Archives

Today I’m finishing up an article on sawmaker Andrew Lunn at Eccentric Toolworks for the next issue of The Fine Tool Journal , my employer’s office is closed for the holiday so [...]

When a workbench leaves a workshop, the results can be sad. I’ve seen perfectly good workbenches transformed into plant stands in a hallway. I’ve seen them as displays for pottery. [...]

A few years ago I was teaching a class on handplanes when one of the students came up to my bench to ask a favor. One of the main reasons he had signed up for the class was to get …

For the Lie-Nielsen fan who has everything, you might consider getting a Lie-Nielsen tattoo for the arm that pushes your bronze and ductile iron beauties. Casual Lie-Nielsen fans can purchase the [...]

You can do fancy things with a hammer and the right nails. And lately, I’ve been doing a lot of practicing with cut nails for a series of projects I’m working on that feature nails [...]

Reader James Carpenter is trying to put together a list of tools to purchase as a gift for his 6-year-old nephew. Man I wish I’d had an uncle like him. The best present I got from an uncle [...]

I’ve had a vintage panel gauge for many years, and I’ve hated every minute of our relationship. The beam flops around in the head, no matter how Conan you go on the thumbscrew. And so [...]

Plastic mallets can be highly durable, but they always look like plastic. Wooden mallets look great, but they sure get beat up after a few years of use. Now Dave Jeske at Blue Spruce Toolworks [...]

In what is surely one of the signs of the apocalypse, The Wood Whisperer is now selling T-shirts that mash together my likeness with the most memorable line from the forgettable 1987 movie [...]

Traditional striking knives have almost disappeared. Except for Adam Cherubini’s article on them in the April 2005 issue of Popular Woodworking, you’ll find little written about them [...]

Sometimes brand-new chisels and planes (even from the best manufacturers) don’t hold an edge well. I’ve seen some edges crumple like tin foil after two whacks with a mallet or two [...]

Poke around enough old woodworking books and two things will happen. You’ll become a tremendous bore at parties (“Aye, but I could find no mention of the ‘pricker’ tool in [...]