Honestly, I’ve tuned so many dang metal planes in my lifetime that I’ll never worry about having enough iron in my diet. They might mine my carcass for the mineral when I’m dead. For me, it has always been an analog process: Do it by hand with inexpensive supplies. Today I spent the day tuning … Read more
In hand-tool woodworking, brains almost always trump brawn. For example, when I need to remove a lot of material from a localized area, I need to think like a tree assassin and exploit its weaknesses. Think about it for a minute: Trees are much stronger in the vertical axis than they are in the horizontal. … Read more
Even if I have an entire shop filled with power equipment, I like to cut my rabbets by hand. Why? It’s fast and fun. Once you master a rabbet plane or a moving fillister plane, your router table and table saw will get a lot less use. To push you along this path, I wrote … Read more
Some woodworkers would rather stick their hand into a running disposal while naked than turn on a dry grinder. So when they need to correct the skew angle on a skewed plane iron or skewed chisel they are at a loss. I even met a guy who would just buy a new blade rather than … Read more
Ever since Roy Underhill wrote about the joys of mutton tallow as a tool lubricant in Popular Woodworking Magazine in the August 2010 issue, readers have been asking where to purchase the stuff. Or, even more alarming, how to render it themselves. The good news is that Lee Valley Tools has started to carry McQueen’s … Read more
If you read this blog, you are probably interested in hand tools. And if you are at the beginning of your journey, this blog entry is for you. Popular Woodworking Magazine commissioned me to make a series of 10 to-the-point videos about hand tools that try to strip away the confusion so you can get … Read more
I have a palm-grip random-orbit sander that I’ve used for many years on household projects that could not be planed because they were too big, such as 16’-long runs of base moulding nailed to a wall, or weren’t designed for handplaning, such as plywood that is covered in paper-thin veneer. A couple years ago, the … Read more
