After two only days of work, nearly the entire class has assembled the shells of their tool chests. This is not according to plan. We are supposed to assemble the chests on Wednesday night. Late Wednesday. Dark. With greasy pizza boxes strewn everywhere. There should be tears. Alcohol deprivation. Hide glue. Instead, we have only … Read more
When you’ve worked out of a traditional tool chest for 15 years, you sometimes forget how excellent it is to work from. That is, until you teach others how to build the chest. This week, I’m at Roy Underhill’s woodworking school, “The Woodwright’s School.” This is the last class I’m teaching in 2012 (aside from … Read more
If I wrote about all the woodworking tools out there that stink, I wouldn’t have much time to build anything. Most of the junk out there can be avoided. You can buy better drill bits, screwdrivers and hammers than the stuff you find in the $1 bins at the home centers. But for some tools, … Read more
Ah, Thursday – day four of a woodworking class. This is the day that most students hit a wall. They take naps at their benches. They sneak off to their cars to lie down. They disappear in the middle of the day and don’t return until the next morning. All these things (and more – … Read more
The first lesson of handwork is this: Most things that you think are important are not important. Most surfaces do not need to be true. Most edges do not need to be square. Most boards do not need to be four-squared (or even free of bark). Most dimensions – length, thickness, width – will only … Read more
Years ago when touring Winterthur, I saw a lot of wacky Pennsylvanian dovetails on old chests. These joints had been wedged through their pins – a feature I had not seen in person before. While the museum personnel wouldn’t let me take photos, I did make a few sketches. Whenever I cut dovetails, my mind … Read more
If you ever want to try out a lot of different workbench designs before you settle on building one for your shop, you might want to take a class at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking. During the last five years, Kelly and his students have been building different style benches with all manner of vises … Read more
