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

having left the pre-socratics, we come to the obvious next step — socrates. you probably already know three things about socrates. he was an ancient greek philosopher. he had an awesome beard. he was sentenced to death for his philosophy by drinking hemlock. while those are a good start, i… Read More »socrates (history of philosophy 2)

history, as we know, isn’t true. it’s just the most popular opinion about what happened in the past. it’s not what actually happened. nobody knows what happened. but it’s a reasonable estimate and that’s close enough. philosophy is a subject with a history nearly as old as human writing. before… Read More »in the beginning (history of philosophy 1)

while i’m on the subject of frequent woodworking questions, the first one that always comes to mind is this. i’ll give you a little background. if you’ve ever used a jointer (and you’ve probably used a jointer if you’re reading woodworking articles online), you know the infeed and outfeed tables… Read More »just plane flat?

about thirty years ago, i saw a trick for the first time to make flattening the back of a plane iron far easier if it was badly out of flat — take a thin coin and put it under the iron, tilting the back just a little off the surface… Read More »underwear for your tools?