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As a theoretical exercise, imagine a machine that processes furniture parts to that hundredth-of-an-inch level of precision. What would happen if we dial that machine back to wider tolerances? It would begin to spit out parts with greater variability across the board, maybe mill out dovetails with slightly uneven angles or generate chair-leg turnings that weren’t exactly identical. Let’s say that we can even program the machine to produce the parts with even more extreme local variations, perhaps leaving coarse milling marks on the underside of a tabletop or generating a drawer on which the sides are of differing thicknesses. These parts might be assembled with some difficulty, forming a piece of furniture that, on paper, matches the typical variations...

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

My 4 tooth-per-inch rip saw can move through 1″ pine at a rate of about 1″ per stroke. For the 3' rip cut I had to make, it took fewer than 40 rapid strokes to get my piece – about 30 seconds of work. I have found it much more efficient to stay a healthy 1/8″ off the line and cut very quickly rather than obsessing over accuracy. Slightly wandering lines can be leveled in only a couple passes of a heavily set fore plane. In my experience, this is much faster than ripping to precise tolerances.  The adjoining short rail pieces were ripped as one long piece and, with the rear rail, were prepped in the same manner as the...

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch