Techniques

Stile and Rail Joinery A reversible stile and rail cutter makes perfect-fitting frames for doors and cabinets without dowels, mortises or biscuits. By Tim Johnson One of the best buys you can [...]

Melamine is the professional cabinetmaker’s best friend. Build a cabinet with it and you have a complete, durable interior that requires no sanding (yes!) and no finishing (oh, yeah!). Pros [...]

  1. Sandpaper Roll Storage I use pressure-sensitive-adhesive (PSA) sanding discs. For easy access, I like to get them out of their packages and lined up by grit. I hang my rolls of sanding [...]

How two versatile woods can be both a blessing and a curse. by Karen Nakamura Cheap, plain and definitely not wood. That’s how many woodworkers describe particleboard and MDF (medium-density [...]

Commercially made zero-clearance inserts cost about $20. I make my own for less than $3 from 3/8-in.-thick polyethylene cutting boards, which are flat and rigid. A 14-in. x 17-in. cutting board [...]

I don't like to throw wood away; offcuts and other short boards work great for small projects, jigs and shop fixtures. But until I built this mobile cart, my shop was littered with piles of [...]

It's easy to cut perfectly round tabletops of almost any size on your tablesaw. All it takes is a simple jig (Fig A) and careful setup. With this method, you can safely cut dia-meters from 12 [...]

Simple Lumber Maker By Jay McClellan I’ve turned my bandsaw into a mini sawmill with the help of one dirt-simple jig and a pair of extension tables. The jig is nothing more than a piece of [...]

Screwing plywood pieces with drywall-type screws is quick and easy, but drilling holes in a straight line can be tricky. That’s why I made this handy little marking gauge that allows me to [...]

I use my grinder almost exclusively for beveling my chisels, so I like to keep the tool rest set to produce the 25-degree bevel I prefer. Having to reset the angle after using my diamond wheel [...]

These days investing in premium tools might have less financial risk than the stock market. Just about every week I get an e-mail or phone call from a reader asking me if they think that premium [...]

Need to clean up the corners of really wide rabbets? Then I have the plane for you. This Stanley plane is so rare it doesn’t even show up in John Walter’s “Stanley Tools Guide [...]