Learn with us.
Everybody sells the finished thing and hides the road to it. This is the road. Three things are being made here and not one of them exists yet. Not in a box, not in a photograph, not anywhere. Two are wood and one is wool, and the road is the same either way. Below is exactly where each one is standing today, including the parts that are stuck.
Every station on the road is a page of its own, and so is every thing to do. Open one and it ends. Nothing here goes on forever.
The answer key to the eight hinges, including the screw that was drawn too short to grab anything and got caught on paper.
Something new every SaturdayEverything made goes down the same road.
A chair, a spoon, a rocket, a wooden airplane. Five stops, always in this order, always all five. Skip one and you find out later which one you skipped. Open any of them for what it means and one thing to do about it.
1Draw
How big is every single part?
Decide what it is, then dimension every part of it.
Grown-ups call it Design engineering
2Source
Who can make it, and what will they charge?
Find the shop and the materials, and agree a price.
Grown-ups call it Sourcing
3Make
What happens when you actually cut the wood?
Someone cuts wood. The first one is never the good one.
Grown-ups call it Prototyping
4Check
Is it the size we said it would be?
Measure what came back against what we drew.
Grown-ups call it Inspection
5Ship
How does it get to a person?
It goes in a box, and then it belongs to somebody.
Grown-ups call it Fulfilment
For the grown-ups: those five are design engineering, sourcing, prototyping, inspection and fulfilment. Nothing on this page is a lesson plan we made up. The board below moves when a real gate clears on a real program, and it moves backwards too when something breaks.
Your shop card.
Do the thing at a station, then stamp it. 3 of 5 can be stamped today. The rest are not pretend-locked. They open when a real shop cuts a real piece of wood, and you will be able to tell from this page the week it happens.
- ?Draw
- ?Source
- ?Make
- ?CheckFirst article: our bench, T1–T5
- ?ShipFlight 001 departs the living room
The Jumbo
KidsA sculpted maple jumbo jet with a walnut nose. A toy, built to be handed down.
No. 001 under the tree, 2026-12-25
Max — Mascot Figure Lamp
HomeAn articulated white-oak robot whose head is a working bulb. That's the joke.
Numbered run of 50
Larry
KidsA plush llama in the 1950s style: jointed, wool pile, built to be handed to a child and kept. Designed by Kilian.
Standing at Draw
Design intent - Kilian's llama, 1955 construction · waiting on Kilian
What happens at DrawThings to do.
Every one of these is its own page and every one of them ends. Two come off the printer. None of them need anything you have to buy.
- Open
Design a bench.
Draw the top of a bench with your finger and it stands up on the screen as a real one. Pick the wood, the edge, the paint and the legs, and watch every choice change it. It ends with a card with your name on it, the way a real drawing carries the name of whoever drew it.
About fifteen minutes.You need: A mouse, or a finger on a screenTeaches: Design engineering - Open
How big is that really?
Three hundred and eighty millimetres means nothing until it stands next to a credit card. Both our objects on one ladder against four things already in your house, then the same trick backwards on something of yours.
About ten minutes.You need: A ruler, A credit cardTeaches: Scale - Open
Train your millimetre eye.
Five rounds. One bar you know the length of, one you do not, and a guess in millimetres. Inside three counts, and that three is the whole lesson.
Two minutes a go.You need: Nothing at allTeaches: Tolerance - Open
Spot the mistake.
Two things that were badly wrong with the airplane, drawn the way they were wrong. Find them before you open the answer. Both were caught on paper, which is the only reason they were cheap.
About ten minutes.You need: Your eyesTeaches: Review - Open
Eight hinges, and why.
The answer key to the Draw station. All eight places Max bends, why a shoulder needs a different one from an elbow, and the screw that was drawn too short to grab anything.
About fifteen minutes.You need: The drawing, Your own armTeaches: Joints - Open
The measuring sheet.
Guess it, measure it, write down the difference. A printable first article check, with the tolerance written down before anything is measured, because deciding it afterwards is how everybody cheats.
Half an hour.You need: A printer, A ruler, Anything not squishyTeaches: First articlePrints - Open
Draw your own, properly.
Our drawing sheet with everything taken off it. The same frame and the same boxes a workshop looks for. Draw anything, put a number on every edge, and get somebody who is not you to sign it.
An afternoon.You need: A printer, A pencilTeaches: Revision controlPrints - Open
Shop words.
Eight words we use here every day, and not one of them is a kid version. Half of them exist because something went wrong once and somebody needed a short way to say it.
Come back to it.You need: NothingTeaches: Vocabulary
You cannot buy either of these yet.
Max is a numbered run of fifty and number one stays in Greenbush. No bulb is locked, so nothing has been built and nothing is being sold today. His page keeps a list, and the list is how you hear the week a shop says yes.
Get on the list for MaxEntries
Written when a station moves, and only when something happened worth reading.
The Road, Drawn in Crayon
The Build Log was written for grown-ups. It has become the thing my nine year old and I talk about, so we rewrote it for him. Five stations, a box of crayons, and the stuck parts left stuck.
The Airplane Is Not Built Yet
My son asked for a wooden 747. There is still no airplane. There are seven drawings, a wing that could not thread its own hole, and a signature to go. First entry in The Build Log.
The Fashion Files.
Everything above is wood. Next door is cloth. Why a jumper stretches and a shirt does not, how to count the threads in something you already own, and the real hundred and eight thread recipe for our own plaid with a grid to colour it in on.
Go to the Fashion Files