Image from @overthewireless My introduction to woodworker Kieran Binnie was through a social media campaign he ran back in 2015 called “Community is…” Kieran had asked woodworkers from around the world to share what they believed community was to them on their woodworking journey. People from all over responded. I watched it draw them together. As he described, “The [online woodworking] community is not something I went in search of. But when I stumbled across it, I found woodworkers with a wealth of very different experiences, unified by a passion for the various woodwork crafts, and intent on sharing knowledge and preserving skills. This willingness to share information, discuss experiences, and most importantly, to encourage and inspire each other, is...
Mike and I are wrapping up the next batch of Boxed Sets this week, and I think we’ve hit our stride. This round sped along wonderfully, and I am delighted with how these have come together. The final mash-up of rough and refined perfectly embodies the M&T vision. One of the techniques we’re using through this project is setting the dovetail baseline depth a hair deeper than the thicknesses of the mating board in order to ensure that the pins and tails protrude rather than sit below the surface. This is important for the project for one primary reason: we wanted to retain the fore-planed texture of the boards, which would be meddled with if we had to plane the...
Anyone who has spent time wandering through the woods of New England has come across an old, mossy line of stacked rocks in their explorations. Stone walls are ubiquitous around here, as much a part of the New England character as thick accents or a complete disdain for the New York Yankees. I’ve stumbled across them in deep woods, far from any homes or roads, where they meander out of sight in both directions or disappear beneath a deep layer of loam accumulated from centuries of fallen leaves. These walls offer a tangible link to the labors of the past – after all, someone’s hands carried each of these rocks, set them in place, and wiped a sweaty brow before...
We just posted a new installment in our “Setting Up Shop” video series. In this video, Mike discusses the stump we use for hewing and riving in our woodshop. We consider this an essential worksurface in a hand-tool shop, because the ability to swing a hatchet or wield a froe should be only a few steps from the bench. The more accessible it is, the more you will use it. There really is no excuse to not have a stump in your shop. It’s dirt cheap, takes up almost no floor space, and requires no construction. And you can heat your house with it when it’s used up in the future. Get yourself a stump. You won’t regret it....
“[C]ircumstances of the jobs performed by carpenters, plumbers, and auto mechanics vary too much for them to be executed by idiots; they require circumspection and adaptability. One feels like a man, not a cog in a machine. The trades are then a natural home for anyone who would live by his own powers, free not only of deadening abstraction but also of the insidious hopes and rising insecurities that seem to be endemic in our current economic life.”
– Matthew Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft
Mike and I were working on boxes today and remarked about how delighted we were that we’ve not screwed up any pieces thus far. Every joint has come together with only minor fettling and all look nice and tight after paring. We should have knocked on wood. Within minutes, we had to abandon two side pieces, one from a check that emerged and the other from human error. I love moments of humbling irony such as this. They remind us in a small way that no matter how many times think we’ve got life covered, there is always the opportunity for a faceplant around the corner. It’s a mercy to be reminded of this principle in trivial circumstances such...
For those of you who have been dying to dig into Mortise & Tenon Issues One, Two, or Three but have been unable to secure a copy of from the original printing, today’s your day. As I discussed on Monday, we have decided to republish all of these articles in a one-volume hardbound book we’re calling, The First Three Issues. The pre-order window is now open. We had Issue One in stock until early 2019, and when we announced our inventory was running low, the remaining supply depleted rapidly. Then Issue Two sold out later that year. Since then, we’ve had no option for folks to get either of these issues. Being a print-only publication has its disadvantages: massive printing...
When you use your tools regularly, you begin to acquire a sense of what works best. Through trial and error, one tool proves more effective than another; one way of doing an operation is demonstrably quicker or easier. It’s sometimes better to deeply scribe that line with a knife than to try to use a saw to establish the shoulder, etc. One such operation is ripping a piece of stock to width. As we work on the dovetailed boxes for the M&T Boxed Sets, there are several pieces (the bottom and the back) that must be ripped down just a bit to their final dimensions. Only a small amount of stock must be removed; in the case of the bottom,...
“What we call green woodworking today carried no such particular distinction in the past. Vernacular woodcraft began in the forest, and made great use of the metamorphosing properties of wood as it changes from soft and saturated to hard and dry. Most everything a typical household needed, from treen to transportation, was produced through this process. Nowadays, much of that intimacy with this raw material has been lost as modern woodworkers turn to machines that rely on tame wood and massive infrastructure to function properly. But trees are not tame, and require knowledge and patience to work in the old way. There are valuable returns for the effort, not just in terms of fulfillment for the individual maker, but in...
The “bench hook” (commonly referred to today as a “planing stop”) is an essential workholding feature on my bench. This L-shaped piece of iron is filed with teeth to bite into the end grain of the board to be planed. Peter Nicholson described it well in his 1812 book Mechanic’s Companion: “Near to the further or fore end A B [of the bench] is an upright rectangular prismatic pin a, made to slide stiffly in a mortise through the top. This pin is called the bench hook, which ought to be so tight as to be moved up or down only by a blow of a hammer or mallet. The use of the bench hook is to be keep the...
