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I first heard about Colen Clenton’s tools from Joel Moskowitz of Tools for Working Wood in Brooklyn, N.Y. On Joel’s recommendation, I purchased one of Colen’s squares and was deeply impressed by [...]

When I fly somewhere to teach, I usually have a luggage limit of about 50 pounds. Amongst my heaps of lacy underwear, I pack the tools I cannot live without – about 12 pounds worth. That means [...]

Among us old-school newspaper cronies, we have a saying: If your mother says she loves you, check it out. Meaning: Don’t believe a word anyone tells you. So when I arrived in Australia earlier [...]

One of the regulars at the Melbourne Guild of Fine Woodworking is building a workbench using Richard Maguire hardware from the United Kingdom. During my visit there, I had the chance to inspect [...]

My biggest fear when traveling to Australia wasn’t the 16-hour flight, the change of hemispheres or the spiders that would make my *deleted* fall off. It was the timber I’d have to work with. [...]

I’ve been teaching classes on building “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” for two years now, and with every class I find some way of goosing the students a bit further along. Last year at The [...]

When it comes to poisonous things that bite you, Australia has more than its fair share. Within an hour of landing in Melbourne, I heard some lovely stories of spotted little spiders that make [...]

Years ago I worked with a professional woodworker who built all his own tools, used the least-expensive machines available and turned out work that was undeniably world class. He scoffed at [...]

If you build traditional casework with traditional joints and fasteners then you already know the local hardware store is of little use when you need some 4d rosehead nails. Lucky for us, there’s [...]

When I make a lot of half-blind dovetails, I’ll use a drill press to help bore out the waste between the pins. The video below shows how I do. Some caveats to consider before you try to cram your [...]

One of the biggest obstacles to beginning woodworkers is carving out a space to work in, and building a bench to work on. Recently, I built a pair of portable workbenches that are closely based [...]

For me, one of the biggest challenges when working with dark-colored woods is marking them out for sawing and chiseling. Knife lines and pencil lines disappear into the tangle of growth rings and [...]