Just a  quick frame I threw together for a piece of art we picked up for our neighbors while on Kauai. Curly Cherry with a few Greene and Green details. Took about 8 hours (need to get faster). Joinery done by hand, half lap joints. If I had more time I should have made through tenons that protruded a bit…. maybe the next one. Read more…

UPDATE: I finished my slab top for the workbench. See Here

For the last year or so I’ve been slowly sliding more into the Japanese side of Woodworking. My workbench isn’t always the most ideal work surface…. mostly due to the location of the tail vise… it aways seems to be in the way of where I want to saw. So I started researching what work surface Japanese woodworkers use.

Most japanese woodworkers, from what I can tell, just put a big hunk of wood on the floor and sit cross legged. Most westerners   (including me) don’t like sitting on the floor much though.

But when Japanese do work standing up, I found a number of different sawhorse styles. During my research I found a old plan by Jay van Arsdale published in American Woodworker Jan-Feb 1990. These sawhorse seems to fit my desires almost perfectly and they are all built using japanese compression joints, wedges and no glue. They are a fun fast(ish) joinery project that gives you something useful to work off of for future projects. Read more…

I haven’t been woodworking very long and like most North American’s when I think of a saw I think of a traditional western push saw, and when I think of a plane, a picture of a Stanley #5 comes to mind.

As I dove into this new hobby a couple years ago I stumbled across a plastic handled Marples pull saw while perusing the aisles of my local Big Box hardware store. I’m not sure what possessed me to grab that saw instead of a more traditional western saw. I had no idea about the origen of a pull saw concept, so I can’t blame my decision on my martial arts background or my love of Asian aesthetics… There was just something about that saw that seemed to make sense to me.

It certainly wasn’t the greatest saw in the world, but more and more I found myself gravitating toward that saw over my circular power saw during every construction project. Read more…