Here is a recurring question that many woodworkers as me about and it’s not just new woodworkers either. Even though being out of square usually doesn’t badly affect the functionality of an edge tool, without correction, theedge can worsen and this does affect how the tool works. Sharpening narrow blades of 3/8″ and less often …
I think sometimes we look at planes more like we might consider, say, hmm, a bulldozer or a road grader — the logic where mass and weight and a dropped blade levels all opposition by sheer, unyielding force alone. The funny thing for me is this, a 22″ wooden plane, weighs 3.4 kilos, and the …
Some things are worth looking at more closely and some phraseology made by those making and selling can be a little more surreptitiously misleading than we think. Unfortunately, it’s the selling that often tilts the truth in favor of the sale rather than our benefit, it makes all the difference, but I understand the reasoning. …
Creativity for me is a kind of protective sphere that I spend most of my time inside and a space in which I have all of the tools I use at my fingertips. The tools, the ones I use constantly, are pens and pencils stood in jars on my workbench, on my desk and on …
There are times when my bench gets freed up from a newly completed project. It’s a rare thing for it to be open and empty, a few brief minutes, mostly. I have just put 15 handmade router planes into boxes and I am about to add in the ones I use regularly made from cast …
I live and have lived in a different world than most for many decades. At what point things changed I am not altogether sure. I think, for the main part, that this is mostly because I didn’t continue along the same paths as those I worked alongside when I was a young emerging craftsman, and …
Two owls call to one another as I unlock the door to the garage. The news powers up in homes around the country to tell of a drone attack that sadly and wrongly killed ten innocent people, including children, and we are all filled with a pang of sadness for the losses of life in …
Should planes arrive sharp and ready to go or are we expecting something that is really of little if any consequence? Well, our expectations have changed a little. It’s true, at one time no one expected any woodworking hand tool to arrive with a refined, surgically sharp bevel to the edges. Beyond a coarse grinding …
A week or so back I said that for around £200 you could buy the tools to make the cabinet I had just built (above). Someone commented and suggested it would be nearer four times that much and that for that you could buy a nice machine, or words to that effect. It really made …
I looked down at my latest design I just finished for Sellers’ Home. It’s the fourth piece this year, aside from all the other things I have been developing and working on. This one took some working through but how it ended up is exactly what I both wanted and needed. I calculate that outside …
