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Today we’re taking the cover photo for the June 2011 issue, stacking bookcases based on the reproductions at Monticello. Last night, these bookcases were loaded up with about half of my [...]

After writing about Deb Chalsty’s amazing workbench (here and here), and noting that the hardware looked like the bench on piano-maker H.O. Studley’s workbench, I got an e-mail from Patrick [...]

Last week Senior Editor Glen D. Huey and I applied a shellac and lacquer spray finish to the cover project for the June 2011 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. These stacking bookcases are [...]

Nobody likes to bend over. So any device that keeps me upright is OK in my book. The Moxon double-screw vise is one great example. Since December I’ve been cutting dovetails like crazy for [...]

Between meetings, classes and regular living, I’ve cut 132 dovetails during the last couple weeks to build my next project, which will be featured on the cover of the June 2011 issue of Popular [...]

One of the interesting characteristics of the Moravian workbenches at Old Salem is how the bench forms evolved. The more ancient benches were made using oak. The newer benches have poplar [...]

The forms of workbenches that interest me the the most are (spoiler alert) the older and simpler forms that haven’t been corrupted by unnecessary complexities that woodworkers want to heap upon [...]

While I have always admired the ornate 18th-century styles of furniture from New England, I’ve never wanted to put one of those pieces in my home. My tastes in furniture have always been more in [...]

Today as we finished up my three-day class on “Handplane Essentials” at The Woodwright’s School, we spent some time at Roy Underhill’s Barnes 1874 combination machine – a treadle-powered table [...]

Roy Underhill’s long-running PBS show “The Woodwright’s Shop” was renewed Wednesday for two years by its sponsor, State Farm Insurance. That means that “The [...]

UNC-TV has posted the shows from the new season of Roy Underhill’s “The Woodwright’s Shop” so you can watch them on your computer – including the two episodes I appeared in. We taped the two [...]

“Now let us drink to the success of our hopeless endeavor.”— Russian dissident toast My plan for the June 2011 cover project was a 17th-century “book press” from Samuel Pepys library – considered [...]