Despite my butchering of their language last year, the German tool company Dictum asked me to return this week to teach two classes at its new workshop in Niederalteich, a small village in [...]
You can now register for Woodworking in America 2011, our annual gathering of hardcore, passionate woodworkers who want to learn everything there is to know about the craft. The conference runs [...]
Boatbuilders often say: If it looks fair, it is fair. I think that’s tremendous advice. Making perfect circular components in wood is tough. If the piece of wood needs to roll, such as on a [...]
A dedicated shooting plane is a luxury item, much like a European table saw with a beautiful sliding table or a full keg of beer by your bedside. For many years, I’ve used my jointer plane to [...]
The best things about the craft of woodworking – the things that bring pleasure in the work – are beyond my skills as a writer, teacher or friend to explain. Example: Powered jointers are – in my [...]
Here’s some tough love: Most good woodworkers are terrible finishers. I know this because I have seen hundreds – probably thousands – of pieces of furniture that have been entered in competitions [...]
QUESTION: My woodworking shop is going great but I do have a question spurred (proper word choice?) on by your videos and my experience. I have flattened my Lie-Nielsen bench benchtop. Not a [...]
I showed up at John Sindelar’s Tool Museum almost an hour late on Saturday morning after an evening at a Chicago tapas restaurant that pushed my bedtime to 1 a.m. The museum, which is also [...]
During the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event in our shop this spring, furniture maker Jeff Miller came over to my bench and started asking questions about the Wenzloff & Sons no-set backsaw I had [...]
In the June 2011 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine we have a fun article that lists all of the woodworking books that the magazine’s staff consider to be “classics.” It’s a great list, but [...]
In 2006 a reader sent me a little spiral-bound black book that was filled with handwritten notecards. Graphs. Equations. Photos. It was a carefully assembled list of all my mistakes and misdeeds [...]
Quick reminder: I’ll be in southwest Michigan this Saturday (June 4) giving demonstrations and generally mopping up the drool in my vicinity at the open house of tool collector John Sindelar. [...]