Blog > Artisan Geometry

Board Foot “Calculator”

Old-school method for calculating linear ratios such as board footage. This particular example is from "Deane's Doctrine of Naval Architecture" published in 1670. See the store page to…

Numbers Versus True

Geometry is a mysterious bird. The ancient geometers thought it mysterious because its secrets were like jewels that fell from the heavens. Though it’s the earliest form of…

A look through Euclid’s Door

Our book Euclid's Door went off to the printer this week. It's a step by step guide to building a set of layout and design tools that were…

East Meets West (Or Vice Versa)

We are often asked if the traditional western practice of designing objects (such as furniture) to whole number harmonic ratios could have also been the case in the…

Cracking the Coffer Code

English oak chest; 16th century.  Image from Wiki Commons, public domain.   For George Walker and me what is truly fascinating about these early chests is that they…

Pinch Sticks Plus

We nearly always use pinch sticks to record and transfer the distance between two points--in this case the span between the jambs of a door frame. It occurred…

The Graphic Rule

This excerpt from our latest book, “From Truths to Tools” speaks to a rather esoteric, but highly useful, rule for use with scaled drawings:        …

The Hidden Hexagon

You can download a PDF of this blog post here: Hidden Hexagon              

Solving Spans with Sticks, Strings, Sightlines and Stones

      In this excerpt from our latest book, “From Truths to Tools”, we show how the carpenter’s of antiquity used the simplest of tools--those mentioned with…

From Truths to Tools

Here we are outside the local print/scan shop where our illustrator, Andrea Love, poses with her art work for the cover of our new book. According to the…