Arm yourself with a good plan (or two) and your buying trip will be a success. I have a 10″-wide piece of 8/4 purpleheart sitting on my lumber rack. I bought it eight years ago when I visited the lumberyard. I still haven’t used it. The funny thing is, I went to buy cherry for…

Planing the edge of a long board perpendicular to its face is a real challenge. To make the job easier, I built a guide that attaches to the side of my plane with rare earth magnets. Now jointing an edge is much easier. I simply alter my grip to take full advantage of the square-cornered…

A rim and box in contrasting species is an elegant eye-catcher. Open boxes, as useful as they are attractive, were not made to hold sweets for the table. Instead, they were for something that makes me wince: expectoration of chewing tobacco. These round open boxes with rims were filled with fresh wood shavings for chewing…

  Tool: 4″ x 6″ Square Buy Now Manufacturer: Blue Spruce Toolworks MSRP: $135 One thing I always worry about with fixed-blade metal try squares (especially beautiful and expensive ones) is the reality that rough handling or an accidental drop from the workbench can knock them out of alignment and render them useless. The 4″ x…

Winter is the perfect time for fireplaces and firewood, and the best firewood is the one you generate yourself. The late Moravian psychoanalyst, Dr. Schtriker Von Axen, used to teach his meek and feeble patients the art of using a maul forcefully and decisively as a vehicle for self-improvement. He used to say: “If you…

I make lots of lazy Susans in my cabinet business, so I cut circles of many diameters. Changing diameters is easy on my circle-cutting jig, because I use a pop rivet as a removable center pin. The jig is an MDF piece with an attached rail that’s sized to slide in the miter gauge slot…

Portable, sturdy and easy to build, these were used for a variety of tasks. Many of the fantastic furniture forms of the Middle Ages have disappeared and have been replaced by pieces that are more complex but not necessarily better. One of my favorites is the early trestle table. It’s three pieces – a top…

Tool: MakerX Ultimate Combo Kit Buy Now Manufacturer: Worx MSRP: $229.99 Battery technology comes to a few of the craftier tools in a woodworker’s kit. Worx has paired a 20-volt battery/power supply with a variety of smaller handheld tools. Yes, there’s still a cable attached to these tools when you use them, but you’re not tethered…

This traditional finish from Denmark is simple, safe and tactile. When I tell fellow woodworkers and customers that I use soap as a finish on some of my tables and chairs, they think I’m joking. Then, when I pull out a Mason jar filled with soap finish to show them how it works, they laugh…

Nothing makes a cabinet look worse than door panels with unattractive grain that runs at werid angles. It pays to be picky about grain direction, even it means wasting some plywood. After assembling your door frames without glue, slide them around on the sheet of plywood until they frame attractive panels. Look for symmetrical grain…

Early modern records show guild regulations in London. Early 17th-century London tradesmen were protective about their work, carefully keeping an eye on any interlopers to their craft. A dispute arose in the early 1630s between London’s carpenters and joiners, and in my last column (June 2016, issue #225), I outlined the works the city aldermen…

Tool: PRO-Tek Chuck Buy Now Manufacturer: Nova MSRP: $140-$220 Nova’s new PRO-TEK line of chucks build on the company’s long history with the lathe. This new series of chucks feature rust-resistant nickel plating, stronger and more versatile 50mm/2″ PRO-TEK jaws with an improved dovetail and serrated profile, upgraded six-point star fasteners, and a captured pinion and…

An explanation of this most confusing of finishing treatments. In the late 1980s, I hosted a local call-in radio show dealing with finishing and restoration. I remember one caller explaining that he had applied four coats of tung oil; he asked what he should use to seal the wood! OK, so he was probably using…

I enjoy making picture frames but always found it a pain to use tacks or staples to hold the picture in place. Plus tacks and staples are hard to remove when you want to change the picture. That’s why I developed this method for holding the picture, glass, matting, and backing board in the frame….

Sharpen your hand-tool skills with this useful project. I recently obtained a nice piece of leather about 1⁄4” thick that I wanted to use as a strop for plane irons and chisels. And, I was looking for a simple hand-tool project. So I decided to make a “strop box” in the Queen Anne style. The…