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My task: 28 kitchen drawers of different sizes, all with hand-cut dovetails. The thought of laying these out was overwhelming, so I designed a jig to simplify the process. To make the jig, [...]

My dovetail jig doesn’t have a depth gauge, and with my engineering background, I like things to be precise. This depth gauge allows me to set my router bits to within .001 of an inch! I also use [...]

In the good old days, when a woodworker wanted to plane a board’s edge, he’d clamp one end in the bench’s face vise and support the cantilevered end with a free-standing devise called a [...]

When sawdust got packed into the back end of my planer’s blast gate, I couldn’t close the gate all the way.  I solved this annoying problem by cutting a notch in the gate. Now, when I close the [...]

I usually work alone, but when I install upper cabinets, I always enlist the help of two shop-made cabinet jacks. They’re steadier than an extra pair of hands. The jacks stand on the lower [...]

Create a classic in an afternoon. Whenever I visited my grandmother, I got to play a game with marbles on a round wooden board. My grandmother called it “Marble Solitaire.” You may know it [...]

A Shop with a View A few years ago, I moved to a Colorado mountain area on five acres, which gave me plenty of room to build my dream shop, a two-story design with 850 sq. ft. on each level. …

While I was gluing up the pedestals for an oak desk, I realized I needed a way to hold the sides parallel at the front. Three Quick-Grip clamps and a scrap wood spacer did the trick. They [...]

My flush-trimming setup allows trimming veneer and solid wood edging up to 7/8-in. thick. It consists of a router with a 1/2-in. straight bit, a table and a perpendicular fence. A 1″-thick [...]

My dust collector, though pieced-together, is the perfect solution for my one-car garage shop. I use a cyclone separator and 5-gallon bucket in conjunction with my shop vacuum. For easy mobility, [...]

Practical solutions for a cleaner shop Vacuum-Assisted Bench I got tired of hooking my bench tools to my shop vac. Now I simply plug their dust collection hoses into the bench. I drilled and [...]

I use a piece of painter’s tape to mark dadoes when I assemble cabinets. Then I know exactly where to shoot nails or install screws and there aren’t any pencil lines to sand off when I’m [...]