David and Sally Shaw-Smith made HANDS, a unique, multi-award winning series of thirty-seven documentaries on Irish crafts for Irish television (RTÉ, Raidió Teilifís Éireann [Radio && Television of Ireland]). Capturing the final years of traditional rural and urban life in Ireland, during the seventies and eighties.
It’s hard to imagine being a wood worker and not having a good quality wooden mallet. In fact, the wooden mallet is essential for joinery, furniture making, for chopping mortises and ‘persuading’ joints together and apart. Wooden mallets have been around for thousands of years. Over the years I have accumulated a selection – some purchased and some home made. Read more…
My initial guess would be some sort of Swartzia species, such as Wamara or Katalox.
I have just finished a project that used Maple and some unknown wood – at first I thought it was walnut – it had that walnut smell when cut, but comparing it to a known piece of walnut revealed different characteristics.
I have been fascinated with boxes for as long as I can remember and have amassed quite a collection, ranging from simple rectangular boxes to more complex sculpted puzzle boxes that I have long since forgotten how to open. In this article I am going to take you through the steps of creating a simple sliding lid box using some new techniques. Read more…
Wood marking
Once upon a time there was a gifted craftsman who made the most incredible products anyone had ever seen or used. Word increased about how amazing his products worked, yet sales did not increase. People looked, but simply could not find or identify his products. Why? Because his products were not marked! The moral of this story is;
“If it is worth making, it is worth marking”