My favorite project is usually the last one I’ve finished, or the one I’m about to start. The cover project for the April 2011 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine will likely stay a favorite for a long, long time. It’s a reproduction of a Gustav Stickley No. 369 bent arm chair. Gus knew what he … Read more
In the mid-1860s a carpenter in Sussex, England named Ephraim Colman had a brilliant idea, to make a chair with an adjustable back. The idea was sketched by Warrington Taylor, and adapted by Phillip Webb for a chair to be produced by William Morris and Company. Chairs have had a slow evolution, and the best … Read more
I read a column about “professional blogging” the other day that mentioned a blog is the one place in journalism where it’s accepted practice to start with an anecdote about your grandmother. So here goes. I was raised that it was wrong, wrong, wrong to ever brag, boast or call undue attention to yourself. Grandma … Read more
It’s easy to talk yourself out of doing something that’s out of the ordinary. Woodworkers tend to worry and analyze things so much that they often settle for less, when doing things right isn’t that much of a stretch. A case in point is the curved rails on the back of a Morris chair. How … Read more
Working on a magazine has some elements of science fiction, particularly in relation to the space/time continuum. Even though it’s late November, I’ve been working on a project for the April 2011 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. Here is a “sausage factory tour” of how we select, design and build projects that appear in the … Read more
