something worth knowing.

Hi, my name is Britton, and this blog is about craftsmanship. It's about old-school quality. It's about my backward quest to learn old school greenwood chair-making, and my anachronistic desire to live in a world without power tools surrounded by people who take pleasure and pride in traditions past.

Here you will find architecture I like, designs I love, and my pure eccentricity. As much as anything, this is still my personal blog, so you're just as likely to find random thoughts and images from my life.

One of the things I hope to do with this blog is to inspire others to follow their passions and interests, whatever they may be. There is no one route to happiness, and there is no one happiness. We each define ourselves by the world we build. But only if we choose to do so.

If you'd like to know more, please feel free to contact me by any manner below, or click one of the four tags to see more on that topic.

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John Reed Fox: The Uncompromising Craftsman - Fine Woodworking →

John Reed Fox:

If you want to have the hand skills that it takes to do this, you have to do it a lot. There’s just no other way. You have to spend a lot of time at it. The way to learn how to cut dovetails is to cut dovetails. The way you learn how to sharpen is to sharpen.

Rather than being intimidated by this, I think there’s comfort in the fact that practice is all it takes.

It is completely worth the six minutes it takes to watch the accompanying video, and listen to John Reed Fox talk about his work. I would love to meet him someday. My one link with John Reed Fox is that he made the body of the plane I used to illustrate the set up of a Japanese plane.

What John says about the practice getting into your hands, and the work being meditative, I’ve found to be absolutely true. Even simply thinking about working on my shavehorse puts a dumb, if idle, smile on my face. Also his gridding technique really makes me want to go to India and learn Jaali. Like, bad.