I have enjoyed making coffee scoops lately. These are short and sweet compared to many of my projects. They have a beginning, middle, and end without much extra anywhere. In short, they are fun. Left is walnut, the roundest of the scoops. The middle two are hawthorn that my dad cut from the woods in… Read More


I’ve started making spoons recently. This is one of my most recent: a little walnut coffee scoop. I carved this with a hatchet and 2 knives: my homemade carving knife and a morakniv hook knife. The process goes like this: Draw shape Use hook knife to hollow bowl Use axe to cut away everything that… Read More


Here’s a tool I’ve been meaning to make since I started woodworking. Now that I have it I’m kicking myself for not making it earlier. It would have made all of my other work more fun. What is it? The humble strop. Basically it is the final sharpening stone. This particularly fine example is a… Read More


As I was building the small Welsh stick chair there was a time when the undercarriage was finished but the top wasn’t attached. Wouldn’t you know it, we sat on that thing all the time. We put coffee mugs on it; we set laptops on it; we used it as an end table wherever we… Read More


In my previous post about my work on the carving knife I mentioned that I thought I had stumbled into a differential heat treat. But I wasn’t sure until I actually etched the blade. Well my ferric chloride arrived the other day. It comes with all kinds of fun tidbits on the bottle, like “caustic”… Read More


In my last post I talked about upgrading my 3d printer to use a better hotend with interchangeable nozzles. Since then I have broken and fixed my printer again. First the break. The new hotend has one of those pipe fitting clamp things that grabs on to the bowden tube (the tube the filament runs… Read More


Let’s get this out of the way: 3D printers are awesome. I have had mine for about a year and a half and it has let me build fun and crazy things like my homemade keyboard. But 3d printers are obnoxiously slow. It makes sense; it’s the world’s tiniest glue gun putting down layer after… Read More


The other day I finally figured out how to sharpen my hook knife and so I took a shot at making a spoon. In the end it turned out a little bit leaky. In this process I realized that I needed a decent carving knife for the outside. So that’s what I made. First I… Read More


I have been getting my brother into woodworking. We went tool shopping yesterday and came out with a huge haul. Last night I was showing him how to flatten the backs of his chisels and he asked, “When would you want to hit the chisel with a hammer?” So I pulled out my chisels and… Read More


On its way Today I put the karambit into the mail. It is on its way to the (hopefully happy) owner. Before the knife was ready to ship I needed to make a case for it. Instead of a traditional leather sheath I decided to go with a wooden case. I borrowed a little bit… Read More