A Planter That Lasts Longer Than Two Years
Most people think you need a shed full of expensive, noisy power tools to figure out how to build a garden planter, but they’ve got it backwards. I’ve spent forty years on sites and another ten in the classroom, and I’ve seen more blokes ruin perfectly good timber with a clumsy circular saw than I […]
Rasps for Shaping and Files for Refining
I remember standing in a drafty college workshop thirty years ago, watching a young apprentice try to coax a smooth curve out of a piece of oak using nothing but a high-speed orbital sander. He was covered in fine dust, his hands were vibrating like a tuning fork, and the shape was a bloody mess. […]
The Offcut Pile That Ate the Workshop
I can still see my old workshop floor from thirty years ago, a treacherous landscape of cedar shavings and jagged maple scraps that would catch your boot and send you sprawling. I spent half my apprenticeship tripping over things that should have been in a bin, wasting more time hunting for a decent piece of […]
Routers and Which Base You Need
Most people approach technology like they approach a cheap, disposable chisel: they buy the flashiest thing on the shelf, use it until it fails, and then toss it in the bin without a second thought. I see these tech reviewers throwing around jargon about "gigabit speeds" and "dual-band architecture" like they’re reciting a prayer, but […]
Letting Timber Settle Before You Cut
I remember a lad I taught back at the college, a bright enough boy, who spent three weeks crafting a beautiful walnut tabletop, only to watch it split right down the middle two months later. He’d used the best oils and the finest chisels, but he’d neglected the one thing that actually matters: knowing how […]
Storing Boards So They Stay Flat
I remember one particular winter back when I was teaching at the college, looking out at a stack of oak that a lad had left leaning against a damp brick wall. He’d spent a fortune on the material, but by the time we went to plane it, the boards had twisted so badly they were […]
Replacing Part of a Sill
You’ll see plenty of blokes on the internet telling you to grab a multi-tool and just hack away at the damage, but that’s a recipe for a mess. If you try to use a vibrating blade to figure out how to repair a rotten sill, you’ll end up wandering blindly into the healthy timber, making […]
Burnishing a Card Scraper Properly
Most people think they need a high-end orbital sander and a mountain of grit to get a surface smooth, but they’re just chasing their tails. I spent years watching apprentices spend hours sanding a tabletop, only to find the swirl marks still there once the finish went on. They’d complain about the tool being finicky, […]
A Tool Chest You Can Carry
I spent thirty years on site and another ten in the classroom, and if there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that a cluttered workbench is a sign of a cluttered mind. Most people think learning how to build a tool chest is just about following a set of blueprints to make a box with […]
Setting Up a Spokeshave That Actually Cuts
I remember a lad in my college workshop back in the nineties, sweating over a curved chair leg with a power sander, trying to force a shape that just wasn't coming. He was fighting the wood, making a mess of the grain and filling the air with useless dust. I walked over, handed him a […]