From mastering hand tools to router basics, 18th-century joinery to Japanese hand tools and joinery, you’ll find it all among the five new DVD selections now available to order at ShopWoodworking.com (and four of them are on “pre-sale” which means you save 20 percent if you order before the DVDs arrive in the warehouse). “Handsaws: … Read more
Attention woodworkers in and around the Great Falls, Montana, area: Have you noticed a curious lack of vintage handsaws in your flea markets and antique malls? Well there’s a reason that greater Great Falls is the black hole of vintage saws. The saw painters have made a 22’-high mechanical shrine to the craft using 208 … Read more
Precision cutting with a hand-held circular saw. I’d like to know who it was that decided that plywood was best sold in 4-foot by 8-foot sheets. I’ve always thought that it was a practical joke in questionable taste to take such a wonderfully useful woodworking material and manufacture it in sheets that are bigger than … Read more
Recently I’ve become somewhat obsessed by the puzzle of storing saws. During my years as a woodworker, I’ve been admonished many times for how I handle this tool. Here are a few choice ones to chew on: 1. With handsaws, you should never lay the entire tool on a flat surface. This will cause the … Read more
The first time I saw Ron Herman sharpen a handsaw, I learned more about sharpening the tool in 20 minutes than I had learned in all the years I’d been a woodworker. I had been sharpening my saws for years, but I was mostly trying to replicate the saw’s existing tooth geometry. I wasn’t confident … Read more
With Andrew Lunn’s announcement that he’s leaving the sawmaking business, the No. 1 question on all our minds is: Who will have the guts to pull a prank on Jameel Abraham from Benchcrafted at the next woodworking show? Besides being an excellent sawmaker, Lunn is also a fan of the occasional practical joke. Ask Abraham … Read more
One of my goals in this job has been to help produce a saw sharpening video that makes sense of all the dogma about this simple task. Should you set the teeth before or after you file them? Should you sharpen fleam from one side of the saw? Or turn the saw around to do … Read more
