Rex Krueger
Published Jul 25, 2024Furniture Forensics returns thanks to the mysterious Buck Board bench.
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November 20, 2024
What on earth is a Buck Board Bench?
August 15, 2024
Build the Square-Leg Craftsman Table (Part 3): Bandsaws are too easy!!! Make the round table top with basic tools
Rex Krueger
Published May 1, 2024Every table needs a top and every hand tool woodworker can use these skills.
Get the Plans! https://www.rexkrueger.com/store/p/wn…
Patrons got them early and FREE: https://patreon.com/rexkrueger
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August 3, 2024
The Rise, Fall, And Revival Of Art Deco | A Style Is Born W/ @KazRowe
Wayfair
Published Jun 15, 2023Welcome to A Style is Born, hosted by YouTuber, cartoonist, and champion of under-represented history, Kaz Rowe!
Join us as we go down the rabbit hole and uncover the unique histories and origin stories behind your favorite design styles. In this first episode of Season 2, we delve into the history-rich Art Deco movement.
Chapters
Intro – 00:00
History – 00:45
Influences, Elements, & Materials – 04:58
1980s Art Deco Revival Via Memphis Group – 07:46
Conclusion – 09:13
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July 30, 2024
Build the Square-Leg Craftsman Table (Part 2)
Rex Krueger
Published Apr 17, 2024Making the base of the craftsman table with approachable joinery.
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July 20, 2024
Build the Square-Leg Craftsman Table (Part 1)
Rex Krueger
Published Apr 3, 2024A satisfying project starts with square pieces.
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May 22, 2024
Making a French Cleat | Paul Sellers
Paul Sellers
Published Sep 9, 2015Have you been looking for a way to hang your wall shelf or clock? Ever wondered what a split cleat or french cleat is? Paul shares this traditional method that really works.
To see a beginner friendly version of how to make a Hanging Wall Shelf, see our sister site: https://commonwoodworking.com/courses…
This video first appeared on https://woodworkingmasterclasses.com
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March 29, 2024
Drawer Joinery Explained | Paul Sellers
Paul Sellers
Published Dec 15, 2023We should never take too much for granted, especially when it comes to which joints are used for this or that.
If no one has explained the reasoning behind drawer joint choices, this simple video will help. Drawers take a lot of stresses and strains, and the dovetail joint is the signature joint of drawers and boxes. But did you know that a housing dado can also improve the functionality of a drawer?
This video will walk you through the reasoning for both joints.
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September 23, 2023
QotD: In which we discover why they’re called antimacassars
“Antimacassar” is such a lovely Victorianism. We still have antimacassars — they’re those pieces of protective fabric you see at the top of your train or plane seat — but do you know why antimacassars are so called? Because in the nineteenth century Rowland’s Macassar Oil became such a popular unguent for gentlemen’s coiffures that the land was full of oily-haired chaps who, upon entering your drawing room, would settle back in your favorite chair — and uh-oh, there goes the fabric. Hence, the vital deployment of the antimacassar. Rowland’s Macassar Oil was one of the first products to be marketed nationally (and, indeed, internationally), and so universally known that Lewis Carroll put it in Alice Through the Looking-Glass:
His accents mild took up the tale:
He said ‘I go my ways,
And when I find a mountain-rill,
I set it in a blaze;
And thence they make a stuff they call
Rowlands’ Macassar-Oil –
Yet twopence-halfpenny is all
They give me for my toil.’Better yet, in Don Juan Lord Byron managed to rhyme it:
In virtue, nothing earthly could surpass her
Save thine ‘incomparable oil’, Macassar!Mark Steyn, “Self-Knitting Antimacassars”, Steyn Online, 2019-08-02.
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August 26, 2023
QotD: The psychological value of “making”
This makes perfect sense, of course: I don’t have a deep and intimate knowledge of these things because I don’t need one. Still, though, it’s important to have a certain very basic familiarity with how the things around you work — enough, say, to know what to Google when something breaks and how to put the results into practice, or to turn fifteen feet of arching blackberry cane into an actual bush — because it gives you power over your world. The particular powers don’t really matter (it’s easy enough to pay someone else to fix your plumbing or grow your berries); the key is the patterns of thought they engender. There are, for example, apparently some enormous number of people who don’t change the batteries in their beeping smoke detectors. I have no idea whether it’s drug-induced apathy, ignorance of how things work (in the same way that drilling a hole in your wall to hang something seems scary if you don’t know that your wall is
a liejust painted drywall in front of empty space between the studs), or simply a pathological lack of personal agency, but it’s hard to believe you can change anything dissatisfactory about your life if you can’t change a 9V battery.Making and doing things, even when you don’t have to, is practice in believing that you can change your own world. It’s weightlifting for agency. You can outsource the making of your physical world, but social worlds — the arrangement of your family life, your personal relationships, the organizations and institutions you’re involved in — must be created by the participants themselves. A good society would be one where the default “builder-grade” scripts lead to human flourishing, but unfortunately that isn’t ours, so you have to be able to decide on your own changes. Start practicing now: find one little thing about your physical environment that annoys you and fix it. Put the new toilet paper roll actually on the holder. Replace the burned-out lightbulb. Hang the artwork that’s listing drunkenly against the wall. Pull some weeds. And then, once you’ve warmed up a little bit, go and make something new.
Jane Psmith, “REVIEW: The Domestic Revolution by Ruth Goodman”, Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf, 2023-05-22.
1. They’re oak dining chairs, probably (judging by the construction) about a hundred years old, and they looked a lot better on Facebook Marketplace than in real life. When I showed up to buy them, the sellers turned out to be an elderly couple moving to assisted living in six hours; they admired my baby and showed me pictures of their grandchildren and explained they had inherited the chairs from the wife’s mother, who in turn had gotten them from her friend’s mother, and by this point I couldn’t really say “yeah I can tell” and leave, so home they came. When I took apart the seats to recover them I discovered the original horsehair padding and some extremely questionable techniques applied over the years, but anyway now my chairs have eight-way hand-tied springs and I have some new calluses.
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July 13, 2023
This “simple” bench made me humble when I tried to build it
Rex Krueger
Published 12 Jul 2023It’s just nails and pine, but this piece was full of tricks.
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May 19, 2023
I Built Three Moravian Stools to Find the Best Design
Rex Krueger
Published 18 May 2023I can’t stop making these stools … but I’ve found the best ways to make one.
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May 11, 2023
This 100 Year Old Bench Should Have Fallen Apart
Rex Krueger
Published 10 May 2023This old bench changes everything I thought I knew about building furniture.
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May 10, 2023
How to Make a Wall Shelf | Episode 1
Paul Sellers
Published 13 Jan 2023This was one of Paul’s first teaching and training projects he developed specifically for his hands-on classes for early woodworkers to start on. That was in the early 1990s, so 30 years ago, and many a thousand students have made it to learn about shelf making.
The goal is the mastery of accuracy using sharp tools to develop two types of housing dadoes, the stopped and the stepped.
This video gives the first woodworking joint most woodworkers start with and shows how to get a snug fit every time.
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April 13, 2023
Build the Moravian Stool with Sliding Dovetail Joinery
Rex Krueger
Published 12 Apr 2023
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February 25, 2023
Making a Simple Stool | Paul Sellers
Paul Sellers
Published 26 Aug 2022I am always surprised how few woodworkers have made a simple three-legged stool, and every woodworker should make at least one. I developed this for benchwork instruction, which makes the whole methodology different and unique.
Whether you are a seasoned woodworker or a raw beginner, there is so much to learn about hand tools, wood, technique, and grain structure in this simple stool. It’s just a few hours of very pleasant woodworking and it can be completed with just a handful of common woodworking tools.
I hope you enjoy making yours.
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