Notes on wood & craft.
Field guides, build stories, and the occasional hard-won lesson — written between coats of oil, from a red barn in Mount Vernon, Ohio. New entries roughly monthly; follow along by RSS or Facebook.
Five trees of Knox County — a field guide
Black walnut, white oak, cherry, sugar maple, sycamore — the five hardwoods of Knox County, and what each one teaches a maker working out of a barn in Mount Vernon.
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Forty-five years, one bad second — and why I finally bought a SawStop
Forty-five years at the lathe, one bad second on the table saw, and the saw I should have owned twenty years ago.
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From fallen tree to finished bowl: the 18-month journey of a walnut
A single black walnut from a Knox County backyard — and the reason a good bowl takes more than a year to make.
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Why the wood matters more than you think
People ask me all the time: what makes one bowl different from another? The answer almost always starts with the wood.
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Anatomy of a build: the oak kitchen table
A few months back I got a call from a customer in Michigan. He wanted a kitchen table — something big enough for the whole family.
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How to care for your handmade wood piece
One of the most common questions I get after delivering a piece is: how do I take care of this? The good news is simple.
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What is wood turning, anyway?
If you've found your way to this site, you probably have at least a rough idea of what woodturning is. But I'm surprised how often people don't really know.
Read the essay →Tell me about the tree,
or the it's headed for.
Most pieces begin with an email — a photo of a room, a rough dimension, a story about someone the piece is for. There's no form required. Just a note, and a patient reply.
michael@redbarnwoodturning.com →