I made this rack so the finish on my small projects would dry without leaving marks. I cut strips off of a 3/4″ board with my tablesaw’s blade tilted 30 degrees. For each new strip, I just [...]
Old bandsaw blades can easily be recycled into useful marking or carving knives. One blade nets you a slew of small pieces. Use a tin snip to cut off a piece of the blade, grind off the teeth, [...]
I got tired of jury-rigging extra light for finishing, so I built this light stand from a 4-ft. length of 2×2 and 1/4-in. plywood. The 6-in. by 17-in. legs include 1/2-in. by 3- 1/2” feet. [...]
I made a go-anywhere task light by retrofitting an old, broken fixture with a new, battery-powered LED light. First, I removed the cord and inner workings from the task light. Then I screwed a [...]
After ruining four $90 sheets of plywood by storing them on a damp floor, I came up with a simple fix: PVC feet. Cut several 12″ sections of 2″ dia. PVC pipe in half, lengthwise. [...]
For years, I sanded and hand planed panel edges by laying them flat on my workbench. I could never quite squeeze a bench vise into my woodworking budget, so I came up with this fast, inexpensive [...]
A friend needed a small tool to clean out glue inside small places. So I made him a mini-scraper using an indexable blade from my planer, screwed to a turned handle. Each blade is about $3, plus [...]
Bottle Cap Jig Knobs I’m always trying to use up scraps and stuff that would otherwise end up in the trash. My latest devices are jig knobs made with plastic bottle caps, which have a grippy [...]
My grandfather made this foot-powered jigsaw during World War II. The Depression had taught him to be very frugal, so he built the saw from orange and grapefruit crates, which were made from [...]
Shop-made ply can achieve shapes and forms solid wood just can’t handle. The title of this article may sound silly, or perhaps us woodworkers have just run out of things to write about? Now that [...]
One of the most accurate approaches for checking a case or other assembly for square is to compare the inside diagonal measurements for equidistance. The easiest way to do this is using pinch [...]
There’s nothing more annoying than a vacuum hose dragging on the bench when you’re working with a router, sander or other power tool. These big hoses always seem to hang up on workpieces and [...]