Burley Figure Woodcraft

06/05/2026

06/05/2026

We installed 522 feet of Crown Molding for a new client who just moved to town. She's already talking about the next two projects she wants us to take on.

05/18/2026

One of my regular clients let me know her wire closet racks fell off the wall. They do that after about 20 years. She wanted a quote to install an off-the-shelf closet system. I asked her what she thought of letting me see if I could be competitive with the retail product.

She decided to go with a completely custom solution for her walk in closet as well as her son's closet. It wasn't an apples-to-apples comparison, so we ended up a couple of thousand over the retail option, but instead of a picture of wood on particle board, it's solid birch trim with birch veneer plywood stained to match the rest of the wood in her home.

We're bringing the beauty to your home with the beauty of real wood.

04/26/2026

I more than doubled my Diston collection today. I got the D8, the one with the thumb grip, that I've been wanting, but he also had a 42" Diston bucking saw, a new-old-stock cast iron Stanley miter frame with a 24" Diston back saw, to replace Stanley Handyman cast aluminum miter frame with a Diston 12" back saw, and a two-man crosscut.

I also picked up a post-war Stanley 5c from him to fill a gap in my corrugated collection, not pictured.

04/18/2026

Here's a little finish carpentry project we completed this week. It's a beadboard wrap for the kitchen island. The client was overjoyed, and started making a list of other projects they wanted us to do for them.

04/17/2026

I heard the crash and knew what happened before I turned around. It was my No.5 Sweetheart. I had a post war parts plane, so, I was able to keep working, but if anyone knows where I can get a period correct sole, I would be grateful.

04/11/2026

I'm working on my hand-cut joinery skills with these half-blind dovetails and draw-pin saddle joints. These legs have two more pairs of mortises each to go. Four will be through mortises, and four will be angles tusk mortises.

They are the best I've ever done, and the first I'm comfortable sharing, but my taste is out-pacing my skill. I'm not satisfied with them, but I'm accepting that they are good enough. I want to be great, but I'm willing to tolerate doing not great work on my way to becoming great. The messy middle sucks, but it's the only path to getting good.

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through." - Ira Glass

03/25/2026

Where it ended.

03/25/2026

Where it started.

03/24/2026

8 hours to assemble it. Tomorrow it will get a light sanding and a final coat of lacquer.