The thing about working with wood for 30 years is that it teaches problem solving, an ability that served Andrew Lapthorn very well when he was asked to construct explodable buildings for military training, and when he had to work out the design for his Tripod tables that require sound engineering principles; Dave Roberts reports on this extraordinary maker. Meanwhile Andrea Hargreaves travels to the lovely Lake District to…
Think of furniture schools and one of the best known in the country has to be that run by designer and maker David Savage in the wilds of North Devon; in this issue Mark Gould sets out to discover the ethos of the year-long courses and what happens to his students when they complete one and try to make a living from the craft. Barrie Scott goes out East again, this time to Thailand where he visits a museum of carvings and reclaimed artefacts…
In order to squeeze in 13 issues of Good Woodworking it is necessary to play a few tricks with time once a year, in this case moving the big hand very swiftly around 14 revolutions, allowing for your March edition to be produced in a scant three weeks. So it is apposite that this one majors strongly on clocks, the almost completely all-wood ones engineered by Bruce Aitken. Dave Roberts sought him out on top of a hill in the…
Our Andy King seems to know everyone, and not just on the woodworking circuit either. Send him to Silverstone and he’s in the pit lane saying hi to Top Gear’s The Stig who lives in the same neck of the woods as Andy – the lengths manufacturers will go to get our attention! Well, the lure of some super-fast cars got Andy’s pulses racing, but it says something for the quality of DeWalt kit that he was…
There has to be something wrong with the education system when two talented and dedicated teachers of furniture making become so disillusioned that they desert its box-filling exercises and go private, founding their own schools with a difference. Andrea Hargreaves reports on Peter Sefton’s clever and thoughtful setup that sees his students giving the seal of usefulness and quality to tools that he sells online, some…
A while back a reader observed that GW was all furniture, but conversely I am expecting those of you who associate timber with tables, chairs and cabinets to enquire where it has gone lately, but it’ll be back next month I promise. It is, however, interesting to note how many objects that enrich our lives rely on wood for their effect. Take the guitars that we major on in this issue – Shaun Newton restores a…
The internal structure of Cressing Temple Barns and the throng of people gathered there for the European Woodworking Show, serves to illustrate this Special issue of Good Woodworking admirably: we’re focusing on big timber-based structures and also on the fun to be had with wood. Woodworkers down in the West Country are still using methods that this ancient barn would have been built with, and,…
The shiny face and through-a-bush-backwards hair are the result of spending a fraught but fun taster day at Axminster Tool Centre; there was certainly no time for getting the comb out to rectify the coiffural damage wrought by a protective head shield and facemask in the rush to turn a vase in two hours, not to speak of a plumb bob, a leaf carving and, er, what you see pictured below. Projects of a far more professional…
Magazine planning, like that for any job I suppose, is subject to variables. You start with a few givens, the features you know have a place come what may, then you go into frantic plate-spinning mode, trying to juggle all the unscheduled but wonderful things that happen in a month into too few pages. For example, having covered what I thought would be the best of graduate work last month, I went along to New Designers…
