Welcome to my 500th “Over the Workbench” blog. I won’t say, “It’s hard to believe this is No. 500,” since you can reach any number just by adding more to it. But, yikemo, that’s a lot of blogs.

Back when I kicked this off on January 7, 2008, I never really had 500 blogs in mind that I could just work my way through. In fact, I put it this way:

“I have no idea of the specific topics I’ll cover – those will be determined by what I’m doing at the moment, what I see in the news, what experiences I have, what I see and read on the many woodworking forums I visit, or even what I might hear from you. But what this column WILL be about is woodworking, plain and simple.

“I’m sure I’ll cover safety issues, the wood markets, furniture design and sales, cabinetry and numerous other topics of interest to the professional woodworker. But really, what I’ll be addressing is woodworking, in and of itself. Pro or hobbyist, full-timer or just when you get the chance, the bond you and I share is a love of working with wood. It’s what we do, and it’s what we talk about. This will be the place to talk about it.”

In retrospect, I think I’ve covered that pretty well. Looking back, I discussed safety more than any other single subject, followed closely by blogs on woodworking materials and tools. But that’s just as specific topics. The overall theme and direction has always remained the same as I stated way back then: I wanted to talk about woodworking, and the single thread that runs through all 500 of those blogs is the woodworking experience.

Sometimes it was dead serious, as when talking about shop injuries, and sometimes it was just trying to figure out a better way of doing something in the shop. Some of the blogs – my favorites, probably – just centered on the fun of woodworking. (And I’ve had a lot of fun hiding little Easter eggs and in-jokes in the blogs for people to find, beginning with the very first one.)

I may have had no idea back then what the blogs would be, but that didn’t stop me from coming up with 500 of them. As before, I don’t know what the next 500 will be about. Ask me when I hit No. 1,000.

A thousand blogs? Why not? It’s all just a matter of starting at 500 and adding more to it …

A.J.