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Today my worst nightmare as a teacher came true during a dovetail demonstration. As I knocked together the components of the joint under the watchful eyes of 18 students and...

When I call my students “maggots,” I do it in only the kindest, most loving way possible. After all, most of them are at the very beginning of their journey...

When I teach a class on sawing by hand, some students seem bewildered by how much work we do with planes and chisels. When I teach a class on planes,...

I have always been fastidious about keeping rust off my tools. I have to be. My shop is partially underground and we live in a humid river city. Blink, and...

I looked at my 10-year-old daughter Katy over a plate of chili dogs today and realized that this was the chance I had been waiting for all my adult life....

While packing my tools to teach a toolbox class in Germany, I knew two things: 1. The students had to cut a lot of dovetails in 7/8”-thick material. 2. Coping...

Tool seller Patrick Leach has a new sliding bevel in the works that does something that no other modern bevel does: It locks at a perfect 90°. Yup. Sliding bevels...

  If you know me through my writing, then you likely think that I prefer traditional furniture to the more contemporary forms. That’s not exactly true. What I really prefer...

The last day of the tool chest class at Dictum workshops was supposed to be all about the lid. One lid in one day. Easy. Well as it turned out,...

One of my students in my tool chest class has no business being there. He’s been a woodworking instructor in Denmark for 40 years and can teach me a few...

It’s time to reveal a dirty little secret of teaching woodworking classes. Are you ready? I don’t care. Here we go. You have to whip the students mercilessly in the...

I don’t know if there were ever guinea pigs in Europe, but now there are 11 of them. This week I am teaching a class in building the traditional tool...