All wood has personality.   A set of characteristics that make it unique from other species.  Colors, textures, and smells, mix with weight, stiffness, density, and grain to define the working properties for that species.  Learning the subtleties of each species is one of the most enjoyable aspects of any woodworking project.  Alaskan yellow cedar has a sweetness in smell […]

There are few places on a guitar that catch your eye more than the fretboard.  It is hard not to watch a player’s fingers move around the frets, constructing chords or picking out notes.  This is especially true if the fretboard has nice inlay. The original Les Pual guitars from the late 50’s are characterized by large, trapezoid-shaped inlays that […]

The last project, the Shaker dresser, was a fun build.  But I always start to feel a bit itchy when I’m just making square cuts.  Mind you, square cuts and the resulting joints always seem harder for me than working with the curves and ever-changing angles that you find on a boat or surfboard. With curves, I always seem to […]

OK, a very bad pun, but that’s what I’ve got.  Here’s the latest from the shop.  A Shaker dresser for my wife.  The wood is mainly alder.  The drawer boxes are soft maple, with birch plywood bottoms.  The stain is Cabot Gunstock.  If you’ve not used Cabot stains before, they are my favorite.  They go on nice and thick, and […]

Living so close work, 2 blocks, I don’t often get to see the fabulous sunrises and sunsets in the valley.  Yesterday was an anomaly for me.  I was up at 5:30 AM, early for me, in order to do a quick 6:40 live interview on the local tv channel.  Nothing exciting.  Just a quick information session about our local triathlon club and […]