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When you began woodworking, whether you’re a beginner or an accomplished artisan, did you expect that you’d use nails in your work? I didn’t. I looked at nails as something too [...]

I’ve got a weakness for shoulder planes. Though lots of people do great work without them, I find them useful for trimming the shoulders and cheeks of tenons, plus fine-tuning rabbets, [...]

The art director in the woodshop? Yes, it’s my shortcut route to the color printer. But I have stopped a couple of times to actually try some woodworking with some trepidation and lots of [...]

Designing or purchasing a good workbench is one of the most vexing problems facing woodworkers. The correct combination of materials, overall dimensions and vises is the difference between a [...]

Designing or purchasing a good workbench is one of the most vexing problems facing woodworkers. The correct combination of materials, overall dimensions and vises is the difference between a [...]

I’m not exactly Norm, but I do have specialty tools that make the job go faster. These tools are solely for mortise and tenon work and are typical of those available in the 18th century. [...]

Building a workbench is a bit like childbirth. Some benches come into this world like my firstborn did, fighting the entire way and taking twice as long as expected , like the English workbench. [...]

I purchased one of the first sets of Ray Iles mortising chisels that were available in this country in 2005 and they have been in my tool rack since that day, to the exclusion of all other [...]

Designing and building good workbenches has been a passion of mine for the last decade or so. I’ve spent years rooting around in old books and getting dusty in the shop while building [...]

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I can’t sharpen chisels. For years I’ve fought this inadequacy. I’ve had many different sharpening stones and magic devices all [...]

Whenever I attempt to teach a bit of woodworking I say things that don’t come out quite right. Things like: “Sharpening is perhaps the most fundamental of hand skills.” Or: [...]

We test-drive the new loose-tenon joinery system from Festool