Traditional Woodworking Techniques
My path as a designer has led me through an incredible journey of learning traditional woodworking techniques. After developing strong fundamentals of working with power tools and machinery, I grew to foster an appreciation of older techniques involving hand tools like saws, chisels, axes, and planes. I learned about staked furniture and discovered Swedish carving techniques, which gave me a deeper understanding of how to work with wood and to embrace grain structure, splitting, and wood movement. This also led me on a path of building my own tools like a shavehorse to rive logs with a drawknife into spoon blanks and a spring-pole lathe to turn spindles and bowls. Below are a few selected projects from my woodworking journey.
Moravian Workbench
Inspired by the writing of Christopher Schwarz and woodworkers like Paul Sellers and Roy Underhill, I wanted to build a workbench using mainly hand tools with robust mortise and tenons and dovetails.
After investigating various bench styles, I came across Will Myers' adaptation of a Moravian bench at the Old Salem collection in New Salem, N.C and decided to build my own in a smaller scale.
It is made with hand-planed and cut joints using red oak and pine with a hard maple wood screw vice. The bench has a left-handed orientation with dog holes that accommodate 3/4" holdfasts finished with Danish oil.
This project satisfied my urge to restore and sharpen some one-hundred year old tools found at flea markets and eBay, while refining my handcrafting skills, and ultimately has become an indispensable tool that will last a lifetime.
Architectural Built-Ins
Another project I worked on involved building a maker space for children in an elementary school in Chicago. This involved building custom work-furniture based on architectural plans and rough Rhino 3D models and then delivering the partially assembled work furniture to the space and final built-ins on site.
Japanese KUMIKO Joinery
As an avid woodworker, I have become enamored by traditional hand-cut Japanese joinery techniques such as these Asanoha patterns used in Shoji sliding screens. I used this opportunity to learn how to create angle jigs to cut precise angles needed for joints that can hold together tightly without glue.
Enzo Mari Table
Dutch Toolchest
Traditional Archery Bow
Kitchenware
