We’ve just received shipment of our latest T-shirt. This hot-off-the-press design has been inspired by the camaraderie shared amongst woodworkers throughout the world and throughout the generations. The illustration on the front depicts a Victorian-era carpentry crew busily at work. The image is partly absurd, of course, in that no one really has any elbow room to work. (How can three guys be working on one bench?) But we love this artistic representation because it captures so well the intimacy of exchange that craftsmen have always felt. While the assumption today is that woodworking is a solo venture, we at M&T have seen more and more woodworkers desiring to connect with others in the craft. This is, of course,...
O Leatherman! My Leatherman! Our work for the day is done,We’ve weather’d every wiring task, the plumbing work is won,A board was sawn, rope cut and gone, a lunchtime orange peeled cleanly,While twin screwdrivers do their task, and knife blade sharpened keenly; But O pliers! pliers! pliers! O the most useful tool, I say, But the bottle opener will be employed At...
A couple months ago, I decided to hang up my hat. Next fall, I’m not coming back to the classroom after fifteen years of educating, entertaining, managing, having my ego lovingly skewered by, and occasionally being driven to the precipice of insanity by young people in America. It’s been a really hard decision. It’s also one I discerned—as with many really hard decisions I’ve made in the last few years—in the woodshop. The hard-nosed operations of sawing, planing, scribing, and truing have offered me a space to figure what’s really going on in my life, what’s important to me, and how to be a better dad and husband. To open up some distance on things before discerning what to do...
As a kid, I fondly remember my grandfather bringing me and my little brother to the garage on the back corner of his property. We knew this place as simply, “The Building.” It was an uninsulated and unlit steel structure with a high ceiling, a gravel floor, and it seemed to go on forever in all directions. Part of the sense of size had to do with The Building’s contents – rows and rows of fascinating mechanical contrivances, tools, engines, and even whole vehicles in various states of disassembly. There was an early Ford truck cab in one corner (which we loved to climb into) surrounded by all the mechanical guts of the vehicle, as if it had been turned...
