in the beginning (history of philosophy 1)
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 humans were scratching in the mud and letting it dry, they were thinking deep thoughts like “why am i here”,…
just plane flat?
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 are slightly offset. this allows the workpiece to be registered flat against the infeed side before hitting the cutter and…
underwear for your tools?
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 of the stone, allowing it to register against a slightly different plane. this makes the edge sharp without having to…
guides aren’t just for cookies
the cookies are pretty sweet, though. literally. you know, sugar. anyway, guides have a bad reputation and aesthetic reception in western woodworking. people have spent hundreds (perhaps thousands) of years talking about how it’s cheating to use a guide. and that is pure bullshit so i figure it’s probably time to put that idea on notice its time has come. we need a renaissance of guide blocks. are you a…
