The Renaissance Woodworker

I envy the carpenter. He can take his show on the road anytime. If I leave my shop and bench and tools, I am useless. Sometimes, even changing tools I am useless. I’m sure you know what I mean and if not, try cutting a set of carcass dovetails with a saw, chisels, and marking [...]

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It has been a busy couple of months in my shop. I had several commissions to complete as well as a few exciting trips out of the shop to museums and classes. In other words I have a backlog of stuff to talk about with you all. If you saw my mouth watering video tour [...]

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Registration is now open at www.woodworkinginamerica.com, there is a great course list this year and some exciting after hours events too. You had better have a really good reason for not being there. I expect doctor’s notes people!

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I had a great trip down to Williamsburg and got to spend some quality time with a few of the trades. The wheelwright is one of the more obscure by today’s standards but a highly precise branch of woodworking. I was only able to capture so much of the process of building a wheel since [...]

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During the first day of my Fundamentals 3 course at The Acanthus Workshop, my classmates and I took a trip down the road to Hearne Hardwoods to talk about building a project and selecting your lumber. While there we toured the facility and checked out all of the behind the scenes operations. Finally we topped [...]

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I’m off this weekend up in central PA visiting Chuck Bender at his school The Acanthus Workshop. My long time readers may remember my trip over a year ago to get schooled in the fine art of hand tools during the Fundamentals 1 class. Due to some personal conflicts I was not able to attend [...]

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I’m back from another trip down to Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia. The Liberty passes we bought last October have definitely paid for themselves since this is our 3rd trip down there. For a woodworker this is a great place to go. For a woodworker like me who is fascinated by history and proud of my American [...]

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We have the full year Patriot pass so why not take advantage of it and scheduled another trip down to Williamsburg for this weekend. It is spring break for my wife so I am taking a few days off so we can get out of town. I feel continually blessed to live in the mid [...]

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Here in the US we tend to be a little ethnocentric. Call it American swagger, call it geographic isolation but we often forget that things are different elsewhere in this big world. So it is nice every once in a while to be shaken out of our preconceptions. Last weekend I made a trip up [...]

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I paid a visit to the Baltimore Museum of Art this past weekend. I had heard tales of their excellent decorative arts wing that contains excellent examples of 18th century furniture with an emphasis on local cabinetmakers from Baltimore and Annapolis. Unfortunately on my way down the hall to the exhibit I was told by [...]

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