Archives

As with most things in woodworking, there’s more than one way to fit doors and drawers. Nothing beats a handplane for precision, flexibility, and speed when you have a solid bench and vise. [...]

When I first began teaching at our school, I noticed that many of the rasps and files our students were using had a gooey buildup of masking tape around their tips. This blob of glue and paper [...]

Scratch-Free Flush Cuts No matter how carefully I cut with my economy-model flushcutting saw, it always left scratch marks on the wood’s surface. To solve the problem, I attached a playing card [...]

Reclaimed Lumber Back at the beginning of April I wrote about some household items I made using leftovers from a commissioned project. Well, I thought I'd show you the original project. [...]

Let the Boxes Begin A couple weeks ago I wrote about some teak that I salvaged from an old Adirondack chair. I started a project with it today; a long, slender dovetailed box with a sliding lid. [...]

Q: Try as I might, I can’t seem to get a good edge on my bowl gouges. Are bowl gouge sharpening jigs worth looking into? A: Bowl-gouge sharpening jigs do a great job. The jigs give many turners a [...]

Saber-Saw Cushion The next time you use your saber saw, forget about hauling out the sawhorses or cantilevering a hard-to-hold workpiece off your bench. Extruded polystyrene insulation board, the [...]

You Want Me To Help You Make a What? If you have kids in school, you’re well aware of the fact that you’ll be pressed into service to help make art projects countless times. For me, [...]

Q: I am really puzzled as to how the tail vise actually works as I have only used a front vise. A: A tail vise’s main purpose is to hold a board flat on the bench for planing, routing, [...]

A Little Bit of Buried Treasure   A friend of mine had an old two-seater Adirondack chair that she figured was rotting and ready for the landfill. But she liked it so much, that she asked me [...]

Clamp Leash My spring clamps always seem to be out of reach or scattered around the shop. To solve my problem, I suspended my dog’s old leash over my workbench. Now my spring clamps are always [...]

Cordless Jointer.  Yup, it's late. But it's still Friday. It's been a whirlwind of a week. While working on a project today, I got to use one of my favorite techniques. Most [...]