I have called myself a lifestyle woodworker for a decade on a public level but two when I include talking of it in more isolated pockets as in my woodworking classes and courses. In reality, though, I have practised it for much longer than that it’s just that the term lifestyle really didn’t exist before…

. . . that the work is always easy for me as Paul Sellers. It’s not, not at all. The flow seems fine in the reviews I check before videos go out, but getting there takes structure through planning, micro- and macro-adjustment, attitude changes and other such things too many to list. In the making…

It looks excessive and might be for some but it’s not in the life of a productive maker. Woodworking with hand tools in the life of a productive worker must be strategised throughout. Strategic planing soon becomes a way of life when you are a full-time maker but anyone can adopt the practice to make…

I looked for a second Stanley 60 1/2 block plane of the old style but didn’t want to pay the price they were going for. In the end, I bought two, a secondhand one for £39 and then a new one for £50. The new one was so very disappointing and I’ll go through the…

I go into Oxford on the bus each week to choir practice for a two-hour session. I am a novice chorister in an Oxford-based choir made up of like-minded people who volunteer into the event where everyone sings their hearts out to make sound happen for others. You’ll see where I am coming from in…

I am hoping that most of you have made the upgrade to the Paul Sellers’ Router Plane because once you have made your own from the kit and used it just once you will most likely never go back to an all-metal version. The router plane kit comes with a Sheffield-made, 3/8″ (10mm) ready-hardened tool…

Slopes have purpose and meanings we might pass by and take no stock of in our passing but to designers, they are as highly relevant as arches to openings for doors and windows, to tables, chairs and a mass of other furniture pieces. Whereas the core reason in both arching and sloping is not for…

Planing wood along its long axis, from the bottom to the top of the tree, is generally straightforward enough; wood grain dips and dives in places, but most of the time a simple flip around of the plane to the opposite direction cures the recalcitrant and tames the fibres with a skew here and a…

Having lived and worked in the US for over two decades I grew to know the obvious differences in words and terms used between American English and pronunciations and the English ways: sidewalk = pavement; pavement = road, carpark = parking lot and then you come to stain. Many US woodworkers refer to finish as…

The transformation of the old home we’ve transformed to bring up to date came quite rapidly but of course, when builders move in it can seem like a long time in the making. The work was quite major: replacing structural walls with steelwork to transfer upper-structure brickwork weight to the external walls for a clearspan…