Practice Traditional Building Joinery on a Smaller Scale Project #2104 • Skill Level: Advanced • Time: 2 Weeks • Cost: $300 During my 14 years living in Europe, I marveled repeatedly at how these [...]
I use biscuit joints in lots of small projects, particularly for joining rails to legs. I usually reference from the bottom of the plate joiner rather than use its fence. When I want to make an [...]
Like many woodworkers, I own a basic half-blind dovetail jig, which I use only occasionally for making utility drawers. During the interim, I tend to forget the setup procedures and spacing [...]
Cutting your own dovetails is a right of passage for many woodworkers. Many out there find it intimidating when they first start though. Here are a few techniques that will help you out (or help [...]
Hand tools are the way to go for this traditional joint. Tapered sliding dovetails are multipurpose joints traditionally used for drawer dividers, holding legs in place on a pedestal table and [...]
Discover five cross-grain construction strategies to help keep your tabletops and chest lids flat. Cross-grain construction tends to freak out most beginning woodworkers, but it’s a viable [...]
Plow planes are some of the easiest joinery planes to use , once you know a few tricks to getting good results. I struggled with the tools until Don McConnell (now a planemaker at Clark & [...]
This versatile router joint is perfect for production work. When I need to batch out a bunch of drawer boxes, I use a lock miter router bit. Not only does this bit create a joint with a clean, [...]
How do you make strong joints in wood like this? When I need wood for a project, my first stop is a small mill near my shop that specializes in local hardwoods. On one particular visit I noticed [...]
Your joints will last for decades if you know how to apply your glue. Much of woodworking is joinery: An edge-to-edge joint is used to join two or more boards to create a tabletop, dovetails are [...]
Some people get pretty worked up about using the right word for the right joint. Perhaps they have a point since imprecise use of terms can lead to confusion. So, to be precise, here are the [...]
Editor’s note: This dovetail method is referenced in the October 2021 issue of Popular Woodworking, so we are republishing it to the home page. The blog below was originally published in [...]