namu.works — the craft of woodworking

01 joinery

The honest joint

The art of connecting wood without fasteners. Dovetails, mortise-and-tenon, finger joints — each a puzzle solved by centuries of craft wisdom. A well-cut dovetail is a quiet promise: this drawer will outlive the cabinet, and the cabinet will outlive its maker.

We mark with a knife rather than a pencil, because the knife line cuts the fibres and gives the chisel a wall to land against. Precision is not a vanity here; it is what keeps a hundred-year piece honest.

jointblind dovetail
angle14°
toolsmarking knife · 6mm chisel · dovetail saw
timbereuropean oak, quartersawn

fig. 01 — blind dovetail, exploded view

fig. 02 — quercus robur, transverse section

02 material

The voice of the timber

Oak, walnut, cherry, maple — each species tells its own story through grain, color, and working properties. The woodworker listens before cutting. A board's history is written in its rings: a wet summer, a long drought, a year the wind blew east.

Quartersawn oak gives a medullary fleck that reflects light like cathedral glass. Walnut darkens with sun and oil. Cherry flushes from cream to deep amber across a single decade. To choose is to commit.

speciesquercus robur — european oak
cutquartersawn
moisture8 ± 1%
gradeFAS — first & seconds

03 form

Function, then beauty

Where function meets beauty. Clean lines born from natural curves, proportions derived from the golden ratio, surfaces polished by hand to reveal the wood's inner light. A chair must hold a sitting body; everything else is conversation between the maker and the material.

The Scandinavian masters taught us this: leave the wood alone where you can. A chamfer instead of a moulding. A pegged joint instead of a screw. Honesty as ornament.

finishdanish oil, 3 coats hand-rubbed
ratio1 : 1.618 (φ)
edge3mm chamfer, 45°
sheensatin, 2000-grit final

fig. 03 — side chair, side elevation

fig. 04 — process diagram, six stages

04 process

From rough lumber to finished piece

Measuring, marking, cutting, shaping, fitting, finishing. Each step demands patience and precision. The shop runs on a rhythm older than electricity — sharpen, plane, check, sharpen again. Time is the only honest finish.

A tolerance of one tenth of a millimetre is the difference between a drawer that whispers and one that scrapes. We work to that whisper. The hand learns what the ruler can only describe.

tolerance± 0.1mm
stages6 — measure, mark, cut, shape, fit, finish
durationavg. 42 hrs / piece
shavingscomposted on-site

namu .works

From tree to object

The honest joint

The voice of the timber

Function, then beauty

From rough lumber to finished piece

The shop's standing stock