Woodworking Mistakes

Backside Out After dabbling with woodworking for a couple of years, I finally got up the courage to build some kitchen cabinets, starting with an 8′ long upper unit. I composed a detailed [...]

Kitchen Kalamity The cherry salad tongs I’d made needed repairs. They were steam-bent, so they would “spring” when you squeezed them together. But the top portion where the two arms attached was [...]

Clamp-Ka-Bob This morning I glued up a 4′ x 6′ tabletop made of maple 2x2s on my assembly table. I positioned 6′ pipe clamps alternately on the top and bottom faces of the [...]

While visiting the local Habitat for Humanity store I noticed a woodturning lathe. The store manager told me it had come from an estate and was almost new, so I bought it and took it home in the [...]

Self Portrait Seeing that it was a very fine day, I began to carve a gnome. This little guy would be my masterpiece. Hours, then days passed as I worked on my gnome. From his ridiculously long [...]

Inside Job While building kitchen cabinets, I purposefully chose straight-grained lumber for the doors’ stiles and rails and bought expensive, highly-figured boards to make the panels. In [...]

Dust Bomb My neighbor has had a woodworking shop in his garage since I was a kid. Recently, when he discovered that mice and other furry critters were living in its cinder block foundation, he [...]

One Coat Coverage I had finished building new frame and panel doors for my kitchen cabinets and knew the stain would really make the grain pop. I laid the first door on my workbench, with the [...]

Tipsy Tablesaw Planning to rip several boards to width on his tablesaw, my friend stacked them on the extension wing to the left of the blade. After cutting each board, he placed it on the [...]

Wood Filler Fiasco In order to fill some tiny gaps in a box I was making, I decided to make my own wood filler. I dumped fine sawdust from my sander’s filter bag into a small cup. Then I …

My Boring Story I needed to rout a deep stopped groove in a long 2×12. So, I installed an up-cut spiral bit in my plunge router, jointed a board to use as a straightedge and clamped [...]

Kamikaze Tailstock I often wax finished projects as they spin on my lathe, so it’s natural to wax the lathe’s bed at the same time. Waxing the bed prevents rust and makes the [...]