Last weekend, Whitney LB Miller, author of “Henry Boyd’s Freedom Bed,” was invited to read her new book at a Saturday morning children’s event. We suggested she film it but – reporting star that she is (she’s currently on the air with Cincinnati’s WCPO television station) – Whitney got a much better story. After he…
Read moreThe 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 (combined here into one volume) that explained…
Read moreAlong with blue tape and paper towels, so-called “super glues” are often cited as a way to treat relatively minor cuts in the workshop. But the cyanoacrylates that are meant to glue wood, porcelain and plastics (and hardhats to I-beams – if you’re old enough to remember that Krazy Glue commercial) are actually harmful to…
Read moreThe following is excerpted from “The Anarchist’s Design Book: Expanded Edition,” by Christopher Schwarz. It’s an exploration of furniture forms that have persisted outside of the high styles that dominate every museum exhibit, scholarly text and woodworking magazine of the last 200 years. There are historic furniture forms out there that have been around for…
Read moreOften when we start working on a new book, among the first steps are to acquire any good (and sometimes bad) research that’s already been done on the subject – at least for topics that haven’t been written about ad nauseam (see workbenches…or Shaker furniture; we’d need far more shelving to hold everything written on…
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