Paul Sellers

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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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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