Marking Everything From One Face
I was standing over a slab of walnut last Tuesday, pencil lead snapped, feeling that familiar, hollow knot of dread in my stomach. I had already cut the tenons for…
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Knowledge That Cannot Be Written Down
I was clearing out a corner of the studio last Tuesday when I tripped over a stack of rejected joinery samples from 2004—oak tenons that were a fraction too proud,…
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A Maker’s Website of Five Pages
I spent three weeks last year staring at a blank WordPress dashboard, feeling more paralyzed than I ever did when trying to figure out the joinery for a mid-century sideboard.…
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A Panel Glue Up That Stays Flat
I was standing over a walnut slab three years ago, watching a bead of PVA glue weep out from a joint that should have been seamless, realizing I had just…
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Why a Two Hundred Year Old Joint Survives
I was standing in my workshop last Tuesday, staring at a joint that refused to seat properly, when I realized I was fighting a piece of walnut with a tool…
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Describing Your Work Without Overclaiming
I spent three hours last Tuesday staring at a blank screen, feeling that same hollow tightness in my chest I used to get when a client rejected a joinery detail.…
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The Order I Prepare Four Faces
I remember standing in my first studio, surrounded by sawdust and the smell of scorched lacquer, staring at a pile of expensive walnut that I’d completely botched because I’d rushed…
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Photographing Furniture Without a Studio
I spent three hours last Tuesday wrestling with a studio light that cost more than my first car, only to realize the shot looked utterly lifeless. It’s the great lie…
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A Client Who Keeps Visiting the Workshop
I was staring at a prototype of a walnut sideboard—a piece that had cost me three weeks of sleep—when the email came through. It wasn’t a critique of the joinery…
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Tradition as Accumulated Testing
I was digging through a box of rejected chair joints in my studio last Tuesday—one of those piles of “failures” I can’t seem to throw away—when I realized how much…
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