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This coming Saturday I am going to teach a remote whittling class for children, hosted by Peters Valley School of Crafts. Unlike in-person teaching, where the teacher is present in the class/shop [...]

One of the most exciting new tools that my students and I got to try and use this year was the 6 Piece Bushcraft Survival Auger Kit with T-Handle and 5 Auger Bits in Tool Roll from WoodOwl. The [...]

A few weeks ago I was gifted an old wooden ammunition box that had one of its handles missing in action. The box also suffered from a few other structural issues, including a lengthy crack on one [...]

With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, I was obligated to change my curriculum and put our traditional shop work on hiatus. Since I wasn’t able to use our benches, vises, and clamps I [...]

One of the strops that I tried in my efforts to find a high-quality yet economic tool was the Lee Valley strop. (Read part 1 of the story here). This strop is made of plywood and comes with [...]

I use strops all the time to hone our many carving knives, our plane, and chisel blades, not to mention my pocket knife. Strops maintain our edges and gift them with pinnacle sharpness that lasts [...]

In this last wrap-up entry of my four-part series on Dan Dargon’s Torii table I will show how Dan build the table’s drawer, applied finished, and finally assembled it all.  Read: Part 1 Part 2 [...]

After portioning out some of the Paulownia logs into smaller units Dan set up his lathe and began the turning process (read about the genesis of this great project here: part 1, part 2). He [...]

Learn the nuts and bolts of making hardware new again. From the time I began collecting reclaimed wood I remember salvaging all kinds of hardware pieces. I like to dismantle hardware from found [...]

Dan’s wood of choice for the Torii table (read part one of the story here) was Paulownia, a fast-growing tree that is both soft and strong, and that has been part and parcel of the remarkable [...]

Under a makeshift awning in a quiet valley near Jerusalem, Israel, Dan Dragon, a multi-faceted maker, has just finished one of the most interesting pieces that I have seen to date. It’s a [...]

While preparing to sand some cutting boards for customers, I decided to do the sanding outside after noticing how blissful the weather was. After all, why have dust in the shop when I can spread [...]