I’m a lazy woodworker. I say that out loud in the shop and people usually laugh, because they think I’m being modest. I’m not. I mean it as a description of how I work and, most days, as a compliment. In 1992 I was out with Genesis on a stadium tour, running lights and calling…
Steven and Alex map out the many paths a new woodworker can take, from rough carpentry and joinery to cabinet making, turning, marquetry, and even building a guitar. They talk through where to actually begin, the resources worth leaning on like Lumberjocks, Fine Woodworking, and Lost Art Press, and why finding a community or makerspace…
A few years ago I cut one dovetail joint a day for ninety days. Pine, because it’s cheap and it cuts easy. The first ones took me an hour. By the end I was down to fifteen or twenty minutes, laying one out and cutting it without thinking much about it. I stacked them on…
My grandmother taught me to drive on the dirt roads of East Texas, in an old International Scout, threading between trees and stumps and ditches on trails that barely counted as roads. Her theory was simple. If I could keep that Scout out of a ditch on a rutted trail, avoiding cars on the interstate…
The most common thing I hear at the Joinery isn’t about a tool. It’s some version of “I don’t know what to build,” and close behind it, “even if I knew, I couldn’t design it.” People say it like it’s the wall between them and the shop. For years I’d answer by pointing them at…
Jul 19 Introduction to Woodturning — July Two Sunday mornings · July 19 & 26 · 9:00 AM–1:30 PM Discover the art and rhythm of woodturning in this beginner-friendly class. Over two Sunday mornings you’ll gain hands-on experience at the lathe, learning essential skills in both spindle and bowl turning. From grain direction to tool…
In a lot of organizations right now there’s a quiet double standard about AI. Using it to write code is fine. Encouraged, even. Using it to write a song, make an image, or punch up a piece of copy is treated as something closer to cheating. Same tool, two verdicts. I’m not a software engineer…
This week on The Joiner’s Bench, Alex and I get into something every woodworker runs into eventually — falling out of the habit, and all the little friction points that keep you off the bench. We talk through the usual excuses (the couch is comfortable, I don’t know what to make, I don’t have the…
There’s a guy in every woodworking shop who thinks the power planer is cheating. Sometimes he’s quiet about it. Sometimes he’s got opinions. Either way the argument is old — older than me, and I’m fifty-six. It just keeps changing tools. I run a planer. I also keep hand planes, and a block plane in…
