Shop Notes & Rambles
The Rambles are the stories lived and learned over decades — the moments, the lessons, and the shop life that shaped the craft. They accumulate here, sorted by publish date. If you want the curated version, explore the Workshop Library.
🌲 Outdoor Woods — A Story From the Red River Valley
Outdoor wood lives a hard life on the Prairies — sun, snow, floodwater, ice, and decades of exposure. This story explores how outdoor materials have survived here for more than 200 years, from bur oak and elm in early river‑lot homes to treated spruce, painted softwoods, and modern HDPE furniture. Built from real fieldwork across Manitoba and neighbouring provinces, it shows outdoor wood exactly as it exists in the real world: weathered, painted, frozen, flooded, and still standing. This is the long Prairie record of outdoor wood — the climate, the materials, and the choices that shaped two centuries of building.
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.
Old Cedar
The cedar we tore off the old decks looked finished — soft, rotten, and ready for the dump. But once the boards dried and the first passes through the planer cut through the weathered surface, the wood showed tight grain, rich colour, and old‑growth strength. This Ramble follows the reclaimed cedar from demolition pile to Muskoka chairs, tracing the milling, the grain, the lessons with Leo, and how fifty‑year‑old lumber found a second life.