Techniques

Anyone who has worked with me for about five minutes knows that I really like chamfers on my work. Stop chamfers, such as those found on early English and American...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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 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...