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I have visited a lot of woodworking clubs in North America since 1996, and I thought I had seen it all until I stepped into the Kansas City Woodworkers Guild’s enormous facility today. Perched on [...]

When it comes to pushing our handplanes, I think we are candy-bottomed wussies compared to the joiners of the 17th century. We are obsessed with how thin a shaving we can make. Early joiners, [...]

A former musician brings an improvisational skill to the craft. by Christopher Schwarz Somewhere between street musician and the symphony orchestra, between an 18th-century hand woodworker and a [...]

I try to keep Adam Bowett’s book “Woods in British Furniture-Making 1400-1900” closed tight as much as possible. That’s because every time I open it, I lose at least an hour of my day reading a [...]

With my latest book, “Campaign Furniture,” I’m at the very titillating stage of processing several gigabytes of scanned images of furniture that I’ve gathered from musty British catalogs. Many of [...]

At Christmas, my preference would be to receive nothing. But that’s not an option with my wife and kids. The kids got me some stickers for my tool chest (Johnny Cash, Foo Fighters and Nirvana). [...]

After setting up shop with your workbench and tool chest (or cabinet), the next project to build for your shop is a nail cabinet – a traditional way to hold fasteners and all the little bits of [...]

One of the gripes I hear about French workbenches is that the benchtops are difficult to flatten because of the end grain protruding through the top. I don’t buy it. Here are a few simple tricks [...]

An eagle-eyed reader spotted this small benchtop that looks like the bigger Danish brother to the portable Milkman’s Workbench I wrote about in the June 2013 issue of Popular Woodworking [...]

When I finish my pieces, I use restraint when adding stains or dyes. Most woods look best (to my eye) with some shellac, lacquer and maybe a little colored wax in the pores. But when I do color [...]

One of the unseen forces in the modern renaissance of hand tool manufacturing is Fred West, a woodworker from West Chester, Pa. Well, to be more precise, you might not know who Fred is, but [...]

Every time I purchase lacquer at a professional paint store, I have the following conversation. Me: “Could you put that gallon in the paint-mixing machine for a couple minutes? That will save me [...]