About
Seventh Designs is a writing project about furniture and the household woodworking that surrounds it. It covers the material, the joints, and the finishes, and it tries to explain why a given method works rather than only listing the steps in order.
The entries are grouped into three standing categories. Joinery covers frames, fits and the marking out that precedes them. Materials covers timber as something that keeps moving after it is seasoned, including how boards are cut from the log and what the seasons do to them afterwards. Finishing covers surfaces and films, and the last few hours of work in which a piece either gains its depth or loses it.
Entries run in date order, newest first, on the front page. The archive lists everything by month, and each category page lists its own entries with a short extract. Short notes and observations that are not full entries appear in the Ephemera list in the sidebar, and they are also filed in the archive like anything else.
The subject is deliberately narrow. There is no attempt here to cover building work, carpentry on site, or machinery in any depth beyond what a small shop is likely to contain. What is covered is the bench, the board, and the decisions made between the two.
Nothing published here is a specification or an instruction for work carried out on someone else's behalf. It is written for people doing this in their own time, on their own furniture, and it assumes the reader will test an approach on offcuts before committing to it.