Arts & Mysteries

Period woodworking trades in London were strictly regulated. I’ve temporarily put down my 5⁄16” joiner’s mortising chisel in favor of a 2″ chisel for chopping carpenter’s mortises. [...]

Early modern records show guild regulations in London. Early 17th-century London tradesmen were protective about their work, carefully keeping an eye on any interlopers to their craft. A dispute [...]

Raking light through windows is the clear winner in a hand-tool shop. In 2007, I was a speaker at Colonial Williamsburg’s Furniture Forum, and there I met Adam Cherubini. He was in costume in the [...]

I have often found it beneficial to sketch furniture while examining it.  Unlike a photograph, a pencil insists a form be understood to be reproduced. But my sketches don’t always look like [...]

If I could teach a class on period woodworking and really control the syllabus, I would start in the woods and teach beginning woodworking. And while I doubt I could fill woodworking classes like [...]

We all have junk in our shops that we don’t use or no longer need.  My junk is sometimes a bit unique, but it’s junk none-the-less.  I’m cleaning out my shop, making room for more junk and I’ll [...]

I hope you are enjoying my latest series on my new tool chest. The project was born this time last year during the FWW presentations at Colonial Williamsburg’s “Working Wood in the [...]

  I built my Roubo clone frame saw many years ago after seeing a similar one in Colonial Williamsburg’s Hay shop.  With my version, which is a closer approximation of the Roubo saw in [...]

The basic principle of woodworking is painfully easy: Mark your project carefully, then remove the wood that isn’t part of your project.  Over Christmas break, I built my wife a coffee [...]

I’m busy dovetailing the 13 tiny drawers for the tool chest I’m making. I’m using two marking gauges to mark out the drawer fronts, but I was having some problems with the [...]

Though planes have been around for millennia, they haven’t always been the essential woodworking tool that we may think they were. In Medieval Europe, and especially England, lots of good [...]

I used plywood for my “Machinist’s Tool Test” project (in the October 2012 issue, and continued in February 2013 issue). In the past, I regarded plywood as being unworkable by [...]