Have you ever experienced those unique moments when sounds or movements in your immediate environment randomly fall into sync and create a rhythm? Like that iconic Volkswagen commercial from 20 years ago, your car’s windshield wipers start swiping to the beat of the song on the radio, or two friends’ strides fall into step on a long walk. Hand tools are particularly rhythmic, and workers have forever played percussion with their tools. Here’s one example that boatbuilder and author Douglas Brooks shared with us, from a traditional Japanese boatbuilder. The other day, I noticed essentially the opposite of this synchronizing effect in the shop. Joshua and I were doing identical tasks (chopping out waste between dovetails with a chisel) at opposite ends...
I know you were hoping that the new “Build For Ever” sticker we just came out with would be our new T-shirt design. It is. And it is the most intense shirt we’ve made to date. This vintage-black tee features a rigorously bearded Joseph, patron saint of hand hewing (among other things), swinging an axe next to a handful barely clothed woodchip-collecting cherubs. Framing the scene are a few words – “Build For Ever” – from one of our favorite quotes from John Ruskin in which he exhorts artisans to build in a way that will outlast them. The shirt’s back features the entire quote: “When we build, let us think that we build for ever.” We LOVE this...
We live in an era of specialization – a time in which there exists a dedicated doodad for every conceivable circumstance one might find themselves in. We have special shorts just for running, hats for gardening (as opposed to any other outdoor sunny-day activities), and knives designed specifically for marking one side of a joint to another. In the English joinery tradition, artisans used combination knife/awl “striking knives.” These tools would make a great addition to a horror film, because they are wicked sharp on both sides! I picked up this one secondhand somewhere along the way, and the first time I used it, I bent over to closely inspect my work… and then… I jumped back before it...
M&T activity has been ramping up steadily over the past year with daily blog posts and regular podcasts and videos. We’ve also finally been able to get some of our favorite books in stock. And we’ve got a lot more we’ve been working on behind the scenes that is yet to be announced. (I’ve been working on another book and we have a new program currently in the final stages of development.) All of this has been possible because we hired our friend Grace Cox a couple years ago. Grace has been tackling more and more as time goes on and this has meant Mike and I have been able to focus on creating loads more content. It’s been wind...
This is a chestnut tree. It is a loner, a survivor, a hybrid that is resistant to the fungus that killed four billion of its kin in the first decades of the 20th century. The American chestnut, Castanea dentata, once comprised one of every four trees in the eastern United States. The trees were massive and beautiful – a mature chestnut crown contained an acre of leaves. The wood was renowned for its beauty, rot-resistance, and strength, and most barns and homes east of the Mississippi River utilized it. The fruit of the tree, an indigenous staple for millennia, became a favorite American food – we even still sing about roasting them over an open fire at Christmastime. But a blight introduced...
Mike and I recorded a new video this morning for our “Setting Up Shop” video series, this time focused on the trying/jointer plane. Although I discuss the history of the terminology, I don’t really care which word you use. Instead, I show the two situations in which these planes shine: flattening board and jointing edges. In practice, these guys don’t get as much use as the fore plane. And that’s good because they’re hefty beasts to wield around.
– Joshua
We may say it often, but it bears repeating here: We love hearing from our readers. Y’all are some of the most thoughtful, engaging, and entertaining people out there. You are what this whole magazine effort is all about. Not long ago, we received an email from Richard in Yorkshire, who has recently become a grandfather twice over. Neither of his grandchildren lives nearby, but as Richard noted, “when they come to visit, one day, the kids will need a chair.” He decided to build a child’s high chair based on the exam article from Issue Three. This is exactly the kind of inspiration we want readers to find in these photo essays of antique furniture – a sense of freedom in...
In his excellent book of small essays, The Book of Delights, the poet Ross Gay writes that “Webster’s definition of loiter reads thus: ‘to stand or wait around idly without apparent purpose,’ and ‘to travel indolently with frequent pauses.’ Among the synonyms for this behavior are linger, loaf, laze, lounge, lollygag, dawdle, amble, saunter, meander, putter, dillydally, and mosey…. All of these words to me imply having a nice day. They imply having the best day. They also imply being unproductive. Which leads to being, even if only temporarily, nonconsumptive, and this is a crime in America.” He adds that another synonym “for loitering [is] taking one’s time. For while the previous list of synonyms allude to time, taking one’s...
Back in October of 2019, Joshua and I drove to New Brunswick, Canada, to spend a couple days at the off-grid homestead of boatbuilder Harry Bryan and his wife, Martha. We were there to take photos for an article Harry was writing for Issue Eight, but more importantly, we wanted to sit down with the Bryans and learn what motivated them to choose the path they had. Harry’s boat shop is an extraordinary collection of innovations, from his treadle-powered bandsaw to his efficient solar array. They built their home utilizing the slipform masonry methods that back-to-the-landers Scott and Helen Nearing (of The Good Life fame) pioneered, and milled all their lumber on a sawmill that Harry salvaged from a field in...
After much agonizing over the pile of compelling applications we received, we have whittled it down to the two final grant recipients. Our first recipient is Agnes Chang, who will be partnering with woodworking instructor Adan Jhan in documenting the last professional handplane makers in Taiwan. Traditional Taiwanese handplanes (which resemble Japanese tools but are pushed rather than pulled, at standing benches) are an amalgamation of Chinese, Japanese, and Western influences, and the modifications and adaptations made to these styles offer clues about the overlapping evolution of each. Chang and Jhan will be touring Taiwan to learn from the remaining few traditional planemakers to study how the traditional methods of making and using these handplanes might offer wisdom for the...
