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While I think a tool chest is the best place to store your tools, the chest can also become a rusty tomb if you aren’t careful. Woodworking shops can be nasty places. I’ve worked in unheated [...]

The other headline I considered for this blog entry was: Fare thee well, pinheads. As I sorted through the box of castings and metal bits in my Benchcrafted Crisscross kit tonight I wondered if [...]

When steel and an abrasive intersect, the typical result is utter confusion. Today we have more choices in steel than ever before. The same goes for abrasives. And so wading into the issue of [...]

For too long now I’ve been researching vernacular forms of furniture. I dislike the word “vernacular,” so I call these designs the “furniture of necessity.” These are the pieces of furniture that [...]

Ever since the minute I built my first leg vise, it has been my vise of choice. It is simple, offers lots of room for clamping and it doesn’t have horizontal guide bars that get in the way. Its [...]

I don’t get too worked up about sharpening equipment. With a few exceptions, any abrasive gets your tools sharp. And I find that the less I write about abrasives, the happier I am. But I’m going [...]

This morning, I’m listening to the newest album from The Avett Brothers, “The Carpenter.” It’s a delightful acoustic and folky album, and as a bonus the CD cover looks like a traditional seal of [...]

It’s fairly uncommon to find old workbenches in the wild that don’t have stretchers below the benchtop. After all, it’s quite handy to have a shelf down there for planes, other tools and [...]

Sometimes I wonder what I would do if I lived in a place where I didn’t have easy access to clear, wide wood. Then I realize the answer: I would move. Today I picked up about 300 board feet of …

When I was taught to sharpen in 1992, the flat back of the iron was holy ground. We were taught to flatten it completely and polish it like a mirror. Never mind that none of the old tools we were [...]

I try to stay abreast of the world of workbenches and workholding. But sometimes a place like Evans Wood Screw Co. escapes my eye. For six years, this Franklin, Ind., enterprise has been cranking [...]

Today we inched our way through the process of documenting the tools in the H.O. Studley chest with high-resolution, for-publication photographs. It is grueling work that’s done in the dark, [...]