Apprentice Notebook

The mortice-and-tenon is one of the mainstays of joinery, and glues up smart and very secure. Two variants on this join finished our hand-tools projects.

Modern joining methods have largely removed the dovetail from our everyday furniture, and this is not without reason.  The labour and skill required to produce dovetails far outweighs the benefit it offers over modern methods in terms of functionality.  They do, however, offer something else.

David has been speaking in the Dimblebies (Rowden morning lectures) this week on his life as a furniture maker, and one of the phrases he mentioned was "the extra 5% that kills you". The premise is this: we can go to 95% fairly easily, and produce a good, well-finished piece of work. But it is that additional 5% that takes the piece to exceptional; it is this additional 5% that kills you.

When you tell people you are learning to make furniture, they want to see something amazing, and pretty quickly. When I showed folks back home my first project, like looking at an ugly baby, it was hard for some to hide their disappointment.

As I was arriving, Dave was leaving. He had been at Rowden for a few months, working through the initial projects offered here. When I asked him how it was, he had a slightly withered look on his face, "Planing", he replied, "so much planing..."