Archives

Accurate Inside Measurement An accurate inside measurement is sometimes difficult to obtain. For example, I needed to take a measurement behind a cabinet’s face frame to fit a new shelf. [...]

Pegboard isn’t just for walls—it’s perfect for organizing stuff wherever you need to store it. I’ve bolted a piece of perfboard to the end of my table saw’s extension table to hold all the [...]

Curved lines in any project are both a blessing and a curse. They’re a blessing for the eye of the beholder, but a curse for the poor guy who has to make them. Executing a perfect, fair [...]

When making repetitive cuts, I found that my stop block would shift. With a hardwood cutoff, a leftover piece of T-track, a 1/4–20 hex head bolt and a jig knob, I constructed a stop block that [...]

Have you ever closed an inset door in a cabinet you were building and found that you couldn’t open it, because you hadn’t added the knob yet? Well, I have. Here’s an easy effective solution: Make [...]

My father showed me this “bird’s mouth” jig almost 60 years ago. It securely clamps 1/4- to 3″thick boards on edge. It’s so useful that I’ve never bothered to add a vise to my workbench. [...]

After years of fumbling with clamps, I decided there must be a better way to attach featherboards to my tablesaw’s rip fence. Two T-tracks screwed to the fence allow me to mount a piece of [...]

Square the table using this old machinists’ trick. Bend a piece of 1/4”. steel rod (available at home centers) into an S shape, as shown in the photo above. Mount it in the chuck and swing it by [...]

I love having a cutting list close at hand. But hanging on to it when both hands are busy was a problem—until I bought 24 clothespins for $2 at the hardware store. I epoxied the wooden pins in [...]

Microfiber cloth picks up tiny dust particles as well as, if not better than, a tack cloth. Unlike a tack cloth, microfiber cloths are washable and reusable. Rockler Sells Norton’s microfiber [...]

Make your brad nailer safer and easier to use with these tips. From avoiding the blowout curse to making your nailer last longer, it’s surprisingly simple to get more out of this tool.

A mobile workbench is handy in a small shop—until you want it to stand still! These levers work like a cam and prevent the bench from wiggling.