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
sometimes you just want things to be dark. and i don’t mean the middle of the night. we’re talking about wood —which we often do here. whether that means midnight-black or vague gray or something between, most wood doesn’t do neutral black tones straight off the tree and wood almost… Read More »matters of black wood
when it comes to sharpening, woodworkers fall loosely into two groups — those who aren’t getting sharp and those who spend an inordinate amount of time getting sharp far beyond what is necessary to do excellent work. let’s talk about this. it’s not woodworking’s dirty little secret. it’s its massive… Read More »fearlessly pointy