We have now opened registration for the 2023 M&T Apprenticeship program. This eight-week mentorship brings together the benefits of online education (clear and replayable tutorials, reduced expense, and slower pace) with the benefits of in-person classes (mentorship from instructors, camaraderie of fellow classmates, and accountability to help you get to the finish line). Mike and I thought long and hard and researched many other programs as we put this together. It’s well known now that the average completion rate for online classes hovers around a meager 10%. This disappointing result is probably due to multiple reasons (poor presentation of material, lack of student accountability, little skin in the game, etc.), and any online educator who cares about this is desperately...
After nurturing, caring for, and steering Issue Fourteen through its infancy and trouble-free adolescence, we are delighted to send it out the door and into the world. It’s ready. And while the development of an issue of M&T is a much more abbreviated (and infinitely easier) process than raising a child to adulthood, there are some similarities. I’ll try to unpack the metaphor through my own experiences in writing an article for a new issue. An idea is carried around for a few months, developing, growing, changing, before it’s put down on paper (or in a Word doc). The writing process is intense, often necessitating several consecutive days blocked out for the task. It’s a tremendous relief to finish this...
Another installment in the Nature and Art of Workmanship series. This time Joshua and Mike walk through chapter six which compares human creativity to the natural world. Regulated work was coveted in ancient cultures because they were surrounded by nature. In our industrial culture, however, we need the liveliness and idiosyncrasy of handwork.
SHOW NOTES
Order your copy of the book here: The Nature and Art of Workmanship
Joshua Klein’s article in Issue Seven: ”A Fresh & Unexpected Beauty: Understanding David Pye’s ‘Workmanship of Risk’”
Historically, workbenches were remarkably simple affairs. Peter Nicholson’s 1812 bench featured just a simple planing stop in the benchtop – not even one hole for a holdfast. Other historic images of benches show workpieces secured with nails, by a rope held by the worker’s feet, and even by the worker’s weight as he sits on the board being planed or the table leg into which a mortise is chopped. The main distinction of this style of work is that the workpiece is restrained by the worker, rather than by some mechanical device. It is not as if more rigid workholding solutions weren’t available to period craftsmen (as we will see), but it’s clear that they consciously chose to work without...
Here is our latest video in the “Getting to Work” series, in which Mike walks through the sharpening of hand saws. It’s easy to get lost in the specialized terminology: “rake,” “fleam,” “slope,” “gullets,” “tpi/ppi,” etc. But Mike gives a dead simple explanation that will be hard to forget. Our goal in our books and videos is always to explain things in the most broken down and straightforward way. There’s enough chest-puffing craftwork out there, and we feel no need to compete. Instead, we just want to get people to the bench working with success.
-Joshua
