Archives

I know how hard working in a small shop can be. My shop is squeezed into a one-car garage that also serves as a storage area for most of the stuff my wife and I don’t frequently use. But [...]

I use my CNC router mostly to make small parts out of solid wood, MDF and plastic. Until recently, I had never done any 3D work with it. Then I saw a photo from one of the students in Build …

There are a few drawing tools I find myself using no matter what I’m working on in SketchUp. One of those is the Move tool. It lets me position objects exactly where I want them, but it’s [...]

Our Build a CNC Router course is coming up again in April, and I’m really excited about it. I love building, programming and using CNC routers, but seeing the photos from students in this class [...]

The jointer is a versatile tool that’s more than just an electric replacement for a hand plane. This machine can do at least four different jobs well, and there are probably some imaginative [...]

The hardest part of designing kitchen cabinets is choosing and accommodating appliances. A typical kitchen has a fridge, range, dishwasher, microwave and coffee maker. Some kitchens have trash [...]

There’s more than one way to make backs for frameless cabinets. Here’s how to choose the method that’s right for your project. Think about how many materials you want to use for the cabinet [...]

To turn wood safely, you need to know the correct way to introduce a cutting tool to a spinning workpiece. There are different ways to start a cut, depending on the type of tool you use. Here’s a [...]

Have you ever used flashcards or CDs to learn a foreign language? To learn a new word, you read it from a card or listen to a native speaker say it in the new language, then you get an English …

A plunge router and template are two must-have tools for wood inlay work, and to get tight-fitting inlays, you’ll need some way to make sure your work pieces don’t move around while you’re [...]

As the course manager for Popular Woodworking University, I spend a lot of time watching woodworking videos and putting together materials for online courses. Each one of our courses has several [...]

Whenever I take on a new cabinet or built-in project, I like to model it in SketchUp. I sometimes have trouble visualizing how things are going to fit together, and an accurate 3D model helps me [...]