Woodwork that you put yourself into creating can last a long time and have personal meaning. Consider that these are among the reasons it is worth doing.

Look back at the item from over 60 years ago discussed in a recent post: Still here

My 50-year file of Fine Woodworking magazine is still housed in a large bookshelf cabinet that I made not long after the magazine began. The beds made for my kids over 30 years ago, used by them in their young lives, are still in the house long after they moved into their own.

Now lately these two nifty trucks are for the grandkids. They are not high art woodwork but as personal creations they are meaningful.

Consider this when you work in the shop: personal connections, the joy of your work (usually), and how it may even outlast you. We work with our hands and tools because it matters.

Now a few comments on the kids’ trucks. They are about 14″l. x 8″h. x 7″w. with specially 10 species of nice wood. Practical, rugged, and fun – constructed to take plenty of playing action. The one at the top has a lifting back, and the other has a lifting lid of its back.

So, dear readers, get into the shop, go to work, and consider what is really going on – and enjoy!

Dear readers, you might wonder why I started writing again last week but was gone for over two years. (This site started in 2008.)

Here is the story.

I was in excellent health – regular doctor visits, no medications, excellent diet, weight, and exercise. However, at the gym one day, I fully collapsed, immediately unconscious. I was rushed to the hospital and underwent brain surgery for a major hemorrhagic stroke in my left-side brain. 

It was May, 2023. This was very bad.

For the next six months, with some hospital stay, shifting to home stay, and back to medical institutions, I worked on recovery. Unfortunately, things got worse by the end of 2023 and early 2024. The second major surgery, to put parts of my skull back together and try to make my brain work, occurred in January, 2024.

I was unconscious and near death, and had religious final rites.   

Odds were not much in my favor, but I lived. Still living in a supportive medical facility, I was a vegetable. My right leg and right arm were completely disabled. I could not speak, move, eat, or have basic systems work. In fact, I have almost no memory of the first 5-6 months of 2024. 

But by late May or early June, 2024, I started to gain some abilities. I could move with supportive equipment, and had some pathetic speaking ability. Of course, I had little understanding and I could not read a word. 

I recall watching a comedy movie about baseball and I was able to laugh. And I enjoyed music.

Some abilities started to return. I realized I could battle forward. I spent the next six months still away from home but working at everything. I relearned to speak, to move, and eventually to lift and walk, to read and to write (4 – 8 hours per day of studying) . . . and to live.

I much later learned via a knowledgeable medical source that about half of people who got what I did unfortunately do not live through it. 75% of the living end up in a bad, restricted state. The remaining 25% of the living gain some improvement but extremely few return to a full life. I am lucky, I did.

By the end of 2024, I came back home. I continued to improve. I can walk, hike, run a bit, exercise and lift heavy weights, read, write, and just LIVE. I diligently continue to work on all aspects of improving. It is going very well.

I do not quit.

I happily restudied woodworking with countless hours in the home shop! On June 24, 2025, I started to write online again. 

That’s my story.

Thanks be to God. Thanks to my family. And, my dear readers: I’m back online.

Click below to enjoy:

So put me in coach, I’m ready to play . . .

Yes, I’m still here. The last post was over two years ago, so perhaps you wonder what has been going on with your devoted author.

I will tell you but in the next post. Here, I want to go way back and tell you first about when I began woodworking. I mean way back. Enough that I can truly say that I’ve been woodworking for about 62 years.

In the basement of the family house, prior to Palm Sunday, I built a little Catholic memorial and then gave it to my mother and father. I did not see it again until 59 years later when I discovered it shortly after my mom died (at 102; dad at 91).

She had saved the woodwork in her small number of collectibles.

Woodworking. It mattered then, and it still does.

And this is how and why I work a saw, chisel, and plane. Because what I do matters.

Go ahead, dear readers, pick up your tools and make things.

It matters.

So, I’m back online. I will tell you in the next post what has been going on. And after that, we will do more woodworking stuff. Lots to come.

You have an idea for a piece – a compelling, strong idea. The more you think it through, the more it grows and the more you think, “I can do this. It’s going to be worth it.”

You research design options, wood, and joinery. Things seem to be coming together. Along the way, however, you find some dangerously impressive work of the general type that you have in mind. This happens to me when I look at woodwork by Tim Coleman, John Cameron, and Craig Vandall Stevens, to name a few. How did they do that?

And you begin to wonder: “OK, it’s not a competition but, good heavens, I love that piece that I’m looking at on the internet and I know, or at least I feel pretty sure, that I will not love mine as much when I finish it – if I make it at all, that is.”

Now what to do? Sometimes it is difficult to avoid outright copying strong ideas – to simply build again what has already been built just fine – but that is not what you set out to do, and not your road to fulfillment. 

Or do you give up part way into the design process and say “Good enough. I know I could do better but why bother?” Will you tank the design, knowing that no one else will know? Or don’t sing at all if you’re not Pavarotti? 

That’s silly. You have a voice. Use it, plain or fancy, innovative or derivative. If you work at it, if you do not lull into laziness, the piece you have in mind is going to be at least good, maybe very good, and who knows, maybe even great. Humility and confidence are willing partners. 

But here is what you do not expect. If you really put mind, hand, and heart into it, I will bet that the piece is going to be better than you think. 

This is perhaps the biggest secret and the magic of creative work. Trust yourself! Yes, it could flop but if you are diligent and you have developed a decent level of skill, the odds are actually in your favor. You are working hard, you are necessarily taking a risk, and you do not, you cannot, know quite what the outcome will be . . . 

Until it is there!

And when it is there, it will be more than the sum of your ideas and your craft. In fact, you likely will look at it sometime hence and think, “How did I do that?”

In fact, the first and only. It has sat, at least until now, for more than 50 years right in the spot in my late parents’ house where I completed it as a high school kid. 

It is nothing special, really, and certainly not nearly as functional as the good old Ulmia, a “real” workbench, that I have been using for about 40 years. Its construction mostly follows a design by John Capotosto that was published in the now defunct Mechanix Illustrated magazine in the May 1971 issue. [Old guys, you may recall that magazine, then a competitor of Popular Mechanics, and if you do, you surely remember “Mimi,” who, in various persons, graced every issue among the ads for cigarettes and automobile gear.] 

At the time, my only power tool was a Sears jigsaw, though I longed for a tablesaw, which is another story. The mostly hand-me-down hand tools that I had were marginally serviceable. It is also, hmm . . . possible, that some local construction sites were relieved of some, perhaps excess, 2-by lumber lying around. 

So, why does it matter? I liked then, and now, and for as long as I can remember, to build things – to make stuff. I can still recall the strong feeling then of wanting to build that bench after seeing the article in the magazine. I knew I could do it. Moreover, after all the lumps and bumps of the ensuing years of life, I am still glad that I made it. 

So, I suppose that is my message to you, fellow woodworkers and especially to nascent woodworkers. If you have that deep urge calling to you to Build It – I think you know what I mean – and you possibly can, then Go Build It. Sure, things get in the way, I know, but remember too, that “it’s always something.” So, do the best you can and build it. 

You will very likely be glad for a long time.

David Charlesworth passed away on May 22. There is an announcement on his website.

Though I never met David, I learned a great deal from his three books and many videos. The books, now out of print, are compilations of wonderful articles that he wrote for Furniture and Cabinetmaking magazine. 

To honor the memory of this great teacher, I want to tell you the main thing, so valuable, that I learned from him, which goes beyond the many specific skills he presented. It was his acutely thoughtful, insightful approach to woodworking. He showed how things could be done with direction and precision. 

David stopped the brain clutter and calmly focused on what was really going on with a plane blade, a joint, or a construction process. With his friendly, humble bearing, evident in writing and videos, he inspired us to do the same. 

Focus, think it through, and try – you can do it. Plan. Create with calm energy and at the same time, stay open to new skills and methods.  

For me, and for so many others, these were his gifts. Thank you, David Charlesworth. Rest in peace.

[32″h x 20″w x 8″d] The curved sides of this cabinet started on the bandsaw, of course, but then I used the #20 compass plane, the RP rasp, and scrapers. The best tool for final truing of the curves was a simple purpose-built sanding shave. This is just a 14″-long stick, about 1″ x 2″, with the working wide face planed a bit convex, to which is attached PSA sandpaper. 

With all the tools on which we spend a small fortune, almost every project necessitates a shop-made tool to save the day. 

The dowel joinery went well. I have plenty of experience with it. Well, except for one section where I used too much glue and paid the price correcting a squeeze-out mess. Think! It is so much easier to avoid than to correct mistakes.

Just clamp the carcase together, right? No. The curved sides required specially shaped clamp blocks. It was so easy to draw that nice curve on paper . . .

For the door frame joints, I choose regular mortise-and-tenons rather than slip joints, which look cool but are a major pain to clamp. I routed the mortises and then carefully set up the bandsaw to make the tenons within a shaving or two (or none) with the rabbet block plane. It’s all about making a precise kerf-width-thick gauge.

There’s a limit to masochism, or maybe not. The unconventional arrangement of the door frame rails and stiles made the final fitting of the doors more difficult. This was, however, a key design element of the piece so it was worth the trouble. The step at the junctions of the inner rail and stile on each door was another pain. A bigger pain would have been to try to assemble the door pieces in the wrong (impossible) order.

After a lot of mulling over, I decided to use magnetic catches. I should have embedded the fixed magnets in the fixed shelf but I made a separate little block for them, which could be removed and replaced if everything did not work out. The catches work nicely but I should not have chickened out on the design.

See the convex front edge of the sides? That feature made everything more difficult, especially the final fit of the doors. Does it matter? Yea, I think so; I like the look. It’s just a matter of deciding if it is worth it.

The problem with one-of-a-kind work is that you never experience all the issues and see the end point until you’re done. Yes, I would have done some things differently if I were to make this again. But I’m not going to.

The top panels are opalescent art glass. I learned a lot about art glass and glass cutting tools and techniques for this project. I installed the glass with strips that are screwed in place, not nailed as Krenov did. 

From the start, I planned to use Z-clips to hang the cabinet. These are essentially metal French cleat hangers but take up only 1/4″ of depth in the back of the cabinet. They must be accounted for when forming the rabbet for the back panel, including some consideration for walls not being perfectly flat. 

Virtually every project requires learning about a new material, technique, finish, or design element. I enjoy that. 

The spalted big-leaf maple panels were a nice find, and they bookmatched well for spalted wood. Like most well spalted material, there were some soft areas that needed hardening. Protective Coatings PC-Petrifier works well with minimal darkening.

For the hinges, bright or even brushed brass just would not look right, and the antiquing on the hinges that I bought proved to be delicate, so I blackened them for good with a solution from Rockler. 

I could go through a dozen or more other special issues with this piece but you get the idea. The truth is that there is a lot of thought, time, trouble, and – is suffering too strong a word? – in making these things.

Are these details worth it? How about the specialized tools, finding the right wood, correcting mistakes, refining the design (over and over), finding the way out of construction problems, and on and on?

Only the maker can answer these questions. That’s the privilege – and the joy – that comes with making things. Best wishes for you and your projects. 

Even at this point, I often make small refinements in the design, mostly to make the proportions look good. I also may add features, such as edge treatments. This is small stuff that I do sweat. I am aiming for a certain peace and balance that will make the piece of furniture be interesting at several levels, and ironically, even fascinating.

However, all of this has to be put into the language of wood. The goal is to make something out of wood, not to just make a nice looking drawing on paper. Sometimes as I gradually get the oversized components out of the rough stock, the wood itself will suggest subtle alterations in the design, so it’s back to the drawing board yet again. 

I think of the wood early on in the design process. In fact, I really do not even think of a design in the abstract at all, but instead see it from the beginning as being in a particular wood or at least narrowed to a few possibilities for the wood.

So there is an ongoing interplay among the drawings, the wood, and my imagination.

Now, when the mental dust has settled and sawdust will take its place, I want the wood to be reliable. Oh, and you know where that goes, fellow woodworkers. Recall the words with which the late Professor Bruce Hoadley began his seminal book, Understanding Wood, “Wood comes from trees.” Its essential characteristics make it for good trees; it did not evolve for woodworking projects. 

And so the gorgeous boards of quartersawn sapele that I took home for this project were destined to drive me nuts. I wrote about this a while ago in the post “Weird wood stresses stress me.” 

This was an unusual, hopefully uniquely frustrating situation with the wood. The point here is that once we have settled on a design that drives us, that answers the question “Is it worth it?” strongly in the affirmative, uncertainty still lurks, starting with the first bite of the saw’s teeth into the rough lumber. 

The recipients of our best work do not, in all likelihood, have any idea of this, especially if they are used to veneered particleboard ready-to-assemble “things” (see how civil I’m being). Still, as I pointed out in the first part of this series, these matters are not, and should not be, their problems. 

Yet they are out problems, fellow woodworkers, and indeed we can usually solve them. So, I am not whining but once in a while, it is worth mentioning them, just among us. This is the uncool reality that is infrequently shared in print, but we ought to be able to say, “Oh, you too? That happens to you too?”

Next in this series: construction, detours, and, gasp, mistakes!