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When you find an old tool, you have some work to do to get it into working condition – cleaning, sharpening, tuning and so forth. Once you’ve spent some time with it, often...

I’m working on a “built-in basics” article for an upcoming issue of the magazine. For perhaps obvious reasons, I’m not focusing that article on the specific components I [...]

Our managing editor, Rodney Wilson, recently wrote about his experience of IWF 2016 (which you can read here). So I thought I would let our readers hear about my experience. We...

Zach Dillinger specializes in building 18th century American furniture with hand tools and period appropriate techniques. He is a member of the Great Lakes Chapter of the Society of American...

I know a woodworker who said he saved himself hundreds of steps a day merely by moving his pencil sharpener so it is under his table saw. I had a...

In my first post on the Popular Woodworking blog, I mentioned a band saw at the cabinet shop that I worked at. That band saw had writing on the top wheel...

With shellac and lacquer finishes, which are the finishes used on almost all old furniture and woodwork, you can use their solvent for stripping instead of a paint-and-varnish remover. Depending...

On Tuesday online editor Jon Russelburg and I piled into a rented red Ford and drove from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Atlanta, Ga., for the 2016 International Woodworking Fair at the...

There are so many old wives’ tales in our craft that you could write an entire book that lists and debunks them. Students constantly bombard me with them, and it...

Live edge boards, like so many other organisms, can also suffer from stress. And while stress in humans can be mitigated with a moderate consumption of alcohol or a visit...

In a lot of woodshops, the easiest way to fix a mistake is to simply start over. Didn’t account for the tenon in your drawings and cut the stretcher too short?...

You may be aware that I’m not a big advocate of random orbit sanders. I prefer to sand by hand most of the time. I think it’s faster, and it’s...