This past weekend I attended the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour as it came through Ellsworth, ME. The guys I’ve gone with for years always choose the ‘extreme sports’ night over the ‘culture’ night. Every year, we watch people climb rock faces in snowstorms, kayak off of waterfalls, and trek across barren wilderness just for the thrill of it. It’s wild stuff. I can appreciate it from a distance but it’s hard for me to relate to because I spent most of my childhood in art classes when everyone else was playing football. Every year, though, I can’t help but think about what it is that motivates a person to push themselves that hard and take that much...
We’ve just posted our first “Ask M&T” video on our YouTube channel. We had a reader ask us, “As a novice woodworker, I struggle to determine the best joints for my projects. What’s the best method of determining the most appropriate joint for any given project?” The above is our “Ask M&T” answer to that very question. We’re excited about this new series because it enables us to give time to give full answers to our readers’ questions. Since our number one goal with M&T is to celebrate historic craftsmanship by empowering readers to work efficiently with plane and saw, we thought it would be a good idea to film our answers for you. So consider this a start....
We just launched our new “Craftsmanship is Risk” t-shirts in the store. We are offering this design in 3 new colors. Check all the colors out here. As a thank you for your support, we are offering free shipping on these shirts for the first week. Also note that we have now discounted our previous “Artisan” shirt to $18. We don’t have every size in stock but if you want one of these, just know we will not be doing another run. All our designs are a one-time deal. They will only be in our store as long as we have them in stock. FREE SHIPPING ON THE NEW SHIRT UNTIL SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11th! It’s not news that the term...
Regular readers know my work philosophy is pretty laid back. I don’t sweat tear out on secondary surfaces, I think knots are fine for drawer parts and back boards, etc… That’s why when it comes to axe edge maintenance, some might be surprised at how fastidious I am about keeping it tip top. Some folks don’t feel a need to keep up on their coarser tools but I don’t buy that distinction. When your coarse prep relies on human muscle rather than machines, a keen edge is your best friend. I’ve wasted too much time straining myself working with dull tools. Saving two minutes of sharpening only to grunt through 20 minutes of miserable work is dumb. It’s simply...
The month is almost over, folks, and that means that the purchasing window for the “Craftsmanship is Risk” hoodies is just about up. First thing Saturday morning I am emailing the total number of orders to Shannon and he is going to order only enough to fulfill these pre-orders. Then no one else will ever get one of these sweatshirts. That’s right… This is a one-time pre-order-only deal because Mike and I don’t want to keep boxes of hoodies around. (We may order a few more just in case of mistakes, but no promises.) If you are on the fence as to whether you were going to order one or not, you’ve got until Friday night to decide. In...
My wife, Julia, and I have been baking our own sourdough bread for ten years now. Early on in our marriage, we began learning the building blocks of using different flours, kneading methods, and how to accommodate for temperature and humidity changes. For years, our bread was not much more than passable. We loved doing it but the books we read and videos we watched online could only take us so far. We needed someone to show us. Fortunately, when we moved back to Maine eight years ago, some of Julia’s old friends generously taught us the way they make the sourdough in their incredible wood-fired bakery. Spending that day with them revolutionized our baking. They taught us little new...
I can't even tell you how incredible Wednesday and Thursday was for Mike and I. We were invited down to Old Sturbridge Village by assistant curator Shelley Cathcart to spend the day exploring the collections of many thousands of tools and furniture in storage. We, of course, leapt at the opportunity. After an early morning departure and five hours on the road, we spent the entire day digging through shelves of artifacts from New England cabinetmakers' shops working between 1790 and 1840. There were many moments crouched under tables with flashlights and times with objects laid out on blankets for closer examination. Besides the standard tools made by established toolmakers, there were so many that were shop made. It is...
It has been a delight to see social media filled with snapshots of readers’ wrapped copies of M&T Issue Two. Although I thought this extra effort would be appreciated by at least a few of our readers, I didn’t expect to see this much enthusiasm for the wrapping alone. The trade cards attached to the wrapping are based off of 18th and 19th century cards tradesmen used for advertising to their communities. They usually featured drawings of furniture or tools and had verbose descriptions of the superiority of their wares or services. The text we use on our M&T cards is pulled straight out of these advertisements and cards. We’ve borrowed their sentences and applied them to our publication (complete with...
When we brought this Victorian mirror into the studio last year, we had to handle it very carefully. It had been heavily damaged in a fire to the point that the top third of the frame had essentially converted to charcoal. We were very glad that the owners wished to restore the mirror as much as possible to its former glory, so we rolled up our sleeves and got to work. First, we had to stabilize everything structurally. After removing the old, broken glass, the upper ornamentation was sealed with multiple coats of shellac to lock in the pervasive smoke smell. We brushed on several applications of wood hardener, then carefully repaired the trim with various formulations of epoxy. Several...
This is the kind of blog post I hate writing. I try hard to make sure all the i's are dotted and t's crossed when getting this publication together to go out the door to the printer. I have to do so much communication with the editorial team, authors, interviewees, sponsors, stockists, our printer, and the owners of certain images we’d like to publish. Then there’s a whole list of folks I am in contact with about merchandise and supplies ordering, taxes, bookkeeping, etc. Then the packing party adds a whole new dimension to the communication demands. It’s usually just when I feel like I might finally have all things afloat that I realize I’ve dropped the ball somewhere....
