Some of the best workholding ideas rely on simple wedging action. This weekend I stumbled onto one more great wedging trick using cut nails. This might be old hat for you. If so, forgive my waste of bandwidth (which should be the motto of my blog). I’m creating some wide panels from narrow boards using … Read more
You can do fancy things with a hammer and the right nails. And lately, I’ve been doing a lot of practicing with cut nails for a series of projects I’m working on that feature nails (including the dry sink in the next issue of Woodworking Magazine). The more I learn about nails, the more I … Read more
Last year I got to tour one of the Lee Valley Tools warehouses in Ottawa, Ontario. No wait, don’t leave just yet. A Lee Valley warehouse is like the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory. Yes, there are huge metal racks filled with bins for garden equipment, tools and Painters’ Pyramids. But the Lee family also has … Read more
Cabinetry is made of chunks of wood that are fairly standard in size. Most of your parts are going to be shorter than 48″ long. It’s rare that individual planks will be wider than 12″, or that your casework is going to be much deeper than 24″ or so. And so most of our tools, … Read more
For me, finger joints have always been the nerdy, square cousin to the dovetail. Finger joints are immensely strong when glued properly. But they are usually used by beginning woodworkers in places where a dovetail would be more appropriate, such as on a piece of 18th-century casework. Add to that the fact that finger joints … Read more
Now you can download six free SketchUp drawings for projects published in Woodworking Magazine during the last four years. These files work with Google’s free drafting program, SketchUp, and allow you to take the projects apart, see the joinery and view the projects at any angle. These files are great for understanding how a project … Read more
I’m a big fan of cut nails. They hold far better that modern wire nails and they really have the right look when it comes to building reproduction furniture, which is why I don’t use square-drive brass screws when installing reproduction hinges. However, cut nails can sometimes be difficult to find. Tremont Nail is an … Read more
