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From the M&T Daily Dispatch: 

The panel raiser was the first plane of Chelor’s that I chose to copy, and it departs the least from the English tradition. Still, there are two differences worth noting. First, English panel raisers nearly always have adjustable, rather than fixed, depth stops and fences.  The early American planes, on the other hand, sacrifice adjustability in favor of simplicity and ease of use. Remember, we have miles of pine to plane! A more subtle difference is the design of the escapement. Normally, the abutments – the surfaces that the wedge bears against – are a consistent width until the bottom half inch, where they taper into the side of the plane. But on the Chelor/Nicholson panel raisers, the left abutment...

From the M&T Daily Dispatch: 

As of just a few minutes ago, Term 04 of the Mortise & Tenon Apprenticeship Program is open for registration! As Joshua mentioned yesterday, we’ve been blown away by the response to this program (referred to affectionately in-house as “MTAP”) and by the wonderful enthusiasm of our students. Many start out cautiously optimistic, having struggled with dovetails and sharpening and finding clear guidance in the past. But as we’ve seen, they finish the program with confidence to tackle just about any furniture project on their bucket list… or to go out into the woods with an axe and chop down a tree. The transformation is nearly incredible. Image Courtesy: Deborah Pessoa Running this program is a group effort, and a...

  Early tomorrow morning (8:00 a.m. Eastern) we will be opening registration for the summer term of our 8-week Apprenticeship Program. This thing has taken on a life of its own and (having just completed Term Three) we’re hearing feedback like we’ve never heard anywhere else: Many people are telling us that their lives have been changed by these eight weeks. Some say it’s the accountability of weekly assignments, others thrive on the inherent camaraderie in forum discussions, and others cite the unique focus on pre-industrial tolerances and techniques. Whatever it is that motivates them, several of our students are now leaving their lifelong careers to work wood with their hands. This is tremendously humbling and gives us a greater...

From the M&T Daily Dispatch: 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch: 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch: 

For all his potential hypocrisy, there’s no debating that he knew his way around hand tools. The first chapter of Walden, “Economy,” includes a fussily detailed description of the supplies, carpentry, layout, and furnishings of his cabin. He describes how he first visited his homesite in March 1845, bringing an axe he’d borrowed from a neighbor. He notes that “it is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise.” (He also reassures us that he returned his neighbor’s axe “sharper than [he] received it.”) He spent days felling and hewing the timbers for his home, sturdy pine studs 6" square. Thoreau rhapsodizes that...

From the M&T Daily Dispatch: