Paul Sellers

Answers to blog post questions posed in Known By Their Fruits 1: Why did this maker take a saw to each corner of the appliqued drawer bottom groove at the back of the drawer when no one would see it, ever? On each of the drawers, he cut this corner off, in situ, after the...

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A chisel or plane leaves its trace identity in the surface of wood in similar fashion as the shell of a bullet discharged by any firearm identifies the gun, but not really the exact same. With a firearm, there are several distinct mechanisms that make the shell casing at different points, and prosecutors can use...

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I have spent the last five years designing and then making pieces for a real family living in a real but quite ordinary family home. The average UK or European-sized home is more compact than those I came to know in the USA and Texas, and I chose this because globally, it was better to...

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Please join us in wishing Paul a happy 76th birthday! Can you believe he is 76? We can’t! Thank you for all your support for him. He loves showing you all his work and has much planned for the year ahead. – Paul’s Family

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The distinction in greetings often differentiates American from our UK English. One continent generally says a, “Merry Christmas,” and in the other it’s more likely to be “Happy Christmas.” Having lived in the USA as a ‘resident alien’ with rights to live and work, pay taxes to two revenue services, be that HMRC (His Majesty’s...

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My advocacy for high-demand hand tool woodworking doesn’t preclude machining wood: it never has nor will. I don’t own or use power machines like chopsaws, power planers, tablesaws, mortisers, spindle moulders (shapers USA), their smaller cousins, power routers and such like that, and that’s from both personal choice and my advocacy for the art and...

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High-demand skills will ultimately change your life for good, and that is why I used hand tools for 98% of my work for almost 61 years of daily woodworking, and why I decline to use machines. Better health and a sense of achievement makes me feel not just marginally good about myself but great, and...

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One of my most commonly asked questions. I’m not sure how long it took me to discover the fuller status and experience of amateurship, but when I did, it was both revelatory and life-changingly refreshing. Hopping the fence, I never once looked back. New coordinates enabled me to set sail, disengage from a world of...

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Often, ancient manors like Kelmscott Manor, the former country home of William Morris, are kept in the past as a way of preservation and yet have no reach into the future. My visit to Kelmscott left me with mixed feelings. The drive there and the walks down country lanes to the house were light and...

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Thinking about auger bits translates me back to a strange link we might none of us be aware of in the day to day, but at one time it would have been a godsend to certain cultures and so too today’s world where spiral elevators are used to raise solids and liquids from one level...

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But not my very, very personal ones. Over the last few decades I’ve accumulated more woodworking hand tools than perhaps I should, but there again, it’s all been for the best of reasons. I have written to books, fifty articles for magazines, and then a thousand blog posts. Factor into that a thousand video episodes...

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We were all busy, so busy, working away and under pressure when Jack, the foreman, told the apprentice just below me, it was time he changed out the bandsaw blade. “More life in it yet!” Les said, but Jack knew better than this sixteen-year-old and simply said the same to him again. Those were the...

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How do you describe the realness of a good week? My life’s as full as can be. Living as a daily maker all of my life might well set me apart these days; rarely will my life compare with that of others. No college or university degrees in furniture design and furniture making. No computer-aided...

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Her hands handled things differently this time. She’s taller, stronger, more able and fully aware. That’s because she’s on the cusp of being seven in a few days time. There was an inner expectation that what she was about to do would work for her the same as it did for me; three years ago,...

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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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