Shop Notes

"to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody."

1 Thessalonians 4:11-12

Cast on Good Soil

We’ve cast our seed out, and I pray it’s landed on good soil. This season feels like the middle — uncertain, costly, and full of faith — but we’ll keep...

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What’s Already Here

But the beginning was simple: what is available, and what can I make from it? That question built a nation.

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Collaborative Fuel

That’s one of the beautiful things about collaboration. It reminds you that value is often found at the point where your skill meets someone else’s real need. Not imagined need....

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From Winter into Spring

Winter had its work but now it is time to plant.

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A Thousand Small Shops

When my family and I moved to our farm, it was an astonishing moment in our lives. We had land. We had gone from a one-acre lot on the edge...

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Grasping the Wheel

For years I’ve thought about what was lost when industry left the household. Henry Ford did not just create a better way to build cars. He helped cement a model...

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Walking in Their Footsteps

I have spent much of my life reading about the old axe makers. Not just their tools, though I’ve loved those too. Not just the patterns, the stamps, the regions,...

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The Machines That Fight Back

Machines never seem to fail when the shop is quiet...

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