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Paul Sellers

A Lifestyle Woodworker

URL: https://paulsellers.com

Updated: 26 min 48 sec ago

My Floor Exercises

Fri, 06/13/2025 - 1:58am

It took about an hour to create this amount of shavings, no more. Swept up from the whole floor, they’d fill a 100 litre bin bag. I planed wood for five continuous hours, and it felt really invigorating. I’d compare it to a marathon’s worth of being good to my health. My blood pressure yesterday...

Categories: Hand Tools

Anonymisation (with an Anglicised S)

Mon, 06/02/2025 - 12:47am

I remember we men in the 70s signing parts of the work we’d made as a team with a soft pencil and doing it somewhere discreetly. Whether you spell it with an ‘S’ or a ‘Z’ is of little consequence, that simply gives the continental divide and the common divergence from one English to an...

Categories: Hand Tools

Coat Cabinet: Making Sliding Dovetails…

Sat, 05/31/2025 - 12:53am

…demands a precision we might find intimidating. We shouldn’t. Though it’s hard to define what levels of accuracy we actually achieve in our hand work, we are always striving for a precision that’s not dialled in or programmed through a computer, work that defines us as remarkable makers. Additionally, we actually (there’s that word again)...

Categories: Hand Tools

Living in Rooms Made For Life

Wed, 05/28/2025 - 1:15am

I can’t really explain it, but waking up in a bed you made from rough boards and seeing other pieces complimenting the room that you made with the same ten, possibly fifteen ordinary hand tools gives you a remarkable feeling. I’ve designed and made furniture to furnish whole rooms belonging to others on and off...

Categories: Hand Tools

Thank You, Everyone!

Wed, 05/21/2025 - 6:09am

Just a quick scribble to say thank you all for such kind comments here. I am still on a bit of a cloud. I have learned that even negative things in your life can ultimately train you for good that comes later when you least expect it. Being told at age 14 that, “Paul can...

Categories: Hand Tools

My Royal Day

Fri, 05/16/2025 - 12:53am

It’s a day like any other, but not really. It may have started the same, first my bike ride which lasts a half hour, sometimes more. Still, it’s 5.30 A.M. as I tread the pedals on the cycle path. I always cook my breakfast, half a dozen vegetables, perhaps a feta omelette to go with...

Categories: Hand Tools

A Royal Invitation

Tue, 05/13/2025 - 12:42am

I bought a suit recently. No, it’s not denim, although had I had time I might have considered one being made to fit. Finding a tailor to make it might be a different matter, not an easy one. Suits are not generally my world. In fact, where I go, I rarely ever see one. The...

Categories: Hand Tools

What’s In a Picture

Thu, 05/08/2025 - 8:18am

It’s just a hammer. Nothing special, just a 20 ounce Stanley claw hammer made in England and bought by me for £1, which was almost two days pay for me back in March 1965 when I bought it new. The hickory shaft is still the original, the hammer face has never chipped, and the claw...

Categories: Hand Tools

Tightening Sliding Dovetails

Fri, 05/02/2025 - 1:16am

It’s rarely used, uncomplicated joinery. You don’t need powered equipment for a quick outcome; the joint readily comes dead on when you do it with a handful of bench tools. Ten minutes gets you there––a chisel hammer, two chisels, a knife, square, steel rule and a marking gauge. You can add a hand router plane...

Categories: Hand Tools

Making a Splay-legged Stool––Weaving the Seat: Part II

Mon, 04/21/2025 - 11:15am

The material I chose is called Danish cord. It’s made from three strands of brown paper; the first two are twisted together tightly and the third is a spiralled wrap. It’s strong and durable and easier to weave than natural read. The outer is coated with a thin wax finish. You can further coat the...

Categories: Hand Tools

Making a Splay-legged Stool

Sun, 04/20/2025 - 3:11am

I wanted something quick and simple this time. Something that looks pleasing, well-made but doesn’t take more than a few hours in the workshop to make as a frame. I made my frame in two hours and spent another hour defining and refining the legs by shaving and shaping. The stool needed to be less...

Categories: Hand Tools

My Chisels…My Surprise

Tue, 04/15/2025 - 12:26am

The lone picture on my FB drew over 1.068,172 views and a reach of 772,550 with 3794 interactions in around 48 hours. It had 15% of my regular followers and 85% non-followers. With 370 comments, I thought you would be as surprised as I was––maybe not? Anyway, what intrigued me (as usual) was the legalism...

Categories: Hand Tools

Where Are We?

Wed, 04/09/2025 - 6:24am

Is my closest friend the wood I work? Is it woodwork? Or are the tools I lift to every task my comrades in arms? I get my answers without the tiresomeness of mere opinions directly from the wood I work; feedback is important, and it comes directly and honestly from responses I get minute by...

Categories: Hand Tools

Recovered and Recovering

Sat, 03/22/2025 - 1:17am

A Year’s Worth of Work for Paul Sellers since my ribs were broken by an assailant in Abingdon. This is how I recovered and why. I’m sorry it’s such a long post, but it is a year in the saddle for me. My Longest Single Blog Post Yet I often ask myself the question and...

Categories: Hand Tools

Understanding the Chair

Mon, 03/10/2025 - 6:22am

My recent blog post on chairs was my attempt to bridge a gap or two in the age-long passage of chair making. Just how did we end up with faults through mass-making the builds in a certain unintentional obsolescence by the original designer? Whether you buy a vintage Michael Thonet from the late 1800s or...

Categories: Hand Tools

Choices

Sun, 03/09/2025 - 4:44am

I remember my introduction to machining wood. I was aged sixteen, when every task seemed to become a machining moment in small and long bites of soul-destroying boredom that just kept building. Oh, I’m not talking about the hobbyist woodworker who sets up a mini-conveyor belt system of minor operations going from crosscuts to ripcuts...

Categories: Hand Tools

Dark and Light Things

Mon, 03/03/2025 - 2:56am

It’s a day like any other. I open the door and everything is just as it should be. I stand in the doorway for just a few seconds and then drift towards my bench, the tools and the piece I’m working on. I want to take in everything as I left it last night; the...

Categories: Hand Tools

The Remarkable Challenge of Wood

Thu, 02/27/2025 - 12:27am

There are challenges we can do nothing about, and then there are the challenges we face in the work we do and might choose to present to ourselves on purpose. That curved balustrade that sweeps gracefully between floors up and along many metres, following the sweep of the stairway to the stars, can be complicated,...

Categories: Hand Tools

Russian Redwood or Scots Pine?

Wed, 02/26/2025 - 12:49am

Well, Scots pine is also known as Redwood, Russian redwood and more names than you can shake a redwood stick at. In the sixties, we bought Redwood (Pinus sylvestris) from Russian climes in beams to resaw into vast numbers for a wide range of work. The smell filled the rafters and wafted around the shop...

Categories: Hand Tools