Techniques

Some of the best workholding ideas rely on simple wedging action. This weekend I stumbled onto one more great wedging trick using cut nails. This might be old hat for you. If so, forgive my waste [...]

FRENCH COUNTRY TABLE30”T x 41"W x 62” – 84”LWalnut, boiled linseed oil, wipe-on poly. Tim RamlBaltic, SD “This table was the first time I used rough lumber for [...]

Whenever I demonstrate handsawing, someone usually asks this question: “Should you saw right on the knife line or next to your line?” I answer: “It depends. Usually I split the [...]

Sometimes with woodworking, what seems crazy one day can be quite sensible the next. I distinctly remember reading in the late 1990s a manuscript from an author who was building some Morris [...]

The most stressful glue-up of my life was assembling my tool chest in 1998. The main carcase had 120 mating surfaces that had to be glued. Foolishly, I chose yellow glue as the adhesive. As a [...]

When you’re a professional writer, people tend to give you cranky manual typewriters as gifts. They don’t expect you to use them, per se. But they do expect you to display them in [...]

Last week Roy Underhill took me to the back room of his new school in Pittsboro, N.C. “Is this the office?” I asked. “No,” Roy said with a wicked grin. “This is [...]

Some day I expect one of my little girls to tell a school counselor (between sobs): “Daddy has a hammer problem.” My, ahem, problem started innocently enough years ago. I got [...]

Working with Melamine It’s dirt cheap, it’s practical, and best of all, there’s no sanding and finishing! by Dave Munkittrick Melamine is the professional cabinetmaker’s [...]

    Have you ever slid a piece of 1/4-in. plywood into a 1/4-in. groove? It ain't pretty. It's a fact of life that plywood is undersized in thickness and this results in ugly [...]

This week I’m at my father’s house in Charleston, S.C., to get my USRDA of grits, tasso and shrimp. Whenever I visit the Holy City, I always make sure to pack comfortable shoes and a [...]

Q. I’m building outdoor furniture from rough cedar. When I cut the wood, it’s soaking wet on the inside. Should I use polyurethane glue since it’s a moisture-cure glue? A. Not [...]