My Royal Day

It’s a day like any other, but not really. It may have started the same, first my bike ride which lasts a half hour, sometimes more. Still, it’s 5.30 A.M. as I tread the pedals on the cycle path. I always cook my breakfast, half a dozen vegetables, perhaps a feta omelette to go with...

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A Royal Invitation

I bought a suit recently. No, it’s not denim, although had I had time I might have considered one being made to fit. Finding a tailor to make it might be a different matter, not an easy one. Suits are not generally my world. In fact, where I go, I rarely ever see one. The...

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What’s In a Picture

It’s just a hammer. Nothing special, just a 20 ounce Stanley claw hammer made in England and bought by me for £1, which was almost two days pay for me back in March 1965 when I bought it new. The hickory shaft is still the original, the hammer face has never chipped, and the claw...

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Tightening Sliding Dovetails

It’s rarely used, uncomplicated joinery. You don’t need powered equipment for a quick outcome; the joint readily comes dead on when you do it with a handful of bench tools. Ten minutes gets you there––a chisel hammer, two chisels, a knife, square, steel rule and a marking gauge. You can add a hand router plane...

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Making a Splay-legged Stool––Weaving the Seat: Part II

The material I chose is called Danish cord. It’s made from three strands of brown paper; the first two are twisted together tightly and the third is a spiralled wrap. It’s strong and durable and easier to weave than natural read. The outer is coated with a thin wax finish. You can further coat the...

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Making a Splay-legged Stool

I wanted something quick and simple this time. Something that looks pleasing, well-made but doesn’t take more than a few hours in the workshop to make as a frame. I made my frame in two hours and spent another hour defining and refining the legs by shaving and shaping. The stool needed to be less...

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My Chisels…My Surprise

The lone picture on my FB drew over 1.068,172 views and a reach of 772,550 with 3794 interactions in around 48 hours. It had 15% of my regular followers and 85% non-followers. With 370 comments, I thought you would be as surprised as I was––maybe not? Anyway, what intrigued me (as usual) was the legalism...

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Where Are We?

Is my closest friend the wood I work? Is it woodwork? Or are the tools I lift to every task my comrades in arms? I get my answers without the tiresomeness of mere opinions directly from the wood I work; feedback is important, and it comes directly and honestly from responses I get minute by...

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Recovered and Recovering

A Year’s Worth of Work for Paul Sellers since my ribs were broken by an assailant in Abingdon. This is how I recovered and why. I’m sorry it’s such a long post, but it is a year in the saddle for me. My Longest Single Blog Post Yet I often ask myself the question and...

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Understanding the Chair

My recent blog post on chairs was my attempt to bridge a gap or two in the age-long passage of chair making. Just how did we end up with faults through mass-making the builds in a certain unintentional obsolescence by the original designer? Whether you buy a vintage Michael Thonet from the late 1800s or...

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Choices

I remember my introduction to machining wood. I was aged sixteen, when every task seemed to become a machining moment in small and long bites of soul-destroying boredom that just kept building. Oh, I’m not talking about the hobbyist woodworker who sets up a mini-conveyor belt system of minor operations going from crosscuts to ripcuts...

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Dark and Light Things

It’s a day like any other. I open the door and everything is just as it should be. I stand in the doorway for just a few seconds and then drift towards my bench, the tools and the piece I’m working on. I want to take in everything as I left it last night; the...

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The Remarkable Challenge of Wood

There are challenges we can do nothing about, and then there are the challenges we face in the work we do and might choose to present to ourselves on purpose. That curved balustrade that sweeps gracefully between floors up and along many metres, following the sweep of the stairway to the stars, can be complicated,...

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Designing a Design

The only thing two days might have in common with one another is the unpredictability of them. We plan one thing, and then something happens that turns what we hoped to accomplish completely on its head. It’s life. A road works, temporary traffic lights and a redirection sends us a different, much longer way. Today...

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Nine Years a Café Chair Equals . . .

. . . 50–200 years, a home version. At least that’s my consideration from what I found in the facts surrounding this mass made chair from the café I go to each day. At first, I said 50 years service, but then I thought, in careful use, an average family size of 1.7 children under...

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What else would you like to see?

It’s Katrina (Paul’s daughter in law here). Since 2021 Paul has been sharing the journey of making all the furniture for his Oxfordshire home at Woodworking Masterclasses, in our series Sellers Home. The idea behind the Sellers Home series is that if you were to follow along and make every piece of furniture you would...

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Hand Tools on Wood

We all have creative ways of entertaining ourselves, but it might be a little more unusual for us to see the contrast between watching as a spectator and creating our way out of one world into another by the doing of things creatively, working with our hands. In my early days, as a new and...

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Writing On a Lived Life

In past years, like many of us, I’ve had to recover from different things. The most recent of these was recovering from three busted ribs after a man, an athletic runner, chased after me and with no warning, rammed into my back. I felt my ribs pop on impact, before I even hit the ground...

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Card Scraper Question

Thanks Paul. I have recently picked up a cabinet scraper. However, I seem to get a better finish with my card scrapers. Is that normal? When do you use a card scraper over a cabinet scraper? I need to revisit your cabinet scraper video as well. These scrapers are amazing. I don’t know why more...

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Another Perfect Scraper Solution

I come up with them all the time and this one should knock your socks off . . . Or at least take incredible shavings for you. New to woodworking or a seasoned machinist, I often get woodworkers lamenting that they sometimes get a good edge to Card Scrapers, but mostly not. I put this...

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