One of best ways to learn how a piece of furniture is put together is to take it apart. Many of the best furniture makers I know who work in historical styles have done a fair bit of restoration [...]
Don Williams is like a shark in a clown suit. He’ll bite you in half while you are laughing. During his presentation at Woodworking in America last weekend, I am quite sure that he [...]
Several customers have asked why the pages in their brand new copy of “Handplane Essentials” have a slight wave to them, like David Hasselhoff’s hair in a botanical garden. The [...]
I got wind last week of a new German-made smoothing plane from Kunz and , surprise , today it landed on a table while I was signing books at our Woodworking in America conference. It’s [...]
“The machines need the numbers. We don’t need the numbers.” – Jim Tolpin After attending almost two days of lectures at our Woodworking in America conference, [...]
I got to spend a little time in the Marketplace area of the Woodworking in America conference this morning and got a first look at some new hand tools that will be available soon. First stop was [...]
Today I was standing in line at our hotel waiting to check in, when I did a foolish thing. “Oh my gosh,” I said (OK, I actually kinda squealed.) “It’s Thomas Moser!” [...]
A couple weeks ago a friend in Chicago sent me a new Western backsaw (nice gift!) that he picked up for a couple dollars. It was shiny and factory-fresh with a beech handle and a clean etch. It [...]
In the history of measuring equipment, there is one blunder so awful that it makes me twitter (old-school twitter) like a smack-addled squirrel every time I encounter it. It’s a 6″ [...]
When the new premium planes from Stanley arrived, it was agony. I was in the middle of another project and had to just stare at them for a week before I could get my mitts on them. The first tool [...]
My wife, Lucy, is fearful that her four cats are going to get trapped inside the walls of our house. And it’s my job, as a woodworker, to prevent this from happening. Before you think I [...]
I’ve been talking a lot about laminated veneer lumber (LVL), the raw material we used to build our latest workbench. But what I haven’t talked much about is why we chose this material [...]