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Why make it in the first place? Before I draw a c

Why make it in the first place?
Before I draw a chair or table, I need to understand why it should exist.
What must it do? How should it be made? What can it cost?
Those questions do not limit the creative work. They are where the design begins.
In this week’s From the Bench, I look at how very different assignments led to very different pieces, and what connects them beneath the surface.
Read the full essay at the link in our bio.
#FurnitureDesign #Woodworking #DesignProcess #Craftsmanship #BrianBoggs

Why are chair legs round? For a long time, mine w

Why are chair legs round?
For a long time, mine were too.
But after making hundreds of post-and-rung chairs, I started wondering whether the round leg was still serving the chair—or whether I was simply making it round because that was the tradition I had inherited.
That question eventually changed the way I thought about joinery, structure, and what a chair could become.
This week’s From the Bench: Why I Left the Round Leg.
Link in bio.

For four decades I believed a joint should tell th

For four decades I believed a joint should tell the truth.
I never questioned that assumption.
Then a redesign forced me to.
This week's essay isn't really about joinery. It's about the assumptions we carry for so long that we stop seeing them.
Link in bio.
#woodworking #furnituredesign #craftsmanship #design #joinery

Our Sonus guitar chair landed in no-man’s-land: to

Our Sonus guitar chair landed in no-man’s-land: too many orders for our shop to build, but too few for our manufacturing partner.
Bringing it home meant starting again. It also gave me the rare opportunity to revisit a chair I first designed fifteen years ago and ask what should remain, what could be improved, and what the next version needed to become.
This week’s From the Bench tells the longer story behind the Sonus guitar chair.
Read the essay at the link in our bio.
#BrianBoggs #BoggsBench #SonusChair #GuitarChair #ChairDesign #FurnitureDesign #FineWoodworking #Woodworking #Craftsmanship #AshevilleMakers

I stood in front of a room full of woodworkers in

I stood in front of a room full of woodworkers in Las Vegas and asked one question: does this feel like the golden age of design? Nobody raised their hand. That silence turned into a new essay, on design, AI, ego, and why we're still pretending our machines are hand tools. Link in bio.
#BoggsBench #BrianBoggs #DesignPhilosophy #Craftsmanship #AI

A spokeshave with adjusters sticking into your pal

A spokeshave with adjusters sticking into your palm can’t be trusted to move the way your hand does.
I designed this one with a clean surface, front and back, so I can flip it, turn it, pull it out of the horse for a closer look, any way the work asks for, without anything in the way.
Balance holds no matter how I hold it. That’s the whole point. A tool that’s always ready doesn’t chatter, and it doesn’t make me work to keep it clean.
Last week’s Substack essay, Worthless Paper, tells the fuller story of why I designed the Lie-Nielsen Boggs Spokeshave this way. Link in bio.
#Spokeshave #ToolDesign #BrianBoggs #BoggsBench #LieNielsen HandTools FineWoodworking Woodworking Craftsmanship Handmade StudioFurniture Asheville

The barriers that shape us are rarely made of stee

The barriers that shape us are rarely made of steel. They’re made of our own expectations.”
I was thirteen, cutting tobacco, and the tool I had was destroying my wrist. So I made a better one.
That moment changed everything I believed about what I could do.
The full story — including the worst spokeshave I ever bought and the one that finally took me across a different kind of barrier — is in this week’s essay. Link in bio.
#woodworking #handtools #spokeshave #toolmaking #chairmaking handmadetools craftsmanship boggsbench

I’ve always had an appetite for tools and machines

I’ve always had an appetite for tools and machines. It’s gotten me into trouble more than once.
Forty years in the shop taught me there’s a real difference between buying capability and buying hope. I didn’t always know which one I was doing.
This grinder took me about a year to decide on. How I got here — and the questions I wish I’d had at twenty — is in this week’s essay. Link in bio.
#woodworking #handtools #chairmaking #boggsbench #woodworkingtools

Most makers spend so much energy trying to be orig

Most makers spend so much energy trying to be original that they never become receptive.
This essay first appeared in 2009. After another seventeen years of designing furniture and teaching others, I find my answer hasn’t changed.
Originality isn’t something we manufacture through effort. It arrives when we develop the skills, attention, and humility to attract it.
The Myth of Original Design is now on Boggs Bench Substack.
Link in bio. #Originality #CreativeProcess #DesignThinking #Craftsmanship #BoggsBench

Most table bases are designed around what looks ri

Most table bases are designed around what looks right. This one is designed around where your feet actually land.
In this short video, Brian uses a piece of MDF and a few borrowed shoes to show exactly why the foot of a table base needs to land where it does — and why those angled legs on the Timber Frame Table aren’t just an aesthetic decision. They’re solving a problem.
If you’ve ever felt cramped at a beautiful table, this is why.
Learn more about the geometry in the free full essay on Substack — link in bio.
#BrianBoggs #TableDesign #FurnitureDesign #Woodworking #Ergonomics

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