The following is excerpted from “Doormaking and Window-Making.” As the Industrial Revolution mechanized the jobs of the joiner – building doors and windows by hand – one anonymous joiner watched the traditional skills disappear and decided to do something about it. That joiner wrote two short illustrated booklets that explained how to build doors and…
Read moreThank you to Eric Stockinger, director of the WoodenBoat School in Brooklin, Maine, for his kind review of “Sharpen This” in the May/June 2023 issue of WoodenBoat Magazine. “If only there had been some simple guidebook to sharpening 30 years ago, I might have saved a whole lot of trouble and money,” wrote Stockinger. “Sharpen…
Read moreChristopher Schwarz might disagree, but I’d say this is the formative section of the collection: books on workbenches and tool chests – two things that are not only of importance in any shop, but of great importance to Chris’ woodworking history (and now mine – at least on the tool chests side of things). I…
Read moreDerek Jones will be visiting from England and in our shop Aug. 2-4 to teach a class in building a cricket table. Tickets for this new class go on sale Monday, May 15, at 10 a.m., on our ticketing site. Cricket tables range from the most basic stick variety to complex joined examples* that can…
Read moreThe following is excerpted from “The Anarchist’s Workbench,” by Christopher Schwarz. “The Anarchist’s Workbench” is – on the one hand – a detailed plan for a simple workbench that can be built using construction lumber and basic woodworking tools. But it’s also the story of Christopher Schwarz’s 20-year journey researching, building and refining historical workbenches…
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