Working With Reclaimed Timber
I spent three hours last Tuesday staring at a stack of grey, weathered oak in a salvage yard, listening to a vendor try to sell me “curated architectural salvage” at…
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Air Drying Your Own Boards
I still have the ghost of a walnut sideboard sitting in my “reject” pile, a heavy, silent monument to my own impatience. Ten years ago, I thought I could bypass…
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Changing Your Mind With the Timber Cut
I was staring at a half-finished walnut sideboard last Tuesday, the scent of sawdust and stale coffee hanging heavy in the studio, when I realized the leg joinery I’d spent…
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Wax and What It Does Not Protect Against
I was staring at a walnut sideboard last Tuesday, the kind of piece that makes you want to weep with its grain, and I realized I was about to ruin…
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Checking the Planer Mid Build
There is this pervasive, polished lie in design circles that maintenance is something you schedule—a clean, clinical ritual performed once a month when the “real work” is done. It’s total…
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Making What People Will Buy
I was staring at a prototype for a walnut lounge chair last Tuesday—one of the many “failures” currently cluttering the corner of my studio—and realized it was the most honest…
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Writing Slowed My Hands Down
I spent the better part of last Tuesday staring at a pile of discarded oak joints in the corner of my studio, each one a failed attempt at a leg…
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Explaining It Taught Me What I Did
I spent most of my career in a workshop, surrounded by the smell of sawdust and the weight of failed joinery, so when people talk about the “spiritual rewards” of…
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Buying From a Sawmill
I still have a piece of walnut sitting on a shelf in my studio, tucked between a failed joinery experiment and a rejected chair leg. It’s a beautiful, heavy slab…
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Timber in Stock Is Money Standing Still
I spent most of last Tuesday staring at a stack of walnut offcuts that I’d foolishly categorized as “scrap,” only to realize they were the exact dimensions needed for a…
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