I had the extremely good fortune of spending 1-5 September at Roy Underhill’s Woodwright’s school taking the Moravian Workbench class with Will Myers. It was such a good time, I thought I’d write about it to help collect my thoughts and to encourage others to try it for themselves.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been working on a new island for our kitchen. It’s a relatively straightforward piece: two cases, side-by-side, with a few open shelves and six drawers; slab top, which is next on the list of projects.

Since I was 17 and first read No Exit, the line “Hell is other people” both resonated with me and troubled me, so I read more dark existentialist literature...and maybe understood some of it.

Doing the work is where we usually fail. We have great dreams, visions, and aspirations. Most of those lofty things remain just that, though: lofty. We are unable to overcome static friction to get moving; or we get moving but lack the momentum to persist.

I suspect many “serious” craftsman are uninterested in the cutting board game. It’s not terribly challenging; if you’re selling them, the profit margin is not huge; and if you’re making more than a few the work can get repetitive and boring, very quickly.

An inch is almost nothing; or, it's ridiculously huge...it all depends on the circumstances. Not just in woodworking, but all circumstances. If you have an inch long piece of wood, it seems pretty small, unless it's lodged in your finger, at which point, it feels like a log.

There were a lot of tricky pieces to this build. By far, the most interesting was making the individual ebony plugs. Thewoodwhisperer.com has the full video and instruction for those interested in how to do it...but for the non-woodworkers out there, know that it took over two full work days to cut, polish, and install those guys.

I've been really enjoying the blanket chest build...here are a few more photos updating the progress.

I am currently building the Greene and Greene Blanket Chest featured on thewoodwhispererguild.com. I don't usually "show my work" as I go, but the customer is interested in the process and I'm approaching this project a little bit differently than I normally work, so I thought I'd share some notes about the project as I go, and also talk about how I work.