Background
How I got here
I didn't come from a woodworking family. There was no grandfather with a shop full of hand planes and wisdom. I started the way most people do now — watching YouTube videos at midnight, convinced that all I needed was a table saw and a dream.
The first few projects were rough. Gaps you could see from across the room, glue-ups that racked, drawer fronts that didn't align. But something about the material — the way wood pushes back, the way it forces you to slow down — kept pulling me back.
The photography started as documentation. I wanted to remember what builds looked like before they got finished and sent to their new homes. But getting close to the grain with a macro lens turned into its own rabbit hole. Now I spend almost as much time thinking about light and framing as I do about joinery.
The journal is where I write about both — the builds, the failures, the tools, the techniques, and the occasional thing that genuinely surprised me.