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How to choose and apply a long-lasting clear finish. What do fancy wooden boats and beautiful wooden front doors have in common? They both need a clear finish that can really stand up to the [...]

Work miracles on wood with oxalic acid. Watering a potted plant can be disastrous if the plant lives on top of something made out of wood. We’ve all seen the white spots and black rings that can [...]

Three quick steps to a silky-smooth finish. Brushed-on finishes such as varnish provide superior protection, but they dry so slowly, airborne dust and renegade hairs are almost sure to settle on [...]

Take your box-making and scroll saw skills to a new level. “Trompe l’oeil” is an old French phrase that literally means “it fools the eye.” Trompe l’oeil has a long tradition in the art [...]

Add a touch of color to your hallway. Our front hall is usually a disorganized mess: coats on the floor, keys strewn here and there, and hats—well, I can never find them. I built this wall shelf [...]

Achieve rich, warm color without blotching in 4 easy steps. If you’ve ever stained birch plywood a dark color, the results were probably so blotchy and difficult to reverse that you vowed, “Never [...]

Using factory-made prefinished plywood makes cabinet building quicker, easier and cleaner, so it’s unfortunate that most home centers and lumberyards don’t stock it. Luckily, [...]

Discovering ugly blotching after applying stain is one of the worst finishing problems a woodworker can encounter—especially because the unsightly patches of dark, deeply absorbed color seem to [...]

This 3-cabinet unit is designed to organize and store finishing supplies ranging from flammable liquids to Q-tips in ways that makes them easy to access and (just as important!) easy to put back. [...]

My grama always used lemon oil to clean and polish her wood furniture. Either she just enjoyed having everything clean and dust free or she believed everything she read on the label. Many [...]

The modern term “butcher block” probably originated from the large, heavy chopping blocks found in old-fashioned butcher shops, which consisted of thick square boards (such as [...]

“What kind of wood is this?” In my work as a furniture restorer and conservator, I often hear this question. Red alder is especially hard to identify because it can be finished to closely [...]