Author name: Enthusiast

Most of my income comes from weekend art/farmers markets where I sell mainly turned work (bowls). I’ve learned that you need to have a bell curve of prices from cheap to extravagant with the majority falling in the middle-class affordable range. I’ve always struggled with the $20 cheap range. If you don’t have a selection of goods at low prices you lose mid-priced sales from the uneducated. These people will […]

The post Profitable Subpar Work – A Strategy for Selling at a Farmers Market appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

I can remember very frustrating times in my shop when I worked like crazy on a refinished piece of furniture to match the color on a sample piece of furniture, only to take the refinished piece to the client’s house and find that it didn’t match. But it matched perfectly in my shop I would meekly explain. I didn’t understand the phenomenon of metamerism. The problem was that the light […]

The post Illustrating Metamerism with a Digital Camera appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

We experimented to find the perfect recipe for this most-requested finish for pine – and it’s as easy as pie. by Glen D. Huey from the Autumn 2007 issue of Woodworking Magazine Pumpkin pine is a developed patina that glows a warm orangy color similar to – you guessed it – a pumpkin. Ask woodworkers what finish they want to replicate when using white pine as their primary wood in […]

The post Carving Out a Pumpkin Pine Finish appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Every step of making this dugout chair has been a little weird. Fastening its seat in place was no different. After cutting the seat to shape using using the help of ticking sticks, I rasped the rim of the seat until I could wedge it inside the trunk and get it level. I usually use a 6” spirit level for this task, but I left it at home. So I […]

The post Dugout Chair: Fastening the Seat appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

One of the first joints I learned to cut during my City & Guilds of London training was the T-bridle, which we used for the leg-to-rail connection on a modern end table, one of the projects that made up the curriculum. Like other variants of the bridle joint, this one is often used for table bases and benches. You can see an especially elegant example of this joint here. The T-bridle […]

The post How to Cut the Rock-Solid T-Bridle Joint appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Ben was one of the six students who took my live-edge Columbus day weekend class at Snow Farm. A newcomer into woodworking, motivated and eager to learn, he asked me to help him design and build a side table for his Boston apartment. Feeling that woodworking is going to be more than just a weekend workshop experience, but rather a long-lasting hobby, he invested in a good quality hand plane […]

The post Live Edge Class at Snow Farm, Massachusetts – Part 2 Ben’s Table appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.