Bursts.

In woodworking, things seem to happen in bursts. Like activity - when you go through frantic spurts of busy-ness one day and in the next, seem to spend most of your time drinking lots of tea. Furniture also seems to build itself in short growth bursts, and each time this happens to me, I never cease to be amazed. All you will have to show for three odd weeks of work will be cut pieces of wood in different sizes lying about and then suddenly in the space of an hour, a miracle happens and you have a dresser. Or at least the beginnings of one. It makes a nice change.

Dresser front in the style of a jester

Two working drawers and the start of a third.

Is my plane too plain?

On top of all that, we've done some exciting marquetry this week with the help of a fret saw and some smelly animal glue. The end result is the top that will go on our apprentice boxes. The tricky bit is picking one. The tool of the week for me has certainly been the pyrography pen. That's right, fire. That comes in an itty bitty 5mm tip and works like a biro. Magic. I'm definitely getting one of those in my workshop. I just have to curtail the urge to burn my name into everything now.