Category Archives: skills
The Gift of Time: 8 Ways to Use Extra Time in the Shop
Time is the greatest of gifts. None of us knows how much of it we will have over our lifetime, and once it’s gone we can never get it back. That’s why I’m not much bothered by the prospect of … Continue reading
Want to Carve Spoons? Use a Template
On a spoon-carving forum I read, the question of templates comes up frequently. A lot of spoon carvers say they “just wing it,” or as others put it, “just see what the wood wants to be.” Now, there’s no question … Continue reading
Why Make Your Own Drawer Pulls?
I had finally assembled this dovetailed, built-in shoe cabinet for my kids shoes, and it was time to consider the hardware. (This post is not about building the shoe cabinet, though I give a few construction details at the end. … Continue reading
The Hardest Part of Learning to Sharpen
The other day, I was teaching a friend to sharpen his plane iron, and it got me thinking about sharpening. Of all the skills I have learned while working wood, sharpening has been the most life-changing. It started with chisels … Continue reading
Crafting (in) the Home: Passing on Your Skills to your Children
I just returned from a conference on community building called The Urban Village: From Cloud-Castles to Blueprints, sponsored by The Servi Institute in Oklahoma City, OK, where I gave a presentation on passing on manual skills to children by letting … Continue reading
Carving Spoons, Building Community
A week ago my wife and I got in a car and drove to Austin, Texas, to teach two days of classes on making wooden spoons. We weren’t sure what to expect–what the facilities would be like, what wood or … Continue reading
The Literary Workshop Blog 