the first step to good results in furniture construction (after acquiring the wood, of course) is jointing your boards. it’s so fundamental, it was common for traditional shops to allow apprentices to do any task (and potentially make mistakes) except the seemingly-most-basic and most-labor-intensive, rough-milling the stock. while this may… Read More »sharing a joint
when someone tells you the pain you feel is all in your head, they’re being dismissive — it’s imaginary. but they’ve inadvertently told the truth. it is all in your head but it’s not artificial and it’s not thought. we’ll get to that in a moment but this raises a… Read More »all in your headache
there are three awesome basic guides necessary for handtool woodworking. the best saw guide you’ll ever use is a flat piece of plastic with a couple of magnets in it. the best chisel guide you’ll ever use is a … flat piece of plastic with a couple of magnets in… Read More »shooting perfection
so the next major project article i’m working on is about building a (large/permanent) workbench. i have a set of questions i want to answer in this article but i know some of you (mostly students but anyone else is welcome to ask) will have other questions. so fire them… Read More »workbench faq callout!
while socrates likely wrote nothing despite teaching the world (leading to his own death) a lot about its hypocrisy and stupidity, plato made up for it. born in the 420s bc, he is probably the most fundamental figure in early western philosophy and he’s seen as the beginning of the… Read More »plato (history of philosophy 3)
every language has patterns of vocal tone. some (mandarin, cantonese) are explicit. others (korean, french) are minimalist. english has patterns and they’re unwritten. but they’re very simple and can be almost-completely summarized by the two-word lyric from the 70s — get down. sentences in english are pitch-neutral with falling inflection… Read More »inflection for non-idiots