Reconnecting with your wood The trees stood all around me in a circle as if watching my careful move with the Echo or the Stihl. I lay one throbbing saw on the ground as I eyed a 30” diameter mesquite tree and wondered if I could drop it right onto the flat bed of my…
It’s often hard to describe how the end of a training intensive feels. I work about 12-14 hours a day most days to ensure its success. This has been another wonderful month-long class and today was something of a last day. The day culminated with loading up chairs, tables and toolboxes handmade throughout the month….
NOTE:Just so you know, this is an older workbench series. Paul has a newer Workbench series. If you are interested in the updated version of Paul’s workbench please click the button down below. This page links to a cutting list, tools list, FAQS and much more. Click here to go to the workbench page This…
With milling over 1,000 pieces for this month-long workshop I expected a lot of the usual waste, but, surprisingly, there was very little beyond the planer shavings and sawdust; perhaps much less than 5% and not the accepted 25% allowed for in most such milling. This piece of white oak was really a piece of junk…
Today was a full day. The fullest yet. Everyone worked hard on their projects and when the need arose they worked together. I enjoy watching this because there’s depth and value and meaning to it. Working together and giving help is better than being independent. Our culture tells us constantly to be the independent, self…
Caleb and Phil are a great help in the class, helping with glue-ups and guiding where they can. Gluing up is of course the point of no return and yet, if you know anything about rock climbing, you shouldn’t climb what you can’t reverse. At least that’s how it was in my younger days climbing….
Looking back through my images taken over the past three weeks I am amazed at the transformation that’s taken place from the first dovetailed box on the 30th October 2012 to the confident reconciliation twixt wood and tool today. It’s no small thing for a man or a woman to pursue their dream to become a woodworker…
I posted a blog recently saying the Faithfull Bench Cabinet Scrapers were OK but discovered they are not quite OK. We discovered a serious flaw in the blade retention. Either the iron is too thin or the recess it fits into is too deep. Either way, the problem is that the blade slips upwards under…
There was a time when imported tools were both cheap to buy and cheap in quality, which of course isn’t cheap but false economy. In the sixties we in the UK were flooded with low grade products from the the German Democratic Republic, Japan, India, China’s Hong Kong and others. Those days are long gone…
Coffee tables This past week you probably gathered that we were creating the table design elements of the month-long workshop. We talk about design concepts yes, but the concepts become texture in our hands at the bench. It’s through this texture that we touch the deeper things even professional machinist woodworkers never see or understand….