Earlywood: First Critique, Then Build

Publisher’s note: Good morning! Welcome to Earlywood, a free excerpt from one of the thousands of pieces I’ve written since 1996. Sometimes it originally appeared in a magazine article. Or in a book. Or in this case, a blog post from 2020. Each entry has been updated or annotated with some modern context or point of view. We hope you enjoy it.

A pile of my early designs from the 1990s that were vetted by my fellow editors.

Because of my odd path through life, almost all of my early furniture designs were vetted, savaged and usually improved by a group of experienced woodworkers before I started the construction process. For 15 years, all of the editors at Popular Woodworking would gather occasionally around a table to plan out future issues of the magazine. We would review proposals from outside authors and we would present our own designs for review.

The short critiques sounded like this: “That rail is too heavy. You don’t have enough meat in that joint. That overhang looks clunky. You …