We’re nearing the shortest day of the year, and it seems every year at this time I can just barely take it. The sun rose at 7:00 this morning and is beginning to set as I write this a few minutes before 4:00. Due to the thickening of the blood in this frigid season, everything in me seems to grind to a halt. It takes everything in me to keep up with the daily responsibilities (as pared back as they are). But I keep my head down and go about my tasks until it starts getting dark again. I do think there’s a healthy seasonality to this whole thing that I’ve yet to figure out how to align myself with....
I occasionally feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of uncompleted projects I have sitting around in my humble basement workshop. There’s that one corner where the old frame saw hangs, awaiting restoration and use. And that big slab of redwood over there – that’s going to be a table… eventually. When I get around to it. And the funny thing is, that mental “to-do” list never really shrinks. I have this issue where I’m working on some important project at the bench (say, a drawer for our bathroom vanity), but get sidetracked with experiments in flintknapping or my kids’ plans to make a longbow out of a length of PVC pipe. The vanity drawer gets set aside for a bit. It seems...
Here’s a new video in the “Setting Up Shop” series. This one is all about backsaws. What are they? Why do you need them? Which ones should you get? How many is too many?
Enjoy.
“A woodworker's hands develop in a special way with intense and concentrated use. The flesh becomes stronger and heavier in certain areas, better fitted to grasp and use the tools. He has a special intensity, a striving for perfection, a conviction that any task must be executed with all his skill.”
– George Nakashima, The Soul of a Tree: A Woodworker’s Reflections
Mike and I finally buttoned up the smithy roof today after much too long of a delay. “Delay” seems to be a buzzword these days. These beefy cedar shingles (7/8" thick at the butt end) should last a good long while. This crosses one big item off the endless to-do list around here. There’s a lot we have to get buttoned up leading into the house restoration, and this was one of the bigger items weighing on our minds. Finally getting a proper roof brings us back to two years ago, when Carpenters Without Borders was here hewing, joining, and laughing together. That project was one of the most intense and enriching experiences of our lives. We now consider ourselves...
Barn finds are the best finds.Last week on the Daily Dispatch, I put up a video comparing several saw totes, from an oddball old Disston D-8 thumbhole crosscut (?!) saw to a brand-new Spear & Jackson crosscut that is less than graceful in form (as most new hand saws are, sadly). I also shared an interesting tote I hadn’t seen before – it was found in a bucket of rusty tools in a friend’s barn. This handle has similarities to the Disston thumbhole tote, suggesting that it is intended for ripping. (A note about that idiosyncratic thumbhole crosscut saw – the Disstonian Institute website notes that “The thumbhole handle was also offered on 28" and 30" crosscut saws for a...
We all have epiphanies. If I were to list the few most significant “aha” moments in my woodworking career, the use of wooden bench planes would be at the top of the stack. I’ve argued elsewhere for the benefits of wooden planes, and I won’t take the time to rehearse it all now, but suffice it to say, investing a few hours in learning to use wooden planes radically changed my woodworking. And I don’t use that word lightly – I mean it changed my work at the root level. So, I’ve been posting at the Daily Dispatch quite a bit about wooden planes lately. I filmed a video examination of a pile of wooden smoothers, and I’ve been making a...
If you’re a survivor of the American education system, you probably remember the famous scene from Mark Twain’s 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. By pretending that the drudgery of whitewashing a fence is, in fact, deeply fun and deeply enviable, Tom hoodwinks his buds into doing his work for him while he kicks back and polishes off an apple. What you may not remember, though, are Tom’s observations after the trick: “Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it -- namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make...
While clearing out storage recently, we came up with a goodly handful of hand-stamped wax-sealed trade cards that came affixed to previous issues of M&T. In an effort to move them along to better homes, we’ve decided to put them up for sale. There’s a finite number of these cards left – only a small handful of some of the designs. But we also ordered several hundred trade cards for Issues 9, 10, and 11 and wax sealed them for those who would like them. Those last three issues did not originally come with sealed cards due to the increased volume of subscriptions we now fulfill. So, this will be the first time these cards have been available outside the 1-10 Boxed Sets. $5 each. You...
On this continent, the full moon of November is traditionally known as the Beaver Moon – a nod to one of the craftiest woodworkers in the North Woods. During this time of year, these semi-aquatic rodents (Castor canadensis) are hard at work stocking up on food supplies for winter. Their time is limited, because once the ponds and lakes freeze over there are no more opportunities to bring in fresh limbs. Beavers don’t eat wood – they eat the cambium layer of trees and branches, just beneath the bark. That’s where all the calories are. To stockpile for winter, they take down trees, buck them to length, trim branches to usable sizes, and sink these in the mud at the...
