18 Mar 2026
About the workshop
My name is Jonathan Gooch. I make furniture by hand in a converted double garage in Somerset, 6.2 metres by 5.8 metres, with one bench under the window and a woodstove in the far corner that takes forty minutes to bring the shop up to 15 degrees in January.
Furniture making started as an evening habit in 2011 and became most of my working week in 2019. Four or five commissions a year come through the shop, mostly small casework: side tables, cabinets, a run of kitchen drawers. Between commissions I make stools, boxes and anything that lets me try a joint I have not cut before.
What is the Jonathan W Gooch workshop journal for?
The Jonathan W Gooch journal records what happened at the bench, including the failures, because a claim written in public needs a measurement to stand on. Half of what I believed about oil finishes turned out to be wrong once the steps went down in order. Woodworking writing usually shows the finished piece and skips the split leg.
Stool number two split its seat because the wedge kerf ran along the grain of the seat instead of across it, and that one failure taught me more than the nine stools that went together properly. Every entry here carries the mistake alongside the method.
Which hand tools and machines does the workshop use?
The bench is beech, 2.1 metres long, with a leg vice and a row of holdfast holes. Hand work runs on a number 5 jack plane, a number 4 smoother, a block plane, a dovetail saw filed 15 teeth per inch, a tenon saw, and six bevel edge chisels between 6mm and 32mm.
Three machines earn their place in a 36 square metre shop: a 300mm bandsaw, a small planer thicknesser and a pillar drill. Machines do the rough conversion and hands do the joinery. Thicknessing eight boards by hand is a fine way to spend one Saturday and a poor way to spend every Saturday.
| Sharpening stage | Abrasive | Grit or particle size | How often a paring chisel sees it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regrinding a chipped bevel | Diamond plate | 400 grit | Only after an edge chips |
| Honing | Diamond plate | 1000 grit | About twice a day of paring |
| Polishing | Waterstone | 8000 grit | About twice a day of paring |
| Stropping | Leather with green compound | 0.5 micron chromium oxide | Every 15 minutes of paring |
Which timbers does the workshop use, and at what moisture content?
European oak, ash and walnut cover almost every commission in this workshop, all bought rough sawn from two yards within an hour of Somerset and all stickered indoors for at least four weeks before use. Cherry appears once or twice a year. Softwood goes into jigs and shop furniture, never into a commission.
| Species | Thickness usually bought | Target moisture content | Price per cubic metre, spring 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| European oak, flatsawn | 27mm and 52mm | 8 to 10 percent | £1,450 and £1,550 |
| European oak, quartersawn | 27mm | 8 to 10 percent | £1,850 |
| Ash | 40mm | 8 to 10 percent | £950 |
| American black walnut | 27mm | 7 to 9 percent | £4,200 |
Those prices are what two Somerset yards charged me in April 2026 for rough sawn kilned stock collected in person. Walnut costs roughly 2.9 times what flatsawn oak costs per cubic metre, which is why walnut goes on tops and drawer fronts and oak carries the carcase behind them.
How do you contact Jonathan W Gooch?
Write to jonathan at jonathanwgooch dot com with a question about a technique in an entry, or with a correction. Replies take about a week, because bench work fills Monday through Thursday. Several readers have corrected details here, including a chairmaker in Devon who explained why leg tenons at 12 percent moisture loosen every summer.