Shop-Made Rocker Jaw
Shop-Made Rocker Jaw One simple board, cut into the shape of a seesaw, can make a huge improvement to your vise. It allows you to firmly hold tapered work and long, upright boards off to the side [...]
Card Scraper Organizer
A scraper’s edge is very delicate. I used to keep my card scrapers loose in a drawer, but to avoid nicking their edges, I decided to make a simple stand for them. I cut a few slots in a [...]
Shop-made Bandings
Learn to make your own and you’ll never have to compromise your design. Bandings and stringing are a dramatic and exciting way to dress up your period furniture. I see them as a way to highlight [...]
Wooden Bar Clamp
I saw stars the last time I dropped a bar clamp on my foot. Then I saw the light, in the form of a wooden handscrew. I’d been making my own handscrews—wood threads and all—for years. Why [...]
Air-Tensioned Bandsaw
The bandsaw has always been the prima donna machine in my shop. It requires so much time and attention to make it work right; changing blades, adjusting tension and repositioning guides. It was [...]
Tiny Tools
Here’s a clever way to give all your friends genuine handmade woodworking tools. The materials for these little gems cost next to nothing and they don’t take long to make, because [...]
Get a Grip
When using a sharpening stone to hone the flat side of handplane irons or scraper plane blades, it can be difficult to grip the metal. Take an old knob off a handplane and glue or epoxy a rare [...]
Small-Job Sprayer
Tool: Preval Spray System Manufacturer: Preval Price: $5 For spraying small projects, this portable, self-contained Preval Spray System sprays almost any finish quickly and easily. Just fill the [...]
Improved PVC Clamps
PVC spring clamps aren’t new. I like using them, but thought they could use some improvement. Here’s what I came up with. First, I added two dowels installed 90° from each other (into [...]
Dust Bin Window
Monitoring the level of dust in your bin is a pain. You have to remove the lid and look, which isn’t easy. If you forget or put it off, dust will back up into the collector’s main [...]
Think Spring
Featherboards are an important accessory, providing both accuracy and a measure of safety. Typically, a featherboard is just a board with thin fingers sawn into the end that act as springs to [...]
Apron-size Clipboard
Carrying a cutting list with me to the saw is a habit I learned long ago. If I don’t, it’s way too easy to transpose measurements on the way from my bench to the saw. I used to carry a …
