Archives

My mailbox has been deluged with questions about the Roorkhee chairs that will be featured in a fall issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. The No. 1 question: What does a woodworker need to do [...]

It’s sad to say, but all of the so-called “lifetime” screwdrivers I’ve tried over the years are sorely lacking in one way or another. On many of them, the tips are soft or poorly shaped. Soft [...]

When you build furniture that hasn’t been popular for a century, the hardware can be difficult to find. The Roorkhee chairs I’m building for a fall issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine feature [...]

Campaign-style furniture goes by many names, such as “military furniture” and “traveling furniture.” But its most curious name is “patent furniture.” It gets [...]

I’m in Charleston, S.C., this week to fatten myself up on grits and explore some of the antique shops for campaign furniture examples to study. First the bad news: Antiques of the Indies, the [...]

I spent Saturday watching and photographing carver Mary May teach a class on ball-and-claw feet at the Woodwright’s School in Pittsboro, N.C. Mary, a traditionally trained professional carver, [...]

Now that I’m no longer on the staff of Woodworking in America, I get to do three things: 1) Actually attend some of the really great seminars from people like chairmaker Curtis Buchanan, carver [...]

I’ve used a lot of different methods to add age to my hardware – everything from a propane torch to ammonia to gun blue to (yes) human urine. Whenever I discuss these methods, I get complaints. [...]

I like Morris chairs  – Lord knows I’ve built enough of them to change my middle name to “Morrie.” But this evening I finished up work on a chair that is lighter in weight (less than 10 lbs.), [...]

Because chairs take abuse like a rented mule, the simple mortise-and-tenon joint is sometimes not enough. In traditional Windsor chair construction, the legs and spindles are attached to the [...]

While I do most of my work by hand, there are two machines that I refuse to do without: a thickness planer and an old Delta 14” band saw. These two machines remove the drudgery from reducing [...]

I get this sort of flack below almost every day. I usually ignore it. But in this case I want to be perfectly clear about how I work and how I have always worked. Comment from Gary Smythe on the [...]