Techniques

Hefty Bookends Resaw your own veneer to hide the steel shot inside. Got a small chunk of figured wood that you’d like to show off? Resaw it into thick veneers and make a pair of matching [...]

The first time I saw Ron Herman sharpen a handsaw, I learned more about sharpening the tool in 20 minutes than I had learned in all the years I’d been a woodworker. I had been sharpening my saws [...]

In addition to designing the Morris Mini, Alec Issigonis is credited with coining the phrase “A camel looks like a horse that was planned by a committee”. I can’t think of a [...]

Fiendish Knot Puzzle By John Cauley Here’s a puzzle that’s devilishly difficult to solve but quite easy to make. You only need some 3/4" hardwood dowel rods, a 3/4" Forstner [...]

Aside from Bender, Zapp Brannigan and Hypnotoad, my favorite character on the show “Futurama” is Nibbler – a cute little alien that can swallow an entire elephant in one bite and then poop [...]

General International 25-010 M1 Pen Turning Lathe Designed and built specifically for turning pens and other smaller hobby type projects. Quick lock control levers easily position tool rest. [...]

There are a couple of techniques I use to sort out thorny and complicated issues; follow the money and check the math. I also try to remember that my little corner of the world is just that, it [...]

Over the past few weeks, the debate over proposed Consumer Product Safety Commission regulations for table saw safety has been in the news. Curiously, the reason for it being in the news [...]

I’ve been using rabbet planes for years and I have made my peace with them. However, there are thousands of woodworkers out there who are driven to distraction by these simple and essential [...]

I’ve been working, albeit slowly, on a small desk from the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) – I wrote about full-blind dovetails found on the desk in an early post (read it [...]

One of the secrets of working effectively in SketchUp is keeping control of all the bits and pieces in your model. The more they look (and act) like individual hunks of wood, the closer modeling [...]

Roy Underhill looks over the rim of his beer at the City Tap – the bar behind his woodworking school – and asks me the following left-field-what-are-you-doing-inside-my-skull question. “You built [...]