I'm in the office with cold rain beating on the windows tonight, and a saggy balding middle-aged man keeps staring back at me every time I look out the window.

The àn tables are done. Or near enough: the wax needs buffing and then I can photograph them, but the making is finished. One in Silver Ash and Myrtle, and one in Victorian Blackwood. The joinery is locked in tight, the spandrels sit snugly in their bridles, and the whole thing holds without glue. There were no major mistakes, and only about three hundred minor ones, which is pretty decent going for me. If the measure of a craftsman is how well they hide their mistakes I'm on track to becoming a great master. Once the spandrel method declared itself - and I wrote about that fight last week - the rest was surprisingly plain sailing. When I dry-assembled the frames and felt everything pull home under hand pressure alone I had that feeling that keeps you in the workshop: astonishment, and yet not at all surprising, given the source of the method.

Buffing the wax is the last step. I ordered a polissoir this week to do it properly. A polissoir is an almost lost-to-history method of finishing: a bundle of bound plant fibres used for burnishing wax into timber. It's the real French Polish, which has nothing to do with what we call French Polish. What we call French Polish the French called English Polish, because only the English did it. The English called it French Polish because they got the idea from French makers who didn't do English Polish, because as we have discerned, they did French Polish. Anyways, I'm quite excited to give this method a try. Finishing is one area that almost all modern makers neglect. It should be the most important part but because of the tyranny of financial necessity (or laziness...) it has devolved from a trade in its own right to 'slap some hard-wax-oil on it and get it out'. I'm blessed in many ways, none more-so than the manner in which I'm able to work.

On other non-table related news, the 'Ming furniture for the western maker' book is moving. Working title: Beneath the Brush. I've got thousands and thousands of words of research done and two chapters drafted, which is more than I've managed in years of toying with writing and getting nowhere. I've tried before, different subjects, different formats, and it always fizzled into a disappointing fart. This one isn't stalling. It turns out the trick is finding a subject that won't leave you alone. I spent a decade trying to write about things I thought I should care about. Turns out you just have to find the thing that hits the eruption button and hope what comes out doesn't stink.

I've also started getting bits together for a joinery class I'm teaching in a fortnight at Melbourne Woodworking Courses in Box Hill. Paring jigs, a worksheet, sample joints. It's a different kind of preparation to building furniture. You have to think about what you know in the order someone else needs to hear it, which turns out to be nothing like the order you actually do it. I keep catching myself wanting to start with the interesting bits and having to back up to the parts that make the interesting bits make sense.

Next week: buffing wax, photographing the tables, delivering them to the gallery and getting the next Bench Mark piece onto the website. And after the ceremonial tidy up, back onto commission work: the desk, and a fireplace surround. And drafting for the book. And...