Not Quite Three Minutes

by | Aug 28, 2015 | 3 comments

I’ve been particularly quiet myself of late, especially on the YouTube type video front. Life these days has become very much about multi-tasking (although for me that’s kept to one job at a time). I’m doing work for the blog, our Premium Videos, the Workbenches, The Book and become quite busy with furniture, and I’m back and forth between them.
But sometimes a job needs to be done completely on its own; full focus. That’s what I’ve been on with, one of those tasks which round these parts is known as a ‘right twat of a job’. This is a very large custom workbench and these keep me thinking. I’ve recently fitted the end-cap complete with a not exactly three minute dovetail.
Workbench end cap with dovetailGlueing up dovetailsIn a couple more weeks the last of the big jobs will be completed and then it’s pretty plain sailing until Christmas with our order list for relatively straight forward work, including some nice furniture commissions.

When you work for yourself and only with yourselves (you become weird) you might think that it gives you ultimate freedom. Our business is sound in that it’s debt free etc, but in this game a sound business means a long back log and having those essential orders on the books can surprisingly put you into limbo, as it can be quite some time before new ideas can be put fully in to action. We’ve always tried to keep our business simple, small and debt free which does at least allow us to manage things without getting in to too much of a fluster.
We’ve slowly switched things around and as of next year the benches will be built in limited quantities (very limited). This is to allow us to get on with finishing The Book, as we’ve some of the bigger projects to get stuck in to.

Hand planing dovetailsAnd with our first ‘test the water’ Premium project nearing a finish we’re absolutely buzzing with ideas of where to go with the next.

Anyway I’ve got a very long night ahead to get the legs of this beast laminated up, so I’ll be making my own words up to my own songs till the early hours of the morning.

If you want to get started with cutting some normal sized half-blind dovetails then this is what we’ve been covering in our Premium Video Series today. As one Member kindly put it:

“This apparently simple piece of furniture is a complete woodworking course into only one project. Astonishing!”

Read full details about the Series here.

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About Richard Maguire

About Richard Maguire

As a professional hand tool woodworker, Richard found hand tools to be the far more efficient solution for a one man workshop. Richard runs 'The English Woodworker' as an online resource and video education for those looking for a fuss free approach to building fine furniture by hand. Learn More About Richard & The English Woodworker.

3 Comments

  1. Jasper

    Well made. Doesn’t look like a six minute dovetail either. More like a three minute glue-up.

    Would you rather be weird or pretending to be normal? The latter never worked for me. IMHO the freedom is in the focus. So I focus on focussing (sorry for posting recursive koans here).

    Reply
  2. Mike Pod-

    I was amused to see you posted this the day I put together a tail vise myself. Yeah…not exactly 3 minutes. Would post the pic to confirm, but I don’t see the option. Cheers. thenewenglishwoodworker 😉

    Reply
  3. Len Aspell

    Richard & Helen

    Good luck with the book. I’d certainly buy it based on your blogs and video rants and of course the brilliant Spoon Rack episodes.

    Len

    Reply

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