The plans have been drawn up. The tools have been sharpened. The shop has been prepped. The only thing you need to do is buy wood to build that special project.

Now, where will you get the wood from?

In years past, there was little choice. All lumber was bought locally at a hardwood supplier, construction yard, or at a local sawmill.

Today, the Internet offers a tremendous variety of sources to choose from. Whether you look at an online auction such as eBay or find an online provider such as Bell Forest Products, your purchasing options are seemingly limitless.

So this week, let us know if you have ever taken the plunge and bought your lumber online.

Have you ever bought wood for your projects online?

You know what’s coming up this week here in the United States: Thanksgiving!

And, immediately following Thanksgiving is Black Friday where people lose their minds, wait in hours-long lines and attempt to buy every single holiday gift in a frenzy of shopping bliss. Which is also followed by Cyber Monday, the first day back to work from the holiday when many of us – ahem – ‘borrow’ the bandwidth of our employers to do a little online shopping.

It’s an annual rite and no matter how much we dislike it we continue to do it year after year. Sometimes, the sales are even awesome for us woodworkers.

So this week, the question is will you be buying any woodworking tools this coming Black Friday or Cyber Monday or will you be staying out of the fray?

November is rolling by! The stores have had their holiday decorations up since, I dunno, the end of summer? Like it or not the holiday season is bearing down on us like a runaway sleigh pulled by nine crazy flying reindeer and it’s only picking up speed.

So it’s time to for the annual question: Are you building any holiday presents this year? Is it a given that you will, or are you surprised by just how quickly time is flying by? We asked this question last year too so click here to see those results.

Let’s face it, hanging out in the shop is fun. As woodworkers, we take the money other folks would spend on golf clubs, fishing tackle or bowling balls and blow it on miter saws, hand planes and cabinet scrapers. We could spend hours standing in the same place in our shop using a belt sander to flatten a poorly glued end-grain cutting board and actually enjoy it.

But as always seems to be the case, we never have enough shop time. All of those little obligations that we agreed to, or were thrust upon us by others, tend to soak up the time we would otherwise spend creating masterpieces in the shop.

So this week, we want to know what you consider to be the greatest obstacle to getting more shop time. Is it family? Work? Something else?