Books and CD'S - Things Western

Here you'll find some books and CD's written by me and published by Fakahwee Publications. These projects have all been very rewarding for me, both in the process of writing them and of course in the resulting sales. There is nothing like writing about a successfull project to help one analyse what MAKES it a success, and to help carry that success on to other projects. Of course, it's easy to make it all LOOK easy, since nobody includes all the devestating failures that came along the way in a book about something that works. Hopefully, you'll be able to avoid repeating some of my failures by reading about what finally worked in some of these books. Thanks for looking....Joe

The Book of The Bandsaw

Here is a picture of the first of many bandsaw mills I built back in the 1980's. At the time I was building almost any kind of machinery you could imagine, from chicken pluckers to wind generators to giant wood lathes. I made special cutters and tooling for Lear jets and weird attachments for chainsaws and nearly everything in between. After building this first sawmill, I soon began getting requests to build more and more of them, and other bandsaws for general and special purposes. I ran the mill in the picture for several years, cutting mesquite and ponderosa pine, and at the same time built more and more mills for customers. Over the years, lots of folks have encouraged me to draw up the plans for this mill and sell them, but I decided to go one better. Instead, I wrote a book about building not only this mill, but lots of variations of sawmills and regular shop bandsaws. My reasoning was that having built several saws from different materials and in different styles, and having found all of them satisfactory in different ways, the readers of the book should be given a choice as to what style they build, what materials they use, and benefit from ALL my experiences. There are 39 different diagrams showing how to construct mainframes, guides, spindles, tilt adjustments for the wheels, each part of each component of a carriage in different styles, tables with removable inserts from various materials, how and where to make adjustable mountings to align and adjust the various parts of the saw and carriage, couplers to use between single cylinder engines and car transmissions, and a host of other parts and pieces.There are tables to indicate blade tension, minimum wheel diameter for various size blades, a formula for calculating proper wheel speeds per wheel sizes. There is a long chapter on choosing, sharpening, joining and evaluating bandsaw blades and saving a bundle on new blades as well.Scattered through the book are tips on saving money by scrounging parts from various places such as where to go for ball bearings in lots of mixed sizes for about $4 per GALLON.You'll learn several different options on getting your bandsaw wheels from the scrapyard and the strong and weak points of each, and how to properly set up a grinder for sharpening and joining blades. In fact, I have been told that the sharpening information alone in this book will pay for the book in a couple of days time.I cannot possibly list all the things you can learn from this book that will carry over into other projects and benefit you in ways that have nothing to do with saws or sawmills. It's 83 pages of solid information, comb bound, 9x11, published by Fakahwee publications, written and copyrighted by me, Joe Rollings, Unique Tool, Rodeo, NM. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks...Joe

The Book of the bandsaw is $18.00

Artisans and money

Earning a nice living as an artisan

This book is written by me, and helps artisans a lot with a host of problems common to creative types in business. It's the product of more than thirty years of living by my hands and my wits. Will save many artisans years of learning the hard way how to earn a nice living. Price, $18.00 A single $7 shipping charge will be added at checkout, regardless of how many items you purchase. 104 pages, 9"x11", spiral bound.

Published by Fakahwee publications

1-800-840-2434

Introduction

This is a book about money, artisans, and how to best put the two together in the first years of the twenty-first century. Artisans are defined as skilled craftsmen in the dictionary, and as such should have little trouble earning a proper living. In my experience, though, they have a great deal of trouble, and the level of skill they have in their selected fields of work seldom accurately reflects the level of their income. The reasons for this are many, but based on only a few basic flaws in thinking and behavior. I am very familiar with these flaws, because I began my life's work as an artisan with every one of them firmly entrenched in every moment of my everyday life. I spent years blaming everyone in the country except myself, scarcely making ends meet. As I slowly (and mostly accidentally) began discovering the truths found in this book, my income started to increase. I now make more money than I ever assumed I would, own equipment I always assumed would never be mine, work 5 day weeks instead of seven, six hour days instead of twelve, and love my life. I buy new vehicles every few years. I replace tires with new ones before the tread is all gone. My wife does not bite her lip and cross her fingers when she throws down a credit card or writes a check at the grocery store or the doctor's office. We have raised five daughters using only the income from our business. We will semi-retire in four years, at age 60. . Although this may not define success for many, it does for us, and considering that our net worth hovered near zero only a dozen years ago, I'll not apologize for taking a bit of modest pride in what we've accomplished. Others have done much better because they "wised up" sooner. The majority of artisans have done worse, because they never did wise up. Even better, unlike the majority of American workers, I have no fear of waking up one morning without an income. To quote the old country song, "as long as these two hands are fit to use"…..I can always make a living for my family, dealing only with those folks I want to deal with, doing the work I want to do, working when I want to work, living where I want to live. I believe that life is best lived without fear, and under the presumption that it is good, and that such a life makes a better person of anyone……..I wish such a life to all artisans everywhere……..Joe Rollings…October 26, 2003. RTISANS AND MONEY

Price $18.00