For those of you coming to Penrhyn Castle this Saturday for the two-day Discovering Woodworking (2-3 April), it looks like a full class, which means we will have a great time rediscovering those aspects of woodworking John Seymour described in his book as The Forgotten Crafts. My goal is to give you as much of…
The more I think about sharing my creative workspace with others, the more I become conscious that sharing worklife has immeasurable rewards that far surpass the independence of working alone. My friends and fellow woodworkers support the important work that’s true, but more than that, they share my workspace and often I share theirs. Shared life is…
Its another hand tool school weekend coming up (2-3 April) and the focus is on a range of tasks and skills people desperately need to enhance their knowledge of working wood and knowing how wood works. The whole weekend is all about wood and the stuff of working it into something of real value using your own…
Car boot (trunk US) sales (bit like a combo garage/flea market or neighborhood garage sale US) are hit-and-miss venues for tool finding, but each week, in about an hour or so, I can find a handfull of good, old tools to restore and use. My apprentice, John Winter, was asking me about a plane in my tool…
I wandered lonely as a CloudThat floats on high o’er vales and Hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden Daffodils;Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shineAnd twinkle on the milky way,They stretched in never-ending lineAlong the margin of a bay:Ten thousand…
These are trees on my walk to work at the hand tool school. Beech, oak, cherry, ash, walnut, laurel and rhododendron line the road all the way. Limbs drop and culling provides a reasonable supply of small stock and next weekend (2-3 April 2011) we begin our Discovering Woodworking workshop in the best place for…
Leave your space for a season, with others working around yours, and soon you’ll find your neighbour extends his and her comfort zone into yours. This reflects a lack of respect for one person’s space by another or others. If one picks up the tool belonging to another, respect is diminished. A man’s tools are…
Woodworking courses and schools that offer hands-on workshops with master craftsmen provide the best way of getting to know exactly what are the absolute essentials that dovetail the traditions of the past with the best of today’s woodworking. Short courses add flexibility for those with busy schedules and enable them to build substantive skill without taking large…
John sharpened his first saw and guess what? It cuts! Setting comes next and I will teach him the hammer-and-nail-punch (nail set US) method as this is fast, accurate and highly versatile. This saw is smaller and has fairly small teeth, which is a harder saw to start practicing on, but he did it. It…
John’s making a dovetailed box and his joints came out really well, almost perfect. One of the things that has struck me over the past 25 years of teaching apprentices and students around the world is how much significance they see in making dovetails. This joint is actually one of the simplest of all joints…
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