I love the first views of each of the videos we make. I review them just to check for any glaring errors I might make but then too for faults that might be somehow out of sequence. I also want to ensure our videographers are supported fully and have confidence in their concluding each of…

If I can cut a gap-free six-dovetail corner to a drawer in 20 minutes it’s because I am not rushing it. It’s also because of the practised structure of my making, the sharpness of my tools that are sharpened before they become in any way consciously dull and because the tools I use are customised…

It was setting up the plough plane to cut the grooves that really struck me the most. I had timed myself in cutting the four corner dovetails and realised how quickly they came off the saw. I made two eight-inch deep drawers with dovetailed top to bottom to each of the corners in less than…

Resolve is something of an odd word. Generally, we use it in showing determination to overcome opposition of one kind or another be that with a resolution to kickstart each new year, win a game or take on a difficult situation that we feel cannot continue. But it’s a word with many applications and that’s…

This week I milled my wood from roughsawn oak and some poplar too to make a chest of drawers. Oak is my primary wood and poplar the secondary. The drawer insides don’t need oak, poplar is lighter in weight and for bedroom drawers it will last well enough. I planned out the chest on paper…

. . . Or Peer Pressures? Some time ago I went to the trouble of creating a short and creative video to show (prove) that taking a couple of simple steps could upgrade an inexpensive but well-made saw to parallel that of premium saws costing six to seven times more. Buying some saws, even from…

With so much of my work being planed and trued by hand I use something of a simple strategy that really works well and especially with the short lengths we generally use in furniture making. Though of course we have long lengths for bedsides, head boards, tabletops and wardrobes but the rails and stiles, frames…

In building our latest project in the Sellers’ Home bedroom series I relied on my bandsaw for many of the long and often heavy rip cuts. I expect many of those building the same projects might well decide to do the same. Mostly, this was to do with the type of different and often random…

When I wrote Essential Woodworking Hand Tools it was less about the tools and more about what was missing from books I read and saw through the decades in books often entitled something like ‘The Woodworker’s Bible‘, usually commissioned by publishers known for their educational books, people like that. What mainly was missing was the…

. . . or the lure of a mechanised performance! The most predictable thing about wood is its unpredictability. I would say that that is the case in most natural materials used in most crafts and that is why we have such a predominance of man-made alternative materials; for any type of mass-making the materials…