Welcome to our blog,
For those who are new here, my name is Tom Bensari. I am a master woodworker and furniture designer, and I run a design studio and a working woodworking atelier in Wrocław, Poland, known as Bensari Workshop. I specialize in traditional woodworking, and in my daily practice I work with hand tools. For several years now, I have been teaching woodworking courses for both beginners and professionals who want to deepen their understanding of working with wood.
When I started my journey into traditional woodworking, the problem was not the lack of information, but the lack of reliable knowledge and direct contact with someone who could pass it on. Woodworking courses were almost nonexistent, and the gradual disappearance of traditional craft education meant that much of the knowledge had to be rediscovered independently.
I collected books, attended courses abroad, and searched for knowledge wherever I could. For a long time, I learned through trial and error, arriving at solutions that would have been obvious to past generations of craftsmen.
Today, I run my own workshop and share this knowledge through hands-on courses, teaching the same methods I use in my daily work when designing and building furniture and wooden objects. I am a member of the Lower Silesian Chamber of Crafts, hold both journeyman and master qualifications, and have pedagogical training that allows me to teach in a structured and responsible way.
Over time, I realized that practice and video content alone are not enough. The modern internet is full of woodworking content, but much of it repeats mistakes, in technique, in understanding tools, and in the way wood as a material is approached. What is still missing is structured, experience-based knowledge grounded in real workshop practice.
For this reason, alongside this blog, I am developing a public knowledge repository dedicated to traditional woodworking, where I systematically document techniques, tools, and processes used in everyday workshop work: https://github.com/tombensariworkshop-web
This repository is an evolving body of knowledge, from fundamental principles to advanced techniques, and serves as a natural extension of the work carried out at Bensari Workshop.
The blog will host broader, more reflective texts about working with wood, traditional techniques, hand tools, and the role of craftsmanship in contemporary design. The repository, on the other hand, is closer to the workshop itself, more technical, more precise, and focused on practical solutions.
If you are interested in craftsmanship understood as a deliberate method of work, not as nostalgia or a marketing label, you are in the right place.
See you,
Tom Bensari
