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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 [...]

Filling knots with colored epoxy usually works quite well, but sometimes the void is in a spot that’s difficult to fill, like the edge of a board. Here’s how to do it. First, apply some paste wax [...]

Mice used to rule my shop. They got into everything! That all changed when someone told me that fresh mint repels mice. Mint grows wild in one corner of my yard (it’s a perennial and comes back [...]

Chamfering an edge with a block plane is often easier, faster and safer than using a router or tablesaw—particularly on a small part. I do it so often that I’ve dedicated one of my planes for the [...]

Here’s a simple way to sharpen chisels using a 3″ sanding drum mounted in an oscillating spindle sander or a drill press. Cut a squared-up 2×4 the length of the sander’s table. Cut a [...]