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I use a piece of painter’s tape to mark dadoes when I assemble cabinets. Then I know exactly where to shoot nails or install screws and there aren’t any pencil lines to sand off when I’m [...]

When my bench’s tool tray fills up with sawdust and hardware, I’ve found that the easiest way to clean it is to use a vacuum. To keep the hardware from going into the vacuum, I cover [...]

I purchased this classic tool chest at a yard sale in Maine, while on vacation. The case had only two drawers remaining, and no handle. The seller said he had every intention of restoring it, but [...]

An old-timer showed me this trick years ago and I’ve used it ever since. Plain old waxed paper is great for lubricating my tools’ cast iron tables and miter gauge bars. Whenever I start to feel [...]

I built my wedge-shaped workshop twelve years ago. It’s 470 square feet, which is too small, as every woodworker knows, but my options were limited, because the shop had to fit between my house [...]

Put a ton of tools up on the wall in this tool “book.” Hang 1/2“ or 3/4“ thick plywood “pages” 4“ apart on horizontal 2x4s with 3“ door hinges. Screw and glue …

Here’s a dirt cheap way to store your saw blades and keep their carbide teeth from knocking into each other. Slip the blades onto a 3/8″ dia. landscape nail, using plastic coffee-can lids [...]

Bow Blues After preparing the laminations, bending form and heat box for the fiberglass longbow I planned to build, I mixed the epoxy—and promptly began to mess up the entire project. First, I [...]

The blade of a marking gauge must be as sharp as a scalpel in order to cut a fine line across the grain. Sharpening it can be very difficult because it’s so small. I solved that problem by [...]

Gambler’s Micro-Adjust Precise fence adjustments are a sure bet when I clamp this shop-made device on my router table. I simply drilled and tapped a hole to accept a 1/4″-20 machine screw [...]

Pants on Fire When Daylight Savings Time begins, I make it a point to change the batteries in the three smoke detectors in my workshop. It was that time again, so I bought new 9-volt batteries [...]

While turning wooden pens, students in my woodshop classes kept wearing out the points on the live centers of our mini lathes. The points fit into the hollowed end of the pen mandrel. If the [...]