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From the M&T Daily Dispatch: 

“Most people have staked their self-images in the present structure [of society] and are unwilling to lose their ground. They have found security in one of the several ideologies that support further industrialization. They feel compelled to push the illusion of progress on which they are hooked. They long for and expect increased satisfaction, with less input of human energy and with more division of competence. They value handicraft and personal care as luxuries, but the ideal of a more labor-intensive, yet modern, production process seems to them quixotic and anachronistic.”-Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality  

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: