Twiss Fine Woodwork

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I've been poking around under the hood of the website and adding quite a few extra items recently.

Why not take a look around and sign up to receive loyalty points and get the occasional email to let you know new things coming up. I promise it will be pretty infrequent but hopefully interesting enough for you all. :)

New Tools November Sale Lots of new tools on site. Order in time for Christmas and shop today. Use code SOCIAL23 at checkout for a 7% discount on all items until 25 November.

There’s just something about dovetails.

To me they are the quintessential challenge of the fine wood craftsman. A mix of art and expertise in which things like spacing, angles and proportion all have to come together with as close to flawless ex*****on as possible.

In this world where most things are machine made, the hand cut dovetail stands apart.

The second principle of the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi embraces imperfection as something to be appreciated, and even celebrated. No matter how good you are, a hand cut dovetail will always exhibit the human touch.

Throwback Thursday. Here’s a lovely piece I made over 20 years ago in Nannup.

All traditional techniques and solid Marri construction. Frame and panel base with hand dovetailed drawers.

Second Decagon table in Walnut, matched beautifully with Decton Laurent top, delivered in less than a week.

It’s wonderful when you get to deliver to repeat clients and share the joy of installing a new custom designed and made piece.

Thanks to the guys for a great job and a prompt and very helpful delivery.

DM us for a truly unique and bespoke piece or visit to place an order from the range or pick up a bargain from the floor.

The secret sauce in the 10 sided pedestal design. A very versatile joint from the world of mast and spar making. Angles, facets and even curved shapes are possible using this joint.

With so many facets accuracy is critical.

Latest twin pedestal decagon table in solid black walnut. Delivered to valued client with Dekton Laurent stone top installed.

This design is refinement of previous versions with the base dimensions tightened up to give what we believe are finer proportions overall.

DM us today to discuss price, customisation, or a truly unique bespoke creation.

Sometimes we just do little jobs because they give us pleasure and hone our hand and eye skills.

This somewhat scarce Stanley 607C Bedrock plane was covered in silver and black paint and probably did duty as a door stop somewhere. The paint came off easily and revealed a very well preserved plane underneath. With a little more work this beautiful tool will be tuned up and turning out sweet shavings again.

Delivery day today. Another absolute gem of a vintage Bridge City Tool to add to my collection. The mortice gauge is a thing of beauty. Made in Oregon of Rosewood and brass, it not only looks amazing but is a precision tool.

Although what we do is intensely practical, I find the tools I use form part of the creative inspiration and continual striving for excellence. It’s hard not to do your best when you use these types of tools.

On a more practical note, I picked up a full suite of Blum hardware for a bespoke bathroom vanity. This stuff is amazingly engineered and incredibly well thought out. On a different level it forces you to work with precision but the results are well worth it. I spend too much time getting the very best out of the timber I select to use cheap hardware and my clients deserve better.

Not the sexiest photo of one of my pieces but certainly one of the most satisfying (and a huge relief).

Thanks to my mate and his awesome burgeoning Japanese whisky empire, this table has made its way across Australia from Perth to Wollongong.

Fantastic work from for the safe packaging and incredible fast delivery by TNT.

If you love quality Japanese Whisky (and why wouldn’t you) look up Matt. We may even be able to put together a special package deal for a top quality piece of furniture and a bottle or two of Japanese finest.

Who knew, our kids (and maybe their dad 😉) loved Lincoln logs.

From motorcycle sale to tooling investment. First and a few other bits and pieces from the good people Perth. Thanks for the beanies fellas 👍🏻

Now yo put these things to work!

Time to say goodbye to my faithful Triumph Tiger. For the first time in 20 years I’m without a motorcycle.

Making a new business work means she wasn’t being ridden nearly enough so now it’s reinvestment into tools time.

Now I’m seriously incentivised to make the business work for the next bike. 😎

The first of the Twiss wine / whisky tables captured together for the first time in the wild

It was a brief meeting as the Jarrah table is about to make its way across to Wollongong in New South Wales.

Apart from the type of wood there is a difference in the bases. Free point if you can work it out. Slainte!

From light to dark. White oak stained almost black. I always feel a little guilty adding colour to wood but this look very striking with a white stone top in the client’s renovated house.

Auctions are fun but it pays to double check quantities!

I now have 250 square metres of beautiful Zebrano veneer to work into future designs and projects.

Watch this space or give me a shout to explore possibilities.

It’s always a real pleasure to see share the delivery / installation experience with a client.

This Jarrah cabinet with lockable acrylic doors will house a precious collection of Marklin Trains which have been in my client’s family for many years.

Bit of a hectic day running a thoroughly disorganised antique tool garage sale after a crazy busy week and coming down with a cold, but lovely to sell quite a few tools and meet fellow obsessed collectors.

It was so nice that quite a few people were looking for old beech Jack and Smoothing planes to use.

If you would like to be included on a mailing list for upcoming sales and updates, head over to my website and sign up.

Sneak peak at model train display cabinet. Still a few finishing touches, including fixing of track to each of the shelves and lockable acrylic doors.

My client wanted the shelves to be as thin as possible so we went for 8mm thick with a tapered edge. Very challenging to ensure alignment and support of shelves so they are stiff enough.

Jarrah is currently not particularly popular in Western Australia at the moment, I think through overuse in fairly mediocre design due to its abundance. All that is changing with Jarrah now becoming more scarce. It’s a beautiful timber and it’s colours and texture absolutely shines when thoughtfully designed and finished. Fine feature pieces in Jarrah can be very striking and beautiful in the right context - especially with the very light colour themes of so many homes.

A pair of beautiful new Japanese saws for dovetailing from the good people at

These are a set of very fine 0.2mm blades, one in rip and the other in crosscut configuration.

Wine or whisky?

Workshop photos of the, finally completed, first batch of what I’m calling the “Felicity” tables.

The prototype was a one off in Black Walnut for a client, which used techniques I had been honing over several months on much larger table bases I had designed and supplied as commercial commissions.

These are four of the original six we made in Marri and Jarrah and hand finished with Livos natural oil sealer and oil wax. They are beautiful little occasional tables designed to help you enjoy a glass of your preferred beverage and a book next to your favourite chair.

I’m still in the process of setting up sales on my website but these are available for immediate purchase directly from Twiss Fine Woodwork. delivery is free in the Perth Metropolitan area and $120 anywhere in Australia. Introductory pricing available via DM or via contact details on my website.

I’m more than happy to discuss limited batch runs and pricing with commercial clients and always open to exploring new collaborative design ideas.

One of the most satisfying parts of the bespoke process is working with clients, especially talented ones like Yohan from who can make concept sketches and his notes look like works of art.

I’m pretty excited to be working on this Blackwood piece that will have hand dovetailed carcass joints and a few other lovely details that will set it apart.

Watch this space to see the beauty of Tasmanian Blackwood emerge as we craft the unique details of this piece.

DM or call to arrange a free bespoke furniture consult today.

The moment of possibilities!

The thrill of custom furniture making is going through the timber stacks visualising how the grain will flow through the piece and the colours and shades will interact with each other. This is even more exiting with woods like Tasmanian Blackwood which has natural chatoyance that shifts the light as you move around piece.

I’m grateful for my dear sister for giving me the opportunity to work with this beautiful timber again to create something special.

What do you think about this? Deco done well can be very beautiful.

How Art-Deco Glamour Is Fast Replacing Scandinavian Cool in L.A. The hottest new restaurants and bars across the city wax nostalgic for its Old Hollywood roots

Simple one today. The last of the first batch of the small side tables.

I’ve experimented a little with the height and chamfer angles to see what works best.

Seven made so far. Three sold and four (2 Jarrah and 2 Marri) will go onto my website store once launched to see how they go in the big wide world.

Welcome to the “Isaac” stool from the studio workshop of .

It’s rare today to find people who truly, obsessively seek to not only find the perfect balance of elements in a design, but also pour their heart and soul into making it as beautifully true and authentic as possible.

My son Isaac is one of those people. Like all good artists, Isaac has quite literally obsessed over every detail, every facet and every surface of these seemingly simple stools.

I’ve been around great furniture a long time and from the moment I picked up and sat on the first of these I knew it was something special. The gentle curve we selected gives a grace to the design, the deliberate alignment of the wedges in the legs pointing to the centre of piece (Isaac’s suggestion) and the perfect height makes you want to sit on it and just observe the world.

These will be made available for order on twissfinewoodwork.com.au in the coming weeks so follow us for further updates and new pieces.

Sometimes the small jobs are most satisfying. This was a simple leg repair and finish cleanup job on a lovely old mahogany gate leg table.

This is the interim phase just after cleaning the finish and doing a final re-polish lightly pulling over the old French polish with de waxed blonde shellac and then waxing.

The inlays were mostly covered with old wax and dirt but quickly cleaned up with an antique furniture cleaner I make from an old recipe.

A bit of extremely careful chair surgery to remove the screws and nails used to repair a beautiful Victorian chair many years ago.

Like all these sorts of repairs, eventually they will destroy a chair as the movement and weight gradually (or suddenly) fractures the wood.

This is one of many similar repairs on this chair which I am reconstructing using as much of the parent wood as possible. In this case I was able to save almost all of the wood and perform an epoxy repair which will make it as strong as when it was made. I only ever use epoxy on antiques for repairing or rebuilding broken wooden parts, never (without exception, on the joinery). All joinery and wherever possible I will always used old fashioned hide glue as it is always reversible for future repairs, yet still very strong.

The finishing and colour matching process is ongoing and what you see now is another old fashioned wood dye made from walnut husks called Van D**e. It’s a beautifully natural and very forgiving stain that is excellent for reproducing original and aged colours in antique furniture.

I love the restoration process as it draws on the humble creativity of finding elegant solutions to often complex problems and the measure of success is found in a finished product that appears like you were never there.

Restoration is not a major part of my current business but I am taking on select work that is justified by the time taken. I am not cheap because I will not cut corners on the work I do. Antique furniture becomes part of our legacy and is too important and precious to ruin with poor work.

If you have a previous piece that needs work from someone who cares about your heirlooms then please DM or email me. A conversation is always free.

Twiss Tokugawa bar table showcasing beautiful and very hard to find Japanese whiskies by at Devlin’s in Subiaco, Perth.

Despite its very fine lines the table is incredibly stable (even with around 20 bottles of premium Japanese Whisky) and is the perfect bar height for standing or use with high bar stools.

This designed and hand made table is available for viewing by request and can be made in almost any wood you choose or reconfigured in height or size to suit.

DM or email Phil at Twiss Fine Woodwork to start the conversation for your specially commissioned piece or fitout for your home / office collections.