Stanley Tool Company

Without doubt one of the best known hand tool manufacturers is the Stanley Tool Company. It was founded by Frederick T. Stanley in 1843, originally a bolt and door hardware manufacturing company located in New Britain, Connecticut. The Stanley Rule and Level Company...

By Hand and Eye

Is a delightful stop motion animation movie about how artisans from antiquity to the dawn of the industrial age carried out design  – in a nutshell, arithmetic trumped the simple geometric relationships of natural — that rational numbers.    ...

Woodworking Humour – How NOT to Hammer a Nail

For Christmas I was given a set of Audel’s Carpenter’s & Builder’s Guide Vol. 1-4 1923 and have been working my way through them. Vol. 1 covers planes to chisels to saws to drills to measuring tools Vol. 2 covers builders math and drawing and...

Splintered History of Wood

I have just finished reading Spike Carlsen’s ‘Splintered History of Wood’.  It is truly facinating!  The violins at the concert you attended last week, the baseball bats at the ball game you watched last night, the telephone poles that carried your...

Mathematics and Woodworking

Next to woodworking, mathematics is my favorite subject. Growing up and attending a technical school in the UK, where woodworking and engineering were required, I learned a great deal about techniques of both woodworking and engineering. Today I think I have found the...

The Practical Woodworker

I was sorting through my woodworking library this week and came across the 4 volumes of Practical Woodworker magazine edited by Bernard E. Jones around 1916.  The 4 volumes, some 1600 pages, was designed as a basic introduction to early 20th Century woodworking...