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Paul Sellers

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Month-long update

Month-long update

Posted by on 26 Jul 2012 in Paul Sellers' Blog | 1 comment

It can be a challenge for such high standards to be accomplished in so short a time using my minimalist methods and measures, but the results prove the efficacy of my endeavour to reestablish real woodworking in the lives of those who seriously seek to become true craftsmen and women and not mere machinists. As you now know, it takes only a working knowledge of safety issues to use a machine, and the reason is that they ARE absolutely extremely dangerous and that they never enhance skill but always Read More

Each cut counts

Posted by on 25 Jul 2012 in Paul Sellers' Blog | 0 comments

My arms tire when ribbons spill in quick successive swipes and wood smoothed results from twisting back the chisel to its task and the plane to its course. It seems to me the hammer once withdrawn then strikes as many times as when it's held from strikes yet one seems more to move the chisel forward than the action that withdraws so. So too it seems to me with every arm-filled thrust of saw and shave I make I see result within each pulsinthat necessary negative to reflex an economic opposite Read More

Peace at work

Posted by on 21 Jul 2012 in Paul Sellers' Blog |

The exactness of workmanship Sometimes, most of the time now, I feel a peace about the work I do as never before. Is it my age, my ability, my confidence levels? As a younger man I seemed to lack this quality. I was rarely contented and the work itself seemed unfulfilling. Workmen I shared my days with too seemed discontented, always striving for money in a brown manilla wage packet that arrived around 3pm each Friday. That was in the days of real money. Less than two decades earlier these men Read More

Why do we call this work?

Why do we call this work?

Posted by on 19 Jul 2012 in Paul Sellers' Blog |

Yesterday we saw a major shifts in the psyche of everyone when the joints were glued up and put to rest in clamps. There can be no doubt creating dovetails in pine can be more demanding than more resistant hardwoods by virtue of one single fact and that is surface absorption of glue. Hardwoods such as Cherry or walnut reain fairly level when glue is applied to a joint, but pine raises the fuzzies from the saw kerf and glue exacerbates the issue so that to make a successful joint you must work extremely Read More

Why not mallets – myths busted again!

Why not mallets – myths busted again!

Posted by on 14 Jul 2012 in Paul Sellers' Blog | 5 comments

Why did I revert to metal worker's panel-beater hammers instead of traditional mallets? It's dead simple. My goal is not the preservation of the traditions but the craft. That my goal just happens to do both is a great coincidental for me, generally speaking, anyway. So the traditionalists cling to their traditions and exclude modern developments that are as equally inspired to us today as those were to men two and three hundred years ago when their ideas were innovative and new and rejected even Read More