I've been doing woodworking for a few years, and recently I came across a write-up that put everything in its place. The main thing I took away: a good piece rests on three pillars — the right wood with controlled moisture, well-thought-out joinery, and calm precision at every step.
The part about moisture was a revelation for me. I used to take boards "as is" and then wonder why my tabletop warped. It turns out you need stock at 8–12% moisture content, the blanks should rest on stickers for 5–10 days, and the shop should be kept at 45–55% humidity. The end grain, growth rings, and grain runout will tell you more about a board than pretty photos.
Joinery finally clicked too: glue doesn't bond empty space, it bonds precise mating surfaces — mortise and tenon, dovetail, loose tenon. A screw is just an auxiliary fastener. One thing I made a point to remember: don't overtighten the clamps, or the glue gets squeezed out and a year later the joint will "start to move."
And precision means a reference face, one measuring tool for the whole assembly, and marking with a knife, not a pencil. For finishing — sanding up through the grits 80→220, and oil if you want to keep the wood looking alive. Boring rules, but they work for years.
Source: TimberCraft
The 75th Okawa Woodworking Festival will be held in Okawa, Fukuoka Prefecture, for three days from October 10 to 12, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is organized by the festival executive committee and takes place around this time every year.
Venues include the Okawa Sangyo Kaikan, where about 10,000 pieces of furniture made by craftspeople in and around the city will be displayed and sold. About 130 furniture makers and others are exhibiting at the Okawa Sangyo Kaikan, offering tables, sofas, beds and more at special prices.
What caught my eye is the hands-on workshop. At the child-rearing support complex “Mokkaland” and elsewhere, you can make kumiko coasters or a chair while getting advice from furniture and fittings craftsmen. Learning how wood joins together from a craftsman’s hands sounds fun even for people who aren’t buying furniture.
About 1,800 free parking spaces are available at City Hall, Okawa Chuo Park Ground and other sites, and shuttle buses run between the venues and places such as Nishitetsu Yanagawa Station. For inquiries, contact the executive committee secretariat at 0944-87-2101. The committee invites visitors, saying it is an event that both furniture buyers and non-buyers can enjoy.
Source: 福岡ふかぼりメディア ささっとー
I read a story about Enrique Mehring, a carpenter from Esperanza in Santa Fe province, who is working against the clock on an armchair for Pope Leo XIV. It will be used at Mass in the Basilica of Luján during the pope’s visit to Argentina on November 8.
The commission came through friends in Luján, and he began building it about two weeks ago. His only references were a single photograph and a few measurements; the photo was just illustrative, to see whether he could make something similar. “I made it as I went, building as I did things,” he said. I think that is a good description of how a skilled carpenter works: solving on the spot what the drawing doesn’t say.
The piece is 1.25 metres tall, made from guatambú and paraíso wood, with a handcrafted Nordic-style design. It will be upholstered in white corduroy and finished with gold details. The frame is already done; the lacquer, upholstery and final details remain, and Enrique is confident he will be on time.
Enrique usually designs and builds chairs, armchairs and tables, so the job was not especially complex for him. What moves him most is the thought that a piece made in Esperanza will stay in Argentina as a keepsake of the visit. The company he works for, moreover, has a 74-year history.
Source: TN
This year marks one hundred years since the birth of Pierluigi Ghianda, the cabinetmaker born in Bovisio Masciago in 1926 and died in 2015, remembered by everyone as the “Poet of Wood”. Il Giorno reports on how his hometown is paying tribute to him.
What struck me is his approach to woodworking: he worked with joints rather than nails, because wood, he used to say, should not be “wounded”. He collaborated with major design names such as Gae Aulenti, Cini Boeri, Gianfranco Frattini, Ettore Sottsass and Vico Magistretti, as well as with several fashion houses.
The program is part of Ville Aperte in Brianza. In the evening at 9 pm, at the civic center on via Leonardo da Vinci 6, the centenary book “Il Ghianda 100” will be presented, supported by APA Confartigianato Imprese Milano, Monza e Brianza. The next day, at 9:30 and 11, there are guided visits to the Pierluigi Ghianda Fund, donated by his daughters and kept at the Alda Merini municipal library, organized by Baule Verde APS. In the afternoon, at 4 pm, there is an art workshop for children aged 6 to 10 called “To Make a Tree”.
For anyone who loves handwork, this is a good reminder: behind a well-made piece of furniture lie respect for the material and years of patience.
Source: Il Giorno
I read the story of Semyon Klyuchantsev, a woodworker from Krasnoyarsk, and wanted to retell it here. He was born in Taymyr, in the village of Nosok, moved to Krasnoyarsk at 18, and trained as an engineer in art materials processing. After the army he struggled for a long time to find work, then helped polish sculptures for the Universiade, and a year later went freelance and rented a corner of a workshop. His first investor was his father, who gave him 50,000 rubles for machines.
At first Semyon made seedling boxes and dishes for restaurants, then furniture; when the pandemic began, orders dried up. About seven years ago he made the first prototype of a wooden bird, spending, by his account, four days in the workshop. A second bird with moving wings won a craftsmen's contest run by a tool manufacturer, and the prize was a machine. In 2020 he made an art object in Yudin Square on the Kacha embankment: 60 birds hanging from trees.
Now his brand, Zastrug, is moving from furniture to toys. Nine months ago Semyon had a daughter, and for babies there is now a bird called Vesnyanka that hangs above the crib. His wife Viktoria handles the business and clients; by his account, income grew after the wedding.
I like the craftsman's thought: the tree grew for 90 years, so what is made from it should last at least as long. It is good to see a man who made expensive tables and lived on little find work where craft and family go together.
Source: V1.ru (NGS24.RU)
While reading about WorldSkills in Shanghai, I was drawn to Finnish cabinetmaker Alexander Häggman from Ostrobothnia. The competition, the 48th of its kind, ran from September 23 to 27 and brought together some 1,400 young people from over 70 countries in 64 skill areas. Finland sent 23 competitors and came home with one gold and eight Medals of Excellence.
Häggman trained at Optima in Jakobstad and now works at DetailWorks in Nykarleby. The Cabinetmaking discipline judges joinery, interpretation of drawings, choice of materials, and the finish, function and style of the furniture. He had previously won a Finnish championship gold and placed fifth at the European Championship in Denmark in 2025. Preparations began more than two years before the competition, with training on his own, team training, camps and a full dress rehearsal in Villmanstrand.
The task was a traditional Chinese tea cabinet with a removable serving tray, decorated with a laser-cut horse in thin veneer to celebrate the Year of the Horse. About an hour into the competition, the fictional client made an extra request: a storage box for the tray, so the plans had to be changed on the fly.
He finished fifth out of 25, five points short of bronze, and received a Medal of Excellence. Gold went to Tobias Kelz from Germany with 731 points, silver to Qi Sheng Chen from Taipei with 730, and bronze to Jonas Wenter from South Tyrol with 727. The French expert even offered him a job in France. Personally, I think it says something about the level of the trade that a few points separate the medal places.
The next WorldSkills will be held in 2027 in Düsseldorf.
Source: Tekijä-lehti
On the Merkur website I came across a lovely journeyman’s piece: 21-year-old Finn Hoppmann from Munich has delivered his oak desk. For several years, the works of trainee carpenters have been displayed for a month at the Brucker Sparkasse on Hauptstraße, and Hoppmann has just brought his there.
His path to the trade was not a straight line: after Realschule he spent a year in the Federal Volunteer Service with the THW, attended the FOS, worked a year in the IT sector, and then began training as a carpenter (Zimmerer). Eventually he switched to cabinetmaking (Schreiner), a decision he says he has never regretted.
He trained at Lindinger Holztechnik GmbH in Germering. There he worked on trade-fair construction as well as solid oak bathroom furniture. For his journeyman’s piece, too, he chose oak: the desk was meant to be timeless yet demanding in craftsmanship. It will not be sold; it is meant to remind him of his apprenticeship.
His company has taken him on. He wants to take his time with the master craftsman’s school and first gather about five years of professional experience. He intends to stay loyal to the trade because it promises a secure job. What I like is that he is keeping his journeyman’s piece, a piece of furniture built not for the market but for his own memories.
Source: Merkur
I recently read an article about the fine woodworking event at the 48th WorldSkills Competition, and it moved me. Ou Zu’an, a competitor from Guangzhou Light Industry Technician College, won gold and helped the Chinese team achieve a “three-peat” in this event.
Fine woodworking is a blind-task event: competitors don’t receive the official drawings until 45 minutes before the start. This edition introduced a fully three-dimensional module task for the first time, requiring them to build a staircase for a wooden house using straight tenon, dovetail and internal tenon joints. On the first day, an error in the dimensions was found on the official drawing, so every competitor’s clock was reset and they had to start again. Ou at first thought he had drawn it wrong and his composure wavered, but once he confirmed the mistake wasn’t his, he settled down.
He completed all the modules in 4 days and 22 hours. His piece was a solid-wood staircase with a handrail, built without nails or screws, using only joinery. Under the scoring rules, the gaps at the staircase joints had to stay within 0.2 mm for full marks, about the thickness of two sheets of A4 paper. During judging, many outer seams stayed within 0.2 mm, and in some places a feeler gauge couldn’t even get in.
He joined the woodworking team in 2021, starting with sawing, planing and chiseling, and spent about a year on the basics. The staircase was his weak point, because it demanded strong spatial thinking and many angle and trigonometry calculations. His coach, Huang Bolin, won gold in fine woodworking at the 47th WorldSkills Competition, and said this year’s task was kept completely confidential and was clearly harder.
What I like most is this detail: however precise a piece of work is, it is built step by step from the most basic sawing, planing and chiseling. Ou said he will keep studying woodworking and share his experience with younger students.
Source: 广州日报新花城 (Guangzhou Daily, Xinhuacheng)
The fifth annual Handworks woodworking showcase took over the Amana Colonies in Iowa on Saturday, September 5, and KCRG reports that the heat did not keep people away. Visitors and vendors simply found ways to stay cool.
Nate Homolka, a woodworking vendor from Cleveland, Ohio, said the Iowa heat took some getting used to, so he made drinking water a priority and carried what he called the biggest water bottle known to man. He added that without the shaded vendor tents he would have left to look for air conditioning.
Sonja Parsons, who lives in Iowa, came with her family early in the morning to avoid the hottest part of the day. They used the event program as a fan in the Fest Hall, and she said she valued the hands-on woodworking experience for her kids.
What I like about this small story is how ordinary it is: a craft show, a hot Saturday, and people who still showed up to see tools and woodwork up close. It tells me there is real appetite for hands-on woodworking, even when the weather is working against it.
Source: KCRG
Popular Woodworking has started a series on bringing an old Stanley No. 220 block plane back to life, and the first part is a good, practical read on the step many people skip: flattening the sole.
The author, Yoav Liberman, was gifted the plane a few weeks before writing. A wooden front knob and a die-cast aluminum lever cap suggest it dates from the 1960s or 70s. It has forward and backward depth adjustment but no lateral adjustment lever, and the sole was badly cupped after years of use without care. He also gives some background: the No. 220 has a 20-degree bed and no adjustable throat plate, the No. 9 1/2 has the same bed angle with an adjustable throat and lateral adjustment, and the No. 60 1/2 has a 12-degree bed with the same premium features.
The method is simple. Check the sole with a straightedge against a window or other indirect light. Then install the blade, retract the edge fully and tighten the lever cap to normal working tension, because lapping an empty body lets the cast iron flex and change shape when the cap is tightened later. Lap on a 120-grit diamond stone with water, flipping the plane and wiping the sole often to see the scratch pattern. After that, move to the 220-grit side and finish on the 360-grit side of a double-sided stone.
What I liked is the realistic target. The toe, the heel and the surfaces just in front of and behind the mouth need to be in the same plane, and minor low spots elsewhere will not matter, so he stopped when about 95 percent of the sole was evenly lapped. Without diamond stones, he notes that wet-dry sandpaper stuck to a granite plate or a table saw wing can do the job.
Part 2, on the blade and throat, is still to come, and I will be watching for it.
Source: Popular Woodworking
I read a long investigative piece about furniture manufacturing in Damietta, and what struck me was how a craft that craftsmen inherited from their grandfathers is turning into a complete industrial system. The Damietta Furniture City sits in the Shata area of the Nile Delta, where the international coastal road meets the Port Said–Damietta road. It covers about 331 feddans and is described as the first and largest industrial zone specialised in furniture and related industries in the Middle East.
The city has 54 hangars holding roughly 1,348 factories and workshops, along with a furniture technology centre, central workshops that serve small craftsmen, shops, administrative offices, a bank, a police station, a fire station and a medical clinic. The idea is that a craftsman can find most of what he needs in one place, from the workshop to marketing.
The spaces are sized to fit every scale. There are 75 specialised factories ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 square metres, while a small workshop covers between 100 and 150 square metres. Small and medium workshops occupy about 72.1 feddans, large factories about 50 feddans, the exhibition complex about 20.9 feddans, and the supporting industries complex about 9.76 feddans, which includes adhesives, paints, sponges and accessories.
According to the investigation, the vision rests on the economic and social development plan document presented by Planning Minister Ahmed Rostom and approved by both chambers of parliament. It aims at expansion and export, and at turning "Damietta furniture" from a famous name into an Egyptian brand that competes in regional and global markets. I am glad to see traditional woodworking getting this kind of attention, and I hope that the skill of the hand stays at the heart of this development.
Source: Youm7
