hopefully find a worthy home. Some are from the showroom, some are from the shop, and some are from this giant box in our back office that I did not know existed. We have more stuff around here–it’s ridiculous at times.

Lastly, I hope you all had a terrific Father’s Day. I was thrilled to visit the American Association of Woodturners exhibition, so inspiring! I was also blessed with a visit from 3 year-old grandson “Speedy”, who promptly informed me that our coffee table had “too much dust”. He then found a piece of petrified popcorn under the sofa and ingested it before I could yank it out of his hands.

I checked in today and he is still alive.

-John