cast iron relief sculpture on the sides of my woodshop stove The little outbuilding I recently converted to a dedicated woodshop has a small cast iron stove. After installing a new roof with a pair of solatubes, the interior light is much brighter and I finally got a good look at the romantic scene relief-cast […]
Tag Archives: craft philosophy
Kathy’s Table
Coffee Table in Paradox Walnut, 7’L x 30″W x 20″H My brother in law recently commissioned a coffee table for my sister’s 50th birthday. The table was to be the centerpiece of the ample living room of a large house they recently moved to outside of Philadelphia, to be situated in front of a nine […]
Milling the Pecan Tree
My friend Sean Gavin mills logs on site with his portable Wood-Mizer I spent an action-packed weekend milling my first tree, a mature pecan (Carya Illinoensis) that grew in the sandy soil of a nearby horse pasture. The tree was beginning to die and had been dropping large branches, threatening the safety of the horses. […]
Vaka Moana
One of eight vaka sails into the harbor of San Francisco’s Treasure Island Last week I attended the welcoming ceremony for a fleet of vaka moana that had just crossed the Pacific from New Zealand, where the eight craft were built. Using traditional sailing rigs supplemented by solar-powered electric motors, the craft and crew made […]
Tree Consciousness
One of my few surviving drawings of trees from first and second grade My fascination with trees and wood dates from early childhood, when I would spend hours staring at trees in different seasons and trying to draw them as accurately as I was able, carefully mapping every branch, leaf or blossom. I remember getting […]
Dedicated Tools
I love my vintage Craftsman “60” one speed drill As challenging as it can be, it’s always wise to extract as much satisfaction from the task at hand as from what the task yields. This is especially true in production woodwork, where tasks are sometimes tediously slow, repetitive and physically demanding. My approach is to […]
In Praise of Ruins
The Occidental Yacht Club in 2009, before it began to seriously buckle Maybe the Occidental Yacht Club was not such a great idea to begin with. At six hundred feet above sea level, the town of Occidental is a dozen winding miles down to the cliffs and breaks of Sonoma’s unforgiving shores. While I have […]