This is a stupid trick. In fact, I’m sure you have a better way to do this. But I don’t. This week I glued up a couple Welsh stick chairs – each had 12 spindles and 28 through-mortises that must be glued and wedged. The top spindle deck of each chair was one massive glue-up, … Read more
Tag Archives: Joinery
Easy Curvaceous Edge Joints
Last winter, I was puzzling out a way to make edge joints that are just the opposite of what we normally want – perfectly straight. I wanted free-flowing curves and I wanted to join contrasting colors of wood species. So the question was how to match the two joint lines on the different pieces of … Read more
Slip-fit Corrects a Slip in Planning
I’ve been working, albeit slowly, on a small desk from the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) – I wrote about full-blind dovetails found on the desk in an early post (read it here). The base of the desk holds two drawers set side-by-side. That means there is a drawer runner centered in the … Read more
Helical Cutterhead Makes Better Tenons
I’ve told this story to many woodworkers, but I have yet to post it in a blog. One day before Dad passed, he called me to complain that he was having to fit every tenon to it’s mortise by hand. (Many woodworkers choose to work that way, but to us it was a detriment in … Read more
Can You Pass Ron Herman’s Joinery Challenge?
“The Joinery Challenge,” a new DVD from Ron Herman, is now available for pre-order at ShopWoodworking.com (and on sale for $5 off the regular price through the end of June). This exercise is one Ron had to pass when he was in his apprenticeship on his way to becoming a journeyman housewright (he’s now a … Read more
Hand-cut Dovetails 2.0 with Rob Cosman
If you’re interested in learning to cut dovetails by hand, boy do you have choices. Google hand-cut dovetail videos and the returns total more than 100,000 (no, I didn’t count them). Yesterday I watched Rob Cosman’s second DVD on dovetails, hence the name “Hand-cut Dovetails 2.0.” It’s been 10 years since his first dovetail video. … Read more
You Will Learn From This Guy
What makes woodworking fun for me is that I learn something new nearly every day. This past week, Monday was a day filled with learning – I spent the day with Ron Herman as he filmed the first of two new DVDs. The project for the day was a joinery exercise that walks through nine … Read more