About
The pull
I built my first table because I couldn't afford the one I wanted, and it was terrible. The second one was less terrible. Twenty-odd years on, that's still the whole engine: the next piece can always be more honest than the last one.
The training
Two years sweeping a chairmaker's floor before he let me near the good wood, then eight years building for other people's names. The shop's been mine since 2014, in Fort Collins. Most of what I know about joinery came from people who are gone now; most of what I know about casework I learned in those eight years.
The practice
Machines do the donkey work; hands do everything a hand can feel. Dovetails and mortises are cut at the bench. Finishes are oil and wax I mix myself, repairable forever. A film finish looks perfect for five years and then fails all at once, and I don't build for five years.
The wood
Most of it comes from a sawyer twenty minutes away who mills urban trees: storm-downed oaks, a walnut that shaded somebody's yard for eighty years. I'll tell you which tree your table was, when I know. Sometimes clients bring their own: a grandmother's walnut, a barn beam. That wood costs nothing and is worth the most.
If a joint ever fails, I fix it. That's the whole warranty.
