The Way Wood Works: Curly Wood How to buy, machine and finish this amazing wood. By Tom Caspar Hidden within a few trees in every forest lies a mysteriously distorted wood that has always [...]
Butternut Tips for working with black walnut's blond cousin. By Tim Johnson Butternut is one of our prettiest domestic hardwoods, but most people have never seen it. Butternut trees are [...]
A Great Glue Bottle Tip I like the narrow tip on refillable glue bottles. What I don’t like is the tiny little cap, which is very easy to lose. The other day I was pawing through shavings [...]
Pivoting Outfeed Support I recently saw an outfeed stand that had a pivoting top. The pivoting action prevents a workpiece from catching the front edge of the outfeed top. Instead, the top just [...]
Jumbo Tape Dispenser I have five or six different kinds of tape in my shop, and last weekend I got fed up with rooting through a drawer to find the one I wanted. To solve the problem, I built [...]
Photocopy Template I used to hate hanging objects, like power strips, that have hidden T-slots on the back. No matter how carefully I measured, I could never get the mounting screws in the right [...]
7 Tips for Better Drum Sanding By Randy Johnson If you hate sanding (and who doesn’t?), a drum sander can be a godsend. Just feed in your boards, or even completed doors and other projects, [...]
Ladder Lumber Rack I organized all my short boards by turning an inexpensive 6-ft. stepladder (about $30 at a home center) into a lumber rack. Now every board is easy to see and reach. My ladder [...]
3 Kitchen Storage Projects Squeeze more space from your cabinets with customized roll-outs. by Eric Smith and David Radke It may seem like a paradox, but even kitchens that are overflowing have [...]
12 Tips for Better Biscuit Joining Improve performance and expand function. By Richard Tendick Make corner splines Decorative corner splines sure make an ordinary box look great. But they can be [...]
Dual-Grit Disc Sanding My disc sander is indispensable for both quick wood removal and final smoothing. I got tired of changing and wasting discs every time I needed a different grit, though, so [...]
Snag-Free Hose By Peter Natoli I love using dust collection with my orbital sander, but the hose always caught on the edge of my workbench. I fixed this problem by suspending the hose and cord [...]