Archives

  Tool: Five Star Drill Set Manufacturer: Colt Price: $56 When I grab a brad-point bit to drill a hole, I don’t give much thought to the design of the bit and to the finer intricacies of [...]

Tool: Pen Plus Jaws Manufacturer: Nova Price: $40 Drilling pen blanks often involves a drill press and a vise. Doing this operation on your lathe offers a finer degree of control and accuracy – [...]

Tool: CMS Router Table Manufacturer: Festool Price: $1720 On one end of the spectrum, there’s the router screwed to the underside of a piece of plywood, supported on sawhorses, with a board [...]

Tool: Rip & Crosscut Tenon Saws Manufacturer: Veritas Price: $139 Cutting tenons on large workpieces often requires bringing the tool to the work, instead of the other way around. It’s [...]

Tool: Precision Strait Edge Manufacturer: iGaging Price: $36 (24″) A precision ruler is just one of those tools that every shop should have. Let’s face it; not everything can be done [...]

Tool: Fusion F2 Manufacturer: Laguna Price: $1800 A cabinet saw is the dream of many woodworkers, but many simply can’t afford one, or don’t have a 220 volt circuit to accommodate [...]

Perhaps woodturners should sell naming rights. The field has never standardized the names of woodturning tools (or measurements of their widths or how to describe their angles), so they often go [...]

Strictly speaking, no, they’re not. But these Fire Hose Work Pants from Duluth Trading Co. are as at-home in the shop as any of my tools. The “Fire Hose” name comes from the [...]

Tool: MicroJig Tapering Jig Manufacturer: MicroJig Price: $109 Some jigs get stuck in a design rut—they never seem to change. Take a typical double-armed tapering jig, for example. It’s [...]

A push pad is essential for jointing, routing or ripping because it keeps your fingers away from the danger zone. I’m always on the lookout for a pad that’s larger and grippier than [...]

Tool: Veritas Shooting Plane Manufacturer: Veritas Price: $356 Shooting a board’s edge with a hand plane is a time-tested way to create perfect fitting joints. Veritas’ new Shooting [...]

Squeeze-out happens! You can’t stop it, so you just have to try to contain it. One day while shopping the local home center, I found a product called DRIcore Subfloor.  It’s used as a [...]