Archives

Very quickly after getting serious about woodworking I realized, if I wanted to make more than simple projects with square or tapered legs, I needed to develop my skills in two major areas beyond [...]

In researching my next topic for this blog series, I was cruising the Winterthur web site. One of the things I noticed, as I sought various examples of a specific furniture form, was some great [...]

In Friday’s “Furniture Details” post I tossed out a photo of a Newport dressing table (or lowboy if you prefer), but shot from below. The idea was to get you looking at not only [...]

In order to know, and understand, how things were made in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries you’ve got to spend a lot of time on the floor (no Bender jokes, please). Looking at pieces from the [...]

John Sindelar, owner of the famous Sindelar Tool Museum, posted a link today from the European Woodworking Show that showed a cornice, or crown moulding, plane in action. I thought it was worth [...]

When most people think about adding something to enhance crown mouldings on pieces of furniture, they turn instantly to dentil moulding. It’s easy to make because of the repetitive cuts, [...]

In the last installment I got to Chippendale furniture but I didn’t cover all the changes that took place. The cabriole leg was actually on its way out in terms of fashion (in England, at [...]

In my last “Design in Practice” post I talked about how, as furniture transitioned from William & Mary to Queen Anne, the bottom back rail moved down and became the shoe on top of [...]

If you’ve ever been frustrated by heading to your local tool dealer to get a hands-on look at the latest new tool reviewed in Popular Woodworking Magazine (or in one of our online reviews) [...]

I got a request recently in the comments section of my “Design in Practice:Stylin’ Too” post (read it here) about museums to visit for those interested in period furniture from [...]

A couple of weeks ago I posted why Philly chairs were just better (read it by clicking here). In the comments pmac mentioned including a SketchUp drawing in future posts to illustrate the joinery [...]

Last week I started down the slippery slope of defining some of the differences between the various periods of furniture (read it here). This week, I’m just jumping off the cliff. Even if [...]