It's felt a bit back to roots of late as we've been talking a lot about workbenches, but for those already set and ready to build you might be relieved to hear that we're now well on with a new furniture build. After giving thought to everyone's requests and looking to come up with something … [Read more...]
Timber Movement & Workbench Design
If you know anything about the way that I work then you'll know that I don't like to faff. I will always do a proper job though, in fact I tend to do things somewhat overkill. But when it comes to the tools and techniques used I'll always find the most basic and simple route. I'm no different … [Read more...]
Scavenging Timber – Sourcing Good Timber In Smaller Sizes
Buying timber can seem to be some sort of secret club that you've yet to be initiated in to. I'd like to say that after all these years of sourcing timber I've been through that initiation, but if I'm honest I'm often still stumped. It's not the technicalities that get to me, I'm pretty good now … [Read more...]
Glue Ups & Grain Direction
Gluing up can be a frantic time. And if you're like me, it'll be messy too. But how much should we be planning ahead, before we get it all stuck together? When we glued up the top for our Hall Table build, we received a few questions on this topic. They were good queries, pondering over … [Read more...]
Workshop Floor From Scaffold Boards
I came in to furniture making as a very young man. Basically I started at the bottom of the food chain. As a result I didn’t get to start with perfect. My workshops have been a constant slow evolution. There have been many, from sheds to simply outside, right up to industrial units. As … [Read more...]
Choosing Timber – The Best Wood For Building A Workbench
If you're going to build yourself a chest of drawers, what wood would you build it out of? You'd build it out of whatever you fancy building it out of. What you like, what's to hand, what's cheapest. Who, bloody cares? It's the same when you're building a workbench. Obviously, I can't … [Read more...]
Something New
I'll be prototyping a few pieces over the coming months and I recently put in an order for some redwood to knock them up in. Our usual merchant can normally supply nice wide boards of redwood easily, but this time I wasn't so lucky. As an alternative tulipwood was offered. Now I'd always thought … [Read more...]
Which Wood?
When thinking of a new project to start a question which always needs to be determined is which wood to use. For personal projects the obvious answer for me is often pine, since I usually have some to hand or know it won't be too expensive if I haven't. But there's a familiar feeling which comes … [Read more...]
Buying Timber – Unit Conversion
I recently wrote about the daunting world of buying hardwoods and in that post I made a point of focusing on what your requirements might be. Today I’d like to start on the subject of pricing and I’m going to keep it concise because there’s just one useful equation that I’d like to mention; this is … [Read more...]
Buying Timber – Hardwoods are Hard Work!
I remember the first time Richard and I were looking to purchase some hardwood and just how daunting the whole thing was. We’d been lucky enough prior to use material supplied by Richard’s Dad but on this occasion we needed to step out on our own. I was working elsewhere at the time but I still … [Read more...]