Recently, I was contacted by a customer to whom I had sold an urn.
She wanted to spread the remains of  her partner after the ceremony
and keep the urn as a memorial, and to store precious, personal items.
Unfortunately, she forgot to tell the funeral director...

I learned to cut dovetails by hand a year and a half ago. It seemed
daunting, but with perseverance and cutting many ugly practice pieces
with inexpensive wood, I managed to do well enough to sell several
boxes and urns with dovetail joinery.

Router cut dovetails have t...

Wood is bent by cutting thin strips—most often between 1/16 to 1/8 inches thick. It is then shaped by either steam and then placed into a form that has the desired shape, or the thin strips can be placed directly into the form without steaming them.

I have made a few it...

Incorporating Decorative Plugs in Tea Boxes

There are countless ways to craft handmade artistic wooden boxes. The simplest form, a box made with 90° joinery, can be enhanced with carving, inlay, veneering,
dowels, plugs, marquetry, and other techniques.
...

An artisan woodworker's thoughts on the beauty of elm in cremation urns.

A woodworker's notes on the creative process. Reflections on inspiration and ideas for fine woodworking cremation urns, tea boxes, custom wood tables and more.

       Soon after I began selling my handmade artistic wooden boxes online, I had a request to make four small boxes, all identical, for use as urns. The woman, whose
mother-in-law had died, desired boxes which had the tropical wood...

Sycamore trees lined the tree lawns along my street in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. One year their bark began to shed excessively, and I wondered if they were diseased, like the elm trees in neighboring Shaker Heights, which were ravaged by the elm beetle. I was relieved t...