Shop Blog

After cutting the branch to length, sawing around the neck and chipping away most of the wood around the handle, the time comes to grab a half-round rasp and begin...

When woodworkers talk about their favorite hand tools, they might mention a treasured handplane — perhaps a superb pre-WWII Stanley Bedrock smoother outfitted with a Ron Hock blade or a...

I say this often. I’ve written it many times. Maybe I get the insight from the many years I’ve spent refinishing furniture. No matter how good or how careful you...

It’s the beginning of a new year, and that means that our December to Remember Holiday Sweepstakes has come to an end. Thanks to everyone who entered and shared with...

Some finishes are impenetrable by any stripper. That’s when you turn to stripping with a heat gun. My daughter-in-law found a dining table she really loved and wanted to refinish it....

To initiate our fourth graders into woodworking, we offer them a branch and show them how to shape it into a mallet. The branch-mallet is a great project to introduce...

Perhaps it’s the American love for excess. But no matter how many examples I cite or pleas I make, most beginning woodworkers seek to build workbenches that are entirely too...

When you make furniture in order to eat or meet a deadline (such as birthdays), it’s difficult to stop yourself from crossing the finish line as soon as possible. Years...

Wedging joints adds great strength, but it also is risky. A wedge can split the work, it can fail to dive into the tenon (sometimes popping out of the tenon),...

A Good Year for Digital Woodworking Tools Using a 3-axis CNC, the underside of a sofa table’s ovoid shaped top is being rough cut in 3D. The edge is a combination of...

All finishes craze ­– that is, develop small cracks – as they age, especially if they are exposed to a lot of sunlight. But there’s another type of crazing, and...

A stout “deadman” or “bench slave” is one of simplest jigs you can build, and it can be an invaluable addition to any workbench with a tail vise. You clamp...