Woodworking
How to Identify an Old Wood Finish Before Stripping It
Most of the furniture I sell at the Saturday market arrives with a finish I did not choose.
I paid £15 for a 1930s pine chest of drawers at a house clearance last February, mostly because the carcass was sound and the drawers still ran true.
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Woodworking
Most of the furniture I sell at the Saturday market arrives with a finish I did not choose.
Tools and Workspace
Your lower back aches after an hour of sanding, or your shoulders burn after a session of hand planing, and you assume it is...
Sewing and Textiles
You finished a whole shirt, and now the last step, five little buttonholes, is the part that scares you.
Paper and Mixed Media
You smooth a magazine scrap onto the page, it looks flat for ten seconds, and then a row of little ridges creeps across it as...
Craft Business
You sold forty pieces at the spring fair, a dozen more online, and somehow you cannot say whether the year made money.
Woodworking
You glued up a tabletop that was dead flat on Saturday, and by the following month it had cupped, a joint had opened or a...
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Archive
Three makers who work with their hands before they write about it: one builds furniture and teaches basic joinery, one sews and mends for a small alterations clientele, and one turns salvaged materials into sellable pieces at weekend markets. Every article carries a byline, and nothing runs that the writer has not actually made.