Back to Germany to See an Old Friend

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 [...]

Make Circles Without Jigs

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 [...]

The Lie-Nielsen No. 51 in Use

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 [...]

Things I Cannot Teach About Woodworking

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 [...]

Finishing for the Rest of Us

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 [...]

Build Two Workbenches in an Afternoon

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 [...]

Jeff Miller’s Incredible Tenon Jig

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 [...]

Roy Underhill’s 3 Favorite Books

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 [...]

A Gift for My Successor

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 [...]