Archives

Chiseling and paring away the waste between dovetail pins can be largely eliminated by using a Forstner bit to remove the waste. Set up a Forstner bit (the diameter equal to your drawer side [...]

Most shops have two types of router bits – dull and sharp ones. It’s easy to tell the difference because the sharp bits ease through the wood while the dull bits labor. Sometimes a good cleaning [...]

Some woodworkers would rather stick their hand into a running disposal while naked than turn on a dry grinder. So when they need to correct the skew angle on a skewed plane iron or skewed chisel [...]

I hadn’t heard of the “Woodworking In Action” DVD series before the 16 DVDs were added to the shopwoodworking.com web site this Spring. Now I wonder how I could have missed out [...]

Vintage hand drills – sometimes called “eggbeater drills” – are common, useful and easy to fix up using stuff you already own. You can buy hand drills all day long on eBay and never deplete the [...]

Fellow woodworkers, did you know that a jeweler’s saw (fret saw) is not just for jewelers? This revelation was brought to me two or three years ago after I saw how Rob Cosman used a [...]

I’m focusing on basic skills in PW. Know that this isn’t news from the mountain top, but rather my very real commitment to fundamentals in my own shop. “Fundamentals” [...]

The day I stop learning how to work wood is the day I hang up my saws for the last time. After more years than I care to admit, I’m still making mistakes and learning new things about wood, [...]

A couple weekends ago I did a clumsy thing in front of an audience: I dropped my expensive 5,000-grit waterstone on the floor where it broke into three jagged chunks. Someone in the audience [...]

Recently, I had the distinct pleasure of watching some of Roy Underhill’s earliest episodes of “The Woodwright’s Shop” – a PBS show he’s been filming since 1979 at [...]

I love good old tools, ones that were made from fine materials such as brass, steel, and hard woods. As I mentioned in my last posting, these tools can endure much abuse, several [...]

Assembling workbenches in the old-school manner is a nail-biter. If the drawbores are too close together, then you drive the peg in and nothing happens. The tenon isn’t pulled into the mortise. [...]