Paul Sellers

I know! It’s the busiest of grain types; a diverse switch from any beech wood you might know because beech is not known for diversity and this wood I have chosen gives volume and depth that might seem distractive but yet, just like the mould of spalting, it creeps in to grow on you to...

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In answer to Joe Leonetti’s request for more information on working it with hand tools, I can say mesquite is more predictably unpredictable and then unpredictably predictable than most any wood. There is nothing in any way uniform or straight-grained about this remarkable wood and there is no doubt that it is a thousand times...

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The gift notion of my possibly becoming a maker came to me in 1963; it’s taken a lifetime to achieve my ambition. Of course, that does not mean that it is only achieved late in life. It simply means that the journey had the power and dynamism to start it, to begin the journey, and...

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Changing the pitch of a bevelled cutting edge is as much about a changed attitude as the physical change in steel. My hand tool woodworking is indeed high-demand woodworking, and guess what? We want it. When I plough out a groove using a plough plane, I am making a statement that says I want and...

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I’m down to the last four pages of completing 5 months of daily journalling in my latest journal/sketchbook. Having been loyal to the US Barnes and Noble sketchbook for well over twenty years, they did as all superstores ultimately do in that they tell you what you can and cannot buy by simply withdrawing an...

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Going into wildness alone is a high-demand aspect of my personal woodworking journey. Would I do it now, now that I am nearing 76 years of age? And would I do it as back then, without a cell phone, when cell phones were yet to be invented, and the internet was still mainly in the...

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My bench inevitably has three squares close to hand, even though I could manage with just the one. Two of them are six-inch Starretts, any Starrett takes some beating, and my one old one was brand new in the box when I bought it in 1965. One of the Starretts was bought and given to...

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Hands at work have always intrigued me. In a New York café, the walls were lined with rough sketches of baker’s hands kneading dough, forming bread to shape and sliding bread into a brick oven. The sketches caught the essence of the baker who drew them. I was fascinated by just how much the sketches...

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Making drawers utterly by hand takes mastery, there is no doubt in my mind. Establishing patterns early on in your making strategies ensures speed and accuracy. For my drawers, I needed 5/8″ stock but could only buy in 3/4″ material preplaned. But preplaned did not mean trued, square, uncupped and untwisted. It simply means that...

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I made a few of these recently, and we filmed how to make one for YT, so here is the link for you to follow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gRIkUidQWg Two strips of wood, grooved, and a piece of birch plywood came from offcuts I wouldn’t find much use for. The wood was long enough to make the four...

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I have made many pieces in my lifetime as a maker. Occasionally, some pieces, large and small, ended up being somewhat overworked. I look back into the history of my craft and I might consider the work made for the highly privileged, mostly the wealthy charlatans of past life, though extraordinarily remarkable, and almost all...

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