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Tuesday morning saw the continuation of the bureau table by Kaare. He assembled the drawer dividers, with the case together added the feet and a few nailed on parts and then started adding the [...]

Day one of the conference began at 8:30 with breakfast in the Wallace Dewitt museum cafe. At 9:00, Colonial Williamsburg cabinetmaker Kaare Loftheim took the stage to demonstrate the construction [...]

I’m in colonial Williamsburg for the annual woodworking conference. This year the subject is the furniture Mount Vernon. Last night there was a short lecture on Mount Vernon furniture and [...]

Today (January 1st) is my birthday.  I’ll spend the rest of this day with beloved family and friends, smiling through their dull headaches.  My birthday (like all of you with Christmas [...]

I’m getting older, losing my near sight, and the world is growing dim. Sounds dire. And while it may be true, I think a big part of my problem is the light bulbs in my shop.  Unlike most of [...]

I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciated all of your thoughtful comments.  They were helpful and constructive and I thank you for them all.  So helpful were they, that I may ask for [...]

I’m working on an article about making nailed (boarded) furniture. The new format at the magazine has restricted columns like mine to 2 pages and I’m having trouble getting the job [...]

Thanks to Popular Woodworking Magazine, I was invited to panel discussion on saving woodworking at this years’ Woodworking In America  conference in Northern Ky. As I suspected, my [...]

The language surrounding so called oilstones is very misleading. First off, there’s no such thing as an “oilstone.” Long ago, these abrasive stones were simply called whetstones. “Whetting” was [...]

Shannon Rogers interviewed me a few weeks ago and in the interview I mentioned my disdain for certain chisel sizes. Specifically, I said that students who come to woodworking classes armed with [...]

I believe that art contains specific and important information about the nature of the human condition and how we view ourselves and the world.  Furniture is art and I think 18th-century [...]

The choice of building boarded or joined furniture wasn’t typically left to individual English craftsmen. The Trade Guilds to which English woodworkers belonged mandated what they were [...]