Paul Sellers Blog
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Paul Sellers' woodworking blog with opinions on hand tool woodworking. You'll find woodworking tutorials, tips, and techniques.
Paul Sellers Blog
3h ago
In thinking about a new USA President about to come, I was reminded of a Craft Fair on the weekend of Thanksgiving in 2008 where I sat with a man, a friend, who I had known for eighteen years. We were having a nice chat when a message came to me that mentioned the possibility...
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Paul Sellers Blog
17h ago
There was a gentleness about him––a gentle settledness, I’d say, really. His frailness belied the determined outlook of this now shrunken man who said little, but when he spoke, and said what he said, no one else spoke, for after he’d spoken, there was nothing more to be said. I looked at his denim overalls,...
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Paul Sellers Blog
2d ago
I thought about all of the woodworking joints that I must’ve made with no use of a machine, along with the few thousands of others I have machined in making my production line products. For several years, I made around 100 walking canes a week using a single mortise and tenon joints, but still realised...
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Paul Sellers Blog
6d ago
…is it perfect? How is perfect or perfection defined, and is it even definable? I often ask myself this question, being as I use the word so often in my day. Riding my bike here and there to do most of what I do outdoors, come to an obstacle, negotiate the potential issue to get...
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Paul Sellers Blog
1w ago
It’s a seamless transition for a maker to slip through each of his days knowing the direction ahead and identifying every obstacle he knows he’ll face long, long before he gets there. That carcase, in some ways, might be mistaken in its spelling where a word is spelled out wrongly as carcass to name a...
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Paul Sellers Blog
1w ago
When I cut the dovetail and sank the screw into the countersunk seating, I knew the joint settled tight that way would annoy some and not those that knew the reason behind the pull-power beyond the inventor-man’s invention 2,500 years ago. This “father of mechanics” started something when he created a continuous thread, others followed...
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Paul Sellers Blog
2w ago
My life working wood spans 60 years. It’s a long time to have worked it six days a week and for longer working days than most: ten- to 12-hour days for much of my life was quite normal and often longer. The important thing is this ingredient: I volunteered every hour I worked into it....
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Paul Sellers Blog
2w ago
. . . for better health, strength and stamina. Wood works for health and welfare when your hands or on the right tools, and you use all of your own energy and skill in the doing of it. Of the sharpening of many edges there is no end and yet, every tool I ever bought...
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Paul Sellers Blog
3w ago
I sometimes wonder if they can understand smoothness on wood after the plane, fresh-sharpened, swipes away that last thin shaving to leave a surface they’ve never felt before. I’m talking about someone who only ever planed wood with a machine. The grain, sheer-cut, parted off, away and lifted in the bench plane’s stroking swipes, left...
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Paul Sellers Blog
3w ago
I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat myself here: sharpening woodworking edge tools is and always will be an abrasive issue. I have used every type of stone and grinder through my 60 years of woodworking. The choice of abrasives may well be a matter of preference, which one you choose depends on how much...
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