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Elsie’s Main Bedroom Tour – A Beautiful Mess

I am so, so excited to share our completed main bedroom with you today. This room came together surprisingly easy. If you’ve been reading a while, you know I am a fan of keeping the bedroom space simple, clean and serene. I don’t want anything loud in my space and I don’t want anything extra to clean or worry about besides the usual daily life stuff like laundry. I realized in our previous home…

Woodworking Kits | Ukulele | Guitar | Woodworker’s Journal

Last week, Rob shared that he plans to build a ukulele from a kit and wondered if kits are a legitimate form of woodworking. Many of you say you fully support “pre-packaged” project kits. – Editor

“I built a ukulele for my granddaughter using the Tenor Ukulele Kit from Rockler. Everything needed was in the kit. Although it was challenging, the final product came out very well. She loves it and I…

Holiday House Back Porch Refresh – A Beautiful Mess

You might remember last summer when we gave the holiday house front porch a makeover. This year, we gave the back porch a little tender love and care too. I really debated if I should call this a “refresh” or a “makeover” as it kind of straddles the line, I suppose. I really loved this porch already—she didn’t need all that much to really shine. And I love getting to show you a peek at the…

Not Expecting That… – Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To

Once again, the Weekly faithful have surprised me. Last week, I confessed that I am about to build a ukulele for my granddaughter from a kit. I expected to be called out as a woodworking fraud and have my “workshop card” recalled.

To be fair, a few of you have let me know that, in your opinion, kits are not woodworking (see Feedback in this issue). But a surprising number of readers have…

Introducing the A Beautiful Mess Print Shop! – A Beautiful Mess

Hi everyone! We are so excited to announce the opening of our newest project that has been in the works for quite a while: the Print Shop! Our goal was to make beautiful art for your home available at an affordable price and with a ton of options for where you print, how you print, and what size. With that in mind, this digital print shop was born! I’m going to take you through a few questions…

10 Things I Love Sunday – A Beautiful Mess

Happy Sunday, friends! I feel like I should have news or updates for you, but honestly not that much has been going on in my world other than work. But here are two small things. First, a week ago today, Trey and I celebrated our seventh anniversary. That feels a little crazy to me—time feels like it’s both flying by and holding very still all at once. And my second mini update for you all is I…

Back in Stock: ‘The Anarchist’s Design Book’

After numerous production delays, which I will blame on the mole people instead of the pandemic, “The Anarchist’s Design Book: Revised Edition” is now back in stock and shipping from our warehouse.

This is the fifth printing of the book, which means there are about 15,000 copies in circulation. By publishing standards, that’s a sad failure. But for me, I couldn’t be happier. 

As a young writer, I…

Blacksmith Planing Stop from Tom Latane

A toothed iron planing stop is my primary form of workholding on the benchtop. When embedded in a 2-1/2” x 2-1/2” x 12” block of wood that moves up and down, I can plane up most faces and edges of boards without a vise.

The teeth are central to the function of the planing stop. You want it to bite into the end grain of your boards, and usually I smack each board from behind to sink the teeth into…

Laura Mays: Making the Connections Between Building and Design

Teaching at The Krenov School, with second year student Scott Nelson. (Photo: Michelle Frederick)

While on a bicycling vacation in 1994, Laura Mays found herself at a village crossroads in remote County Galway, on Ireland’s western coast. Each of the first three corners housed a pub; the fourth, a large Victorian building. Intrigued by the architecture as well as the structure’s status as the odd…

Did You Really Make That? – Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To

I have promised to build a ukulele for my granddaughter. There is the possibility that I could make one without using a kit…I have some of that training in my background. But I confess that I’m going to choose option B instead and build it from a kit. This is a new experience for me, but I’m looking forward to it.

So what do you think of kits? Are they a good way to learn new woodworking…

Turns out there are very few pictures of my grandmother’s 1960s kitchen. This is the best I could find (that’s me, with my new tricycle, Christmas 1981).

My grandmother, my father’s mom, died last July 4 at the age of 94. She was so intelligent. She attended Miami University (Ohio) at a time when many women did not, and studied business. Although she worked in accounting-like jobs for a little…

Cutting Bowl Blanks from a Tree – Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To

This article, “Cutting Bowl Blanks from a Tree,” by Dale Larson, is from the pages of American Woodturner and is brought to you by the America Association of Woodturners (AAW) in partnership with Woodworker’s Journal.

There are many ways to cut bowl blanks out of a tree, but the methodical approach that I take efficiently uses the tree and produces stable, aesthetically pleasing bowl blanks. If…

4 New (and Free!) Excerpts

The title of this post reminds me of my magazine-cover writing days. From the higher-ups: “Use numbers!” “Use exclamation points!” “Use the word ‘free!’” If only it were in neon yellow. But it gets the point across, which is simply this: We’ve added four new excerpts to some of our more-recent titles.

In the excerpt for “Making Things Work: Tales from a Cabinetmaker’s Life (Second Edition” by…

New Techniques | New Projects | Pandemic | Woodworker’s Journal

Last week Rob wondered if you’ve made good use of your shelter-in-place time to learn a new woodworking trick or two — or maybe completed a new project. – Editor

“I took advantage of the recent down time to use up some clock inserts and wood left over from previous projects. I enjoyed it so I bought more inserts. You can see the results in this photo. There is a story about the three clocks in…

Update: ‘Kitchen Think,’ Linocut Prints and Soft Wax

We are putting the finishing touches on Nancy Hiller’s “Kitchen Think” book this week. It should go to press late this week or early next. We just have to make some copy editing changes from Kara Gebhart Uhl and tweak a drawing. 

We will open up pre-publication orders soon. The book will be hardbound, 8.5” x 11”, printed on coated, matte paper and 368 pages long. Full color throughout. And thanks…

Across the Board: Yoav Liberman – Furniture Maker, Teacher & Finder of the Good

Yoav’s drawing for his knockdown table “Merritt,” made with reclaimed materials, inspired by the Merritt Parkway

Imagine this: You’re a teacher of woodworking. Your students are kids. The school where you teach is in a big city, and most of your students live nearby. It’s March 2020: Your school, along with much of the rest of the world, shuts down in response to the pandemic. But your job is to…

An Excerpt from ‘Calvin Cobb’

An excerpt from “Calvin Cobb – Radio Woodworker: A Novel with Measured Drawings,” by Roy Underhill.

Banging buckets echoed down the hall from the clock tower entrance. The painter was done for the day. The stacks of ordered papers on Calvin’s desk no longer made sense, and he gathered them into a single pile.

“I’ll be up in the lab,” he called into Linda’s office as he escaped down the hall. He…