Invent Design Make

When you put in a new gate post, durability is a must have, and many people, myself included, have not been satisfied with regular pressure treated or tanalised spruce posts. They rot quickly at the interface between the ground and the air, which is where fungus and insects thrive, having both moisture and oxygen. This […]

I’m calling it a ‘hybrid knife holder’ because it uses traditional slots (the back three long cook’s knives), and a combination of magnets and indents, to hold the front ones securely in place. It’s made from an old chunk of ash firewood. I really liked the natural split edge with its wavy grain and central […]

Unusual things I do in this little ‘woodworking’ instalment: remove a radiator, make a guide fence for the the 18V planer, create a big-ass wooden hinge, talk about wood glue spreading, cut down a twist drill and re-grind a super long carbide insert masonry drill for use in wood, make a rudimentary drill guide, etc […]

I published an instructable, with a video, detailing a little-talked of method for removing twist from big wooden slabs or boards. I haven’t seen this anywhere on line, or even in old school woodworking magazines, so I thought I’d share. The instructable goes into a fair bit of detail but the basic gist is to strategically weaken […]

There are a few things that I haven’t had time to blog about lately (but check out the photos on the facebook page). Here’s one: The Warlock’s Bed. I don’t quite know what genre this fits into – its not really rustic – as it has some fine joinery and involved plenty of careful, precise […]

We published this step-by-step Instructable a couple of weeks ago, outlining an unusual woodworking technique to splice interesting shaped pieces of contrasting coloured wood. The Instructable editors featured it on their home page and in their newsletter :)  and it’s been getting quite a bit of attention (over 55k views in a week). A bit […]

“Take a piece of wood – plane, sand, and oil it, and you will find it a beautiful thing. The more you do to it from then on, the more chance that you will make it worse.” Tage Frid 1979 So I came across this quote from the late woodworking monster Tage Frid while we were […]

We are well please with the stand, so here we go with the drum itself… To begin with I spent a good long time umming and arring about the dimensions I wanted, and researching how the different proportions would likely affect the sound. I ended up designing it to be

I have been meaning to post a few photos of this little capoeira drum (or atabaque) project for a while now. This is the first part, about the drum’s stand. The stand is a good place to start, as many of the same techniques are used in making the actual drum, but it is smaller […]