It’s obvious from your responses to different posts which ones appeal to a larger percentage and one of the highest is working with your hands and earning all or some percentage of your living from being a woodworker. I know the goal is to make your living which of course is important, but dismantling the…
I started making things from wood with nails to hold the pieces after seeing my dad clutching a handful of 4” ovals making me and my siblings a go-cart from an old mahogany table. Clenching the pointed nails now protruding over and sending them back seemed the cleverest thing to me and two three-foot pieces…
This really happened today. Imagine if it were you. How would you feel if in nine days you’d taken 32 bits of oak and made 56 intersecting joints with about 10 hand tools? This man is Rhodri Owen. He came to me three years ago and did a nine day class. The he invested in another…
It’s been a good week all around. I recovered from last weeks nine-day foundational class last week and got to spend some time with friends finishing up rocking chairs. I am close to concluding one of my own if I could just find that little extra time for myself, which as they say in Texas, “This…
We use these useful tools for finessing spindles and even for paint stripping of spindles if needed. They can be sharpened over and over for decades and they will work better than anything of you have awkward grain. You can create just about any radius you want with just a round file and the tool…
I think this is the last one at this point. The joiner’s axe split cuts all manner of joinery and may seem old fashioned and especially so to today’s carpenter-joiner. Even though I am a furniture maker I knew many furniture makers who never hesitated to pull out an axe to advance their work. This was…
Most axes I’ve seen others use and picked up have rarely been sharp. Do I judge by this? I suppose I do if it’s a joiner’s axe and not a kindling axe or a felling axe. Joiner’s axes are working edges mostly and sharpened to the same level as a chisel or a plane. I…
It’s hard to describe changing lives and being changed. I taught my first foundational course in 1989. I developed it and copied nothing. No one helped me and it unfolded a strategy from a craftsman’s perspective. So I’ve done this course for well over two decades with 5,500 people. Tonight felt settled, very settled. The…
Here is the joiner’s axe (UK spelling). It’s perfectly shaped in every way and it’s mine. A joiner’s axe is not a green axe or a carving axe but it carves and shapes wood as well in most cases too. It’s not a felling axe because of its size but you could fell with it on a…
A man, well, a new friend really, asked me today if I were to start a business and keep my current job going for income whether I would just make one of something or more than one. I think not just one if starting out as an unknown. I believe in small batch productions and…