Here’s a surefire method to ensure flat glue-ups. Use cauls, top and bottom, made from Unistrut. This steel channel is used for light-duty structural support in electrical and plumbing [...]
When my bench’s tool tray fills up with sawdust and hardware, I’ve found that the easiest way to clean it is to use a vacuum. To keep the hardware from going into the vacuum, I cover [...]
Trading Wall Street for molding planes. Editor’s note: This interview originally appeared in the October/November 2012 issue of American Woodworker Matt Bickford’s story is quite unusual [...]
Inside Job While building kitchen cabinets, I purposefully chose straight-grained lumber for the doors’ stiles and rails and bought expensive, highly-figured boards to make the panels. In [...]
Tool: Rip-Cut Circular Saw Guide Manufacturer: Kreg MSRP: $39.99 Breaking down sheet goods into pieces of manageable size is never very easy—unless you’re lucky enough to have a panel saw, [...]
Universal Drawer Holder When I make dovetailed drawers, I usually plane the sides to even up the joints and fine-tune the drawer’s fit. Years ago, I found that you can’t accurately [...]
1. Paraffin Lube When you rout a dovetail joint, your sense of feel is important. Your router should slide easily around the jig’s fingers, without hesitating, so you can tell which [...]
A knife block is one of the most convenient—and safest—devices to store kitchen knives. Most knife blocks are large chunks of wood composed of a dozen or more pieces laminated together. [...]
Using factory-made prefinished plywood makes cabinet building quicker, easier and cleaner, so it’s unfortunate that most home centers and lumberyards don’t stock it. Luckily, [...]
If you’ve ever installed a cabinet door using traditional butt hinges, you know what a pain in the butt they are to work with. That’s why Euro-style hinges have become so popular in the [...]
When you learn how to make cabinet doors, you will have mastered one of the basic skills in woodworking. Doors come in many variations—some have molded edges, arched tops or raised solid-wood [...]
Once you’ve taken the time to build dovetailed drawers for your kitchen cabinets, it’s a crime to cover them up with side-mount drawer slides. Undermount slides show the beauty of [...]