Author name: Enthusiast

In the last few years at least three major coatings’ suppliers have introduced deck coatings that have failed often enough so they have generated a number of class-action lawsuits against the companies. You may have seen ads for these products: Behr Deckover, Olympic Rescue-It and Rust-Oleum Deck Restore. You may have even used one of these products. When I first saw one of the ads, I knew exactly what was […]

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In 1997 my parents built a new house. I was a rambunctious child, and my dad figured out a way to get me out of his hair for a while so he could work. He gave me a long board, a hammer and a box of nails. I spent days just hammering nails into one board, as content as I could be. When the luster of the hammer wore off, […]

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The furniture record shows us that “perfect dovetails” is a modern mania. As the photos of antiques above prove, even some of the ugliest joints will stay together for a very long time indeed (perhaps with a nail or two for good measure). But James Krenov? He ruined us. Nowadays, we strive for cutting perfect dovetails, right off the saw. So, how do you get there? Practice…lots of practice. And […]

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Smart coatings fascinate me. In an earlier post I told you about a paint that uses nanotechnology to cause pee to bounce off walls back onto the shoes of the perp. In another post I told you about a coating that self-heals when exposed to heat or UV light. Here are a few more smart coatings I’ve come across. Researchers at the University of Reading in the U.K. have developed a self-healing […]

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Unlike other furniture designers, I have a handicap. When I design something I am burdened by 15 years of designing furniture for a magazine audience. During those years, I sought to simplify construction and ornament on every piece so that we could fit it into a six- to eight-page article in the magazine. That meant doing away with details that no one saw, designing joints that required the fewest number […]

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About a year-and-a-half ago, Christopher Schwarz got a bunch of woodworkers together for a sawbench building party at John Hoffman’s house outside Indianapolis. Chris was using us as guinea pigs for an upcoming class he was teaching on the subject, and to work out a few final explanatory notes for his “Compound Angles, No Math” article (in the June 2015 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine) and his  “Anarchist’s Design Book” […]

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