Archives

When it comes to building furniture in my shop at home, I have zero desire for industrial-grade machinery. But when I need to get a class of students at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking to [...]

Ever since Roy Underhill wrote about the joys of mutton tallow as a tool lubricant in Popular Woodworking Magazine in the August 2010 issue, readers have been asking where to purchase the stuff. [...]

Almost every system for sharpening tools works just fine, so the differences between the systems come down to speed, expense, portability and mess. In December, Lee Valley Tools started carrying [...]

It’s funny how my chainsaw skills have gone through the roof since I started to build lots of workbenches in 1999. Today I cut down a buttload of 6 x 6 x 16’ Douglas Fir beams for a [...]

If you read this blog, you are probably interested in hand tools. And if you are at the beginning of your journey, this blog entry is for you. Popular Woodworking Magazine commissioned me to make [...]

Christopher Schwarz and Lucy May are pleased to announce the newest addition to their family. Length: 18”. Weight: 9 lbs., 4 oz. Birth date: Feb. 15, 2012. Delivered by: Peter Ross, blacksmith [...]

Anyone who has ever read Joseph Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises” (1678) has puzzled over his pictures of saws. There are some frame saws, a whipsaw and a fancy handled saw without a back that Moxon, [...]

Years ago I was asked to judge a building contest put on by Bosch that pitted young technical students against one another for a big cash prize and a whole bunch of tools. For the contest, the [...]

With the release of the long-awaited book “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree,” I hope to get many more reports like this one from woodworker Wilbur Pan in New Jersey. He and some fellow members of [...]

There is some good advice out there on how to drive brass screws when installing furniture hardware. To recap: 1. Use the right-size pilot holes. The bit should be the diameter of the un-threaded [...]

I spend a lot of time in my shop, so I’m picky about what I put in there, from the bench to the tool cabinet, the wooden floor or even the wastebasket. Last week I decided I needed a wastebasket [...]

After being clobbered by bacterial pneumonia in 2011, woodworker, Popular Woodworking Magazine author and teacher David Charlesworth is again teaching classes on tool tuning, dovetailing and [...]