The journal
Occasional writing on timber, tools and the pieces leaving the hall — published when there is something worth saying, which is not every week.
May 2026
Kiln drying takes weeks and makes commercial sense. It also locks stress into the board that comes out later — as a cupped tabletop, a checked leg, a drawer that sticks every October. Our oak sits stickered in the yard for thirty-six months, and we still check every board with a moisture meter before it earns a place on the bench. Patience is the cheapest tool we own.
March 2026
A commission from the Brouwersgracht: one long Meridian table and twelve chairs for a kitchen that has hosted the same Sunday dinner since the eighties. The catch — every piece had to go up a seventeenth-century staircase. The table now splits into three sections on brass registration pins, invisible when assembled. The staircase, as usual, decided the design.
January 2026
There is a Stanley No. 7 on the wall of the bench room that predates everyone who works here. It has been flattened so many times the sole is a millimetre thinner than it left the factory. We have newer planes, better planes on paper — but for the final pass on a tabletop, the old No. 7 still leaves the surface the others chase. Some tools earn their wall space.