Tricks of the Trade

A mobile workbench is handy in a small shop, until you want it to stand still! After outfitting my bench with casters, I found that their locks didn’t prevent the bench from wiggling. My [...]

I love my dovetail jig except for one thing: If I forget to hold the router flat, it can tip backward off the front of the jig and ruin the job. To solve the problem, I made my own Lshaped …

Here’s a great space-saving tip. I first made “floor drawers” like these for under-the-bed storage. They worked so well I decided to use them in the shop. Floor drawers work great for storing [...]

Flattening the back of a spokeshave’s blade on sandpaper is a pain. The blade is so small that it’s hard to get a grip on it. A 1-1/2″ thick MDF block sized to fit my hand makes [...]

Sooner or later, the wooden runners of your tablesaw jigs will wear and become sloppy, resulting in inaccurate cuts. Having just replaced my kitchen floor, I’ve made new runners using some extra [...]

I needed a sacrificial fence for cutting rabbets with my tablesaw. All of the designs I’d seen required drilling holes in my saw’s fence or positioning clamps strategically out of the way of the [...]

Epoxy is a two-part glue: a hardener and a resin that combine to form a hard, durable plastic. It’s important to follow the manufacturer’s recommendations and use correct ratios of resin and [...]

Chisel Sharpening Jig If you’ve had trouble grinding a straight edge on a chisel or plane iron, try using your disc sander. All you need is a guide that slides in your sander’s miter gauge slot [...]

Toggle clamps are great for all sorts of jigs and fixtures. However, you need a wrench to adjust the length of their posts. To make life easier, replace the clamp’s hex nut with a wing nut. [...]

Drilling small pieces on the drill press can be difficult because most clamps won’t reach to the center of the table. This simple three-piece platform jig solves the problem and ensures a fast [...]

My beam compass is perfect for drawing huge arcs. It’s super easy to make, and I can adjust it quickly without using screws or clamps. To change the arc’s radius, I just slide a [...]

As hard as I try to avoid it, every now and then I need to mill a small part on the router table. I’ve learned the hard way that you should never hold that part by hand, for three good …