---
title: "Seventh Designs"
url: https://seventhdesigns.com/
description: "Seventh Designs is a weblog about furniture-making and household woodworking: timber and how it moves, the joints that hold a piece together, and the finishes that go on."
---

# Seventh Designs

## Earlier entries

Aside

Sharpening treated as an occasional project produces tools that are dull most of the time, because the threshold for starting a project is high and the threshold for carrying on with a slightly dull blade is low. Treated as maintenance, a blade goes back to the stones for a minute at a time, several times a session, and it is never actually blunt. The equipment hardly matters next to the frequency. Whatever is at hand, kept out on the bench rather than put away, will produce sharper tools than a better arrangement kept in a cupboard.

[August 26, 2013](https://seventhdesigns.com/sharpening-routine) — [Joinery](https://seventhdesigns.com/joinery)

Status

Stock moved from an unheated outbuilding into a heated room needs weeks to settle, not days, and it needs air on every face while it does. Stickered in a stack with spacers between the layers, boards give up moisture evenly and stay flat. Piled solid on the floor they dry from the outside in, and the outer boards cup while the inner ones stay wet. Anything cut from the stack before it has stopped moving will be cut to a dimension that no longer exists a month later.

[August 5, 2013](https://seventhdesigns.com/shop-notes-humidity) — [Materials](https://seventhdesigns.com/materials)

Quote

> A surface left by a sharpened edge and a surface left by an abrasive are not the same surface at a finer or coarser degree. They are different in kind, and no progression of grits converts one into the other.

## [On the Surface Left by an Edge](https://seventhdesigns.com/working-by-hand)

[July 15, 2013](https://seventhdesigns.com/working-by-hand) — [Finishing](https://seventhdesigns.com/finishing)

[Continue reading](https://seventhdesigns.com/working-by-hand)

## [Gluing Up a Wide Panel Without Cupping](https://seventhdesigns.com/panel-glue-up)

[June 24, 2013](https://seventhdesigns.com/panel-glue-up) — [Joinery](https://seventhdesigns.com/joinery)

A panel glued from several boards can be flatter and more stable than any single wide board, provided the boards are arranged rather than simply joined.

[Continue reading](https://seventhdesigns.com/panel-glue-up)

Image

## [Hardware, Hinges and the Details](https://seventhdesigns.com/hardware-and-details)

[June 3, 2013](https://seventhdesigns.com/hardware-and-details) — [Finishing](https://seventhdesigns.com/finishing)

Hardware is the part of a piece of furniture that is touched most and considered last, which is the wrong way round.

[Continue reading](https://seventhdesigns.com/hardware-and-details)

## [Refinishing a Secondhand Dresser](https://seventhdesigns.com/refinishing-a-dresser)

[May 13, 2013](https://seventhdesigns.com/refinishing-a-dresser) — [Finishing](https://seventhdesigns.com/finishing)

The first decision is whether the old finish needs removing at all, and the honest answer is more often no than the effort involved would suggest.

[Continue reading](https://seventhdesigns.com/refinishing-a-dresser)

## [Softwood, Hardwood, and What Actually Matters](https://seventhdesigns.com/softwood-hardwood)

[April 22, 2013](https://seventhdesigns.com/softwood-hardwood) — [Materials](https://seventhdesigns.com/materials)

The two words describe how a tree reproduces, not how hard the timber is, and treating them as a hardness scale leads to some poor choices.

[Continue reading](https://seventhdesigns.com/softwood-hardwood)