I rarely like other people to pick up or move my wood. We woodworkers are like packrats when it comes to what wood we have and it’s surprising where we acquire it from or how, what we actually have with regards to wood types and sizes and so on. In the USA, with a family […]
eBay has given us inroads into discovering tools that at one time only came via tool dealers and antique markets. Many tool dealers in the 1970s and 80s advertised in local newspapers for tools to buy and then sell on; they bought chests filled with tools, picked the best from the rest and parcelled them […]
I didn’t recall the finish I applied so I found out and it’s not shellac. It’s a varnish from the pre water-borne finishes era as nothing seems to touch it. Varnish was very much the standard in the mid section of that century. The oak had planed out well with such minimal tearout I could […]
Notes from my Journal May14 2018 It’s Monday evening. I just finished making the wall shelf from my teen years. It was an amazing feeling to relive something so pivotal from 55 years ago. My hands are strong now—a hundred times stronger than back in ’63—and with only lean sinew and pure muscle with […]
Here’s something I personally think is well worth shouting about. I’ve never seen anyone else do it as it’s one I thought up more for as another poor man’s woodworking tool. It’s a scrub plane made from an adapted #78 rebate or rabbet plane. Using the term ‘scrub’ mis describes it. It doesn’t at all […]
Who say’s that any more anyway? No one, I suppose, but it had depth. It had meaning. It had future and it had hope. It mattered. And guess what? It still has all of these things and it still matters whether we use the term or not! What is your vocational calling and I don’t […]
I am ready to commission my new workbench and then too at the same time my new garage workshop. A garage without a bench is a lonely place and a bench without a garage is too exposed. Now the two together, that’s a perfect combination. Where to start? Well, I haven’t a lot of choice […]
I am currently taking possession of my new garage workshop. The brickwork’s dried out now and snagging is all done. Having moved shop for the umpteenth time, both on larger and small scale levels, this feels as though it may well be my last workshop. Since my last making to sell in the USA ended my […]
Question: Paul, I don’t understand what the alignment pieces did. Their tenons are smaller than the mortises, so they don’t register the two sides vertically relative to each other. The two sides are rigidly clamped when we put in the alignment pieces, so it doesn’t seem they can move anything into position. Would you please […]
It’s been a struggle. Rough sawn boards of sycamore and maple, thick sections ripped for legs by hand and then shaped with spokeshaves with scarcely room in my workshop to move. The truth is, though, the result of working through difficulties and challenges thrilled me. The fact that I wasn’t looking for an easy path […]
