Archives

It takes a long time – months, really – to recover your senses after spending time with the tool chest of H.O. Studley. During our first visit with the chest in 2011, we spent about an hour [...]

I’m always bemused by woodworkers who boast that they never use sandpaper. I usually say something to them such as: “Then I guess you don’t like old-school technology.” When they look confused, I [...]

Roorkhee chairs are tough and lightweight – they have to be in order go to war or on safari. To make your chairs as durable and lightweight as possible, here are some details to consider as you [...]

Finding a French-style workbench with a twin-screw vise is somewhat uncommon. And so what furniture maker Nick Webb stumbled upon on the Mediterranean island of Gozo is even more unusual. The [...]

We have iron planes and wooden planes. Iron vises and wooden ones. Iron clamps and wooden ones. So it shouldn’t come as a shock that you can have a wooden holdfast. But it does. Carpenter and [...]

I see a lot of workbenches. Lots of them are gorgeous. Many of them are tough. Few benches are both. Last weekend at Woodworking in America in Pasadena, Calif., I got to use a massive [...]

Lake Erie Toolworks showed off a new wooden vise screw kit at Woodworking in America that can be used to make a nice wagon vise or shoulder vise. Both vises work brilliantly and allow you to [...]

I swore on a stack of “Mechanicks Exercises” that I’d stop writing about coping saws. It’s not healthy, and I know that. But at Woodworking in America last weekend in Pasadena, Calif., I ran into [...]

The first stop after leaving the Los Angeles International Airport: the Lowe’s in nearby Hawthorne, Calif. I needed lumber, tools and hardware for my first demonstration at Woodworking in America [...]

Last month I posted an entry on a portable workbench top that had poked its head up in Australia and Europe. The version from Denmark inspired me to build it. But I haven’t gotten around to that [...]

In every craft, there is a magic device that acolytes must learn to manipulate and master. In joinery, I think dividers (aka the compass) are our totemistic thingy. In journalism, you have to [...]

As a child, I disliked assembling puzzles. What’s the fun in piecing together hundreds of pieces of cardboard into a flat image of a happy whale family? But Lincoln Logs, on the other hand, had [...]