Shop Notes & Rambles
Welcome to the quieter corner of the shop — the place where sawdust settles, thoughts wander, and stories take shape. These rambles capture the rhythm of the work, the lessons learned, and the craft that holds it all together.
Shop Ramble Mailing List
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Shop Ramble Mailing List 〰️
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Wood Doesn’t Lie: Lessons From the Woodpile to the Workshop
A lifetime of splitting firewood taught me the first truths about wood — grain, movement, strength, and the imperfections every tree carries. Those lessons followed me into the workshop, shaping how I read lumber, choose boards, and understand the character inside every piece of wood.
The Mistake Every New Woodworker Makes (And I Made It Too)
Every new woodworker makes the same mistake: trying to force wood to behave. This Ramble follows a twisted spruce workbench, glue‑up problems, and the hard‑earned lesson about wood movement that every beginner eventually learns.
Fast Hardwood — Reader Question
Hardwoods don’t all grow slowly. This follow‑up explains the fast pioneer hardwoods — poplar, willow, and soft maples — and how forest succession shapes the difference between hardwood and softwood growth.
Hardwood vs Softwood
Hardwood vs softwood isn’t just a difference in leaves or needles — it’s the story of how trees survived fire, drought, extinction, and time itself. This piece traces the rise of the two great families of wood, from ancient barren landscapes to the forests we work with today, revealing how evolution shaped every board in the shop and every species in the Wood Archive.
Rarity of Wood
Old‑growth wood is disappearing — not because we’re running out of trees, but because time itself has become rare. This story explores how younger forests, industry changes, disease, fire, and salvage have reshaped the wood we build with, and why the tight‑grained, high‑quality lumber our grandparents knew is now hard to find. From pioneer beams to salvaged elm and century‑old cedar, this is a look at what true wood once was — and why its rarity matters.
Understanding Wood
Wood behaves the way it does because every board carries the memory of the tree it came from. Leaning trunks, shifting riverbanks, floodwater, wind pressure, scars, tension wood, compression wood — all of it becomes grain, movement, and character in the shop. This piece explains how trees grow, adapt, and survive, and why those hidden forces show up decades later when a woodworker planes a board and the wood reacts. Understanding wood begins with understanding the life it lived.