I’m currently working on a joint project with another woodworker. And even though we’re working “together,” the other guy is more than 2,000 miles away.

The woodworking writing game can get interesting. I’m just wrapping an assignment for a magazine, a trio of easy, one-afternoon projects that will tie in with another article in the same issue being done by my long-distance collaborator. Although I’ve never met him, the two of us have known each other and corresponded for about 15 years. For this joint project we’ve compared notes over the phone and email so that his article supports my projects and vice-versa.

To make things even more interesting, he’s not doing his own photography. He typically uses a local-to-him photographer, but the availability didn’t work out so the magazine has asked me to do the shots for him. To that end, he’s shipping me a couple small projects of his own, along with some partially completed components that I’ll set up to photograph in-progress shots in my shop. Naturally, we discussed how the shots should look, as well as materials and tools.

The fun part is that for his article I get to combine my skills with his to create the finished piece: his woodworking, my woodworking photography. As a plus, I get a chance to be a part of – right in my own shop, no less – how another woodworker goes about bringing a project together, with the bottom line being that each of us will end up learning something from the other.

And we’re not even in the same room.

A.J.