Some of the best classes I have ever taught have been how to build a workbench. It began in the USA and has followed me around ever since. One of the best workbenches I have made to date is the one I built a year ago and have been testing since then. I use it…

Kicking off the new year has gone well. My birthday passed with the nicest of times for me and we just completed a nice project for everyone to make. I designed it specifically for a hallway shoe store to tidy the shoes we don’t wear every day, slippers and such too, but then scarves, hats…

In school at 14 a dream emerged slowly and took deep root. It wasn’t a nighttime dream, every day I looked, stared and listened out through the open window of the classroom in search of kestrels and skylarks high and then wagtails on the playground below. I loved the late spring when the warmer weather…

Do you see more at 70 or are you blindsided by thinking you do? Are you dismissed by the younger because you are 70 or do you just think that you are? These are real questions. Some younger than me think I cling to hand tools because I didn’t yet discover the power of power…

I am not a professional health care provider of any kind but I do care and health is provided for in so many ways beyond the ability of professional health care providers. I also strongly dislike the generic terms of health care professional and health care provider. All it does is separate by exclusivity when…

c. 1300, “to regain consciousness,” from Anglo-French rekeverer (13c.), Old French recovrer “come back, return; regain health; procure, get again” (11c.), from Medieval Latin recuperare “to recover” (source of Spanish recobrar, Italian ricoverare; see recuperation). Meaning “to regain health or strength” is from early 14c.; sense of “to get (anything) back” is first attested mid-14c. Related: Recovered; recovering. Unfortunately, centuries of Henry-Ford factorial specialisation and…

We filmed this short series a few weeks ago and it is a free project for you to watch and learn from. Here is the link for the brief introduction: woodworkingmasterclasses.com. Smaller projects like this one really help to reinforce our skills and that is because of the close proximity of shoulder lines, joint sizing,…

It is my dad’s 70th birthday today. I hope you will all join me in wishing him a very happy birthday. We put a little invitation in the roundup emails that go out inviting people to send in videos wishing my dad a happy birthday. We had dozens of videos sent in and while we…

It’s good to look back on all that we achieved last year and entering 2020. Following on from the previous decade of teaching and training, I feel we forge ahead with a 2020 vision for our future based on what these statistics have shown about our platforms for presenting real woodworking for a new generation…