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The difference between a good hammer and a great hammer is significant. Most hammers at the hardware store are but one step above a rock tied to a stick. As...

Of all the furniture of the 18th and 19th centuries, the work of Boston chair maker Samuel Gragg (1772-1855) is some of the most shocking to modern eyes. His elastic,...

In the great battle to make the best router plane (what, you weren’t aware of the war?), Lie-Nielsen has raised the stakes by introducing two new closed-throat routers. For those...

I was in a rock ‘n’ roll band in college, and we dreamed about getting a record deal, selling dozens of copies of our album and ending up in the...

I’m gearing up to build a run of Roorkhee Chairs for some customers and (fingers crossed) this magazine. But before I can even order the wood I had to do...

As a lifelong Southerner, I can attest that things are done a little differently below the Mason-Dixon line. Things might seem a little backward or slow to newcomers. The manners,...

It sounds like a difficult question, but it’s really not. “I really want a Wenzloff & Sons handsaw, but I am a (graduate student, hobo, philosophy major) and cannot afford...

Attention woodworkers in and around the Great Falls, Montana, area: Have you noticed a curious lack of vintage handsaws in your flea markets and antique malls? Well there’s a reason...

Around the Popular Woodworking Magazine office we used to joke about how red oak (Quercus rubra) wasn’t really a wood. It was more like a weed. It’s stringy, kinda homely,...

My favorite honing guide is the one you can find at almost any woodworking store. The guides are inexpensive and poorly made, but you can easily tune them up to...

For some of us, working wood is a form of time travel. We like the smells, the physical exertion and the pleasure of a job well done. What makes it...

  It seems I have more holdfasts than internal organs. And yet, when I was dropping something off at Managing Editor Megan Fitzpatrick’s house this week, I was struck by...