Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of essays by master cooper Marshall Scheetz. We’ve recently been talking with Scheetz about fascinating new research he’s been doing relating to aspects of his trade he’s not yet explored in all his years at the block. We’ve published his writing before and loved it so much that we decided to give him our platform here to share his latest findings. I never imagined wooden buckets could keep me occupied, or rather, transfixed for so long. The simple purpose of a bucket or barrel belies the complex symmetry of such a mundane object. Coopering is the intuitive act of assembling carved wooden staves into a conical form, bound by hoops driven...
We’ve probably all heard this phrase before, but it’s admittedly becoming harder and harder to live by. For example, if you need to change the formatting of your laptop’s hard drive so you can update your MacOS to the latest version and you want it done right, do you do it yourself? (Some will say yes. I’ve been putting it off for months.) Our “somethings” used to be simpler. Vehicles, for example, had adjustable carburetors, few electronics, and most anything wrong with them could be fixed on a warm Saturday under a shady tree. My first car was a 1984 Dodge Caravan (the first minivan ever!) that my parents had purchased new, and I inherited it with 168,000 miles on...
Many woodworkers get into hand tools because they are drawn in by the joinery: dovetails, mortises and tenons, etc. As they continue building pieces in their shops, some begin to wonder if it’s possible to “cut the cord” even further. What would it be like to build from scratch without any machinery whatsoever? How would one start with rough boards and end with a beautiful drop-leaf table without ever firing up the dust collector? In this latest episode, Joshua and Mike discuss these questions in light of Joshua’s forthcoming book, Worked: A Bench Guide to Hand-Tool Efficiency. Joshua makes the argument that “engineer” woodworkers and “monastic” hand-tool-only woodworkers operate on the same strange assumption: that hand tools are supposed...
Your eye is the standard of tolerance. And over the years as your hand skills develop, so will your sense of visual discernment. Dovetails that you were happy with at the beginning of your journey will undoubtedly make you wince a few years into your growth as an artisan. That’s not only OK, it’s expected. It’s called maturation. But as you grow in the craft, don’t ever forget that it’s just woodworking, reader. Although the joinery of the past was intended to be as gap-free as possible, the tolerances of our furniture-making ancestors were much closer to those of house carpenters than those of space engineers. Efficient craftsmanship is caring deeply about everything that matters and being disciplined enough to...
Imagine woodworking with no boundaries.
Imagine having all the tools you need at your fingertips with a gesture.
Imagine being able to transcend the struggles of difficult grain, dull tools, sticky glue, and a deficient skillset.
Today we are announcing the next chapter in woodworking.
The future is going to be beyond anything that we can imagine.
-Mike
The Mortise & Tenon Apprenticeship Program's Spring Term is sailing along and just might finish before spring weather actually arrives. As we pass the halfway point, the Apprentices have mounted numerous personal successes, from free-hand sharpening of their plane irons and chisels to resuscitating antique hand planes to employing these tools of the trade to create traditional handmade joinery worthy of the finest pre-industrial furniture. They're gaining the proper experience in efficient workholding, marking, and layout, body positioning for optimal tool engagement, mindfulness in employing hand tools, reading stock, and resharpening when necessary. The group dynamic is lively and encouraging as everyone tackles and posts their weekly assignments and many get started on Journeyman Challenge projects. Already we've seen lots...
In the early 1990s, I began my woodworking journey with a couple of vintage Stanley bench planes and a Fine Woodworking book on hand tools. I dutifully followed the book’s instructions on setting up and sharpening my new planes, and everything was going pretty well until I came to the section on setting the cap iron (also known as the chipbreaker). According to the author, for difficult hardwoods I was supposed to set the edge of the cap iron “as close as possible” to the cutting edge. So I did, and disaster ensued. I could barely push the plane; it shuddered, shook, and quickly came to an unceremonious halt, the mouth hopelessly clogged with balled-up shavings. I moved the cap...
It’s been a wild ride working on the 1810 house project. We’ve been planning the rubble trench and granite block foundation, cleaning up and selling my double wide home (gone first week of June!), setting up the cottage for moving into (building railings for the loft, digging a water line, running wiring, etc). Anyway, there’s been a lot going on around here. But in the midst of it all, Issue Twelve arrived! Our printer, Cummings Printing, has done a top-notch job, as always. We moved to them a few issues ago and have been so impressed with their consistency and quality. And the page spreads in this one are fun to flip through because the photographs are so captivating. I...
It’s maple sugar season here in New England. When the days are above freezing but the nights are still frosty, the maples (Acer spp.) begin sending copious amounts of sweet sap up the trunk and into the limbs, readying the buds to leaf out when the time comes. We tap a few of our trees every year – rarely more than a dozen. A decent-sized maple can put out more than a gallon of sap per day, per tap, and all this precious liquid must be gathered, cooked down, and finished into syrup or (better yet) maple sugar. It might be the best stuff on earth. Larger producers use food-grade vinyl tubing to pipe all the trees in their “sugarbush” together,...
…A winning wave, deserving note, In the tempestuous petticoat; A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility: Do more bewitch me, than when art Is too precise in every part. -“Delight in Disorder,” by English poet Robert Herrick (1591-1674) I recently started making a new table. And, as is often the case when I buckle down and start something that requires attention—whether it’s a tricky piece of furniture or a short story or a diplomatically worded response to panicked student email sent to me in a Mountain Dew-fueled haze at 2:30 the morning before a due date—I thought of an old joke. It goes like this: “How do you make God laugh?” “Make a plan.” (Rimshot.)...
