Techniques

In China, 2005 was the year of the rooster. In our shop, 2005 was the year of the anvil. We built a guillotine out of framing material and dropped anvils...

Trestle tables have always looked notoriously spindly and rickety to my eye. Compared to a traditional apron table, there’s just not much material there. Add to the fact that they...

I get called a Luddite all the time for my affection for hand tools (Recent quip from spouse: “You know, we own a blender for a good reason”). I certainly...

Sometimes a craftsman-made tool surfaces that is just plain mysterious and wondrous. Today I spent the morning with Carl Bilderback, a semi-retired Chicago-area carpenter who has an astonishing [...]

Growing old gracefully is one of the signature features of this sometimes-finicky wood.

I’m frequently amazed at what happens when I hand a sharp full-size handsaw to a fellow woodworker for a test drive. Nine times out of 10 they clamp something in...

At least once a week I’m asked if I prefer handplanes that have the iron’s bevel facing up (like in a block plane) or facing down (like in a traditional...

One of my favorite movies as a teen-ager had a scene where a 1940s-era G-man goes to a mystic for help in becoming a superhero. The G-man shows the mystic...

One of the themes coursing through the next issue of Woodworking Magazine is rethinking the role of nails in woodworking. And so I’ve been whacking a lot of cut nails...

Some days it’s overwhelming to think about all the woodworking and toolmaking knowledge that’s been lost. Last weekend at the Mid-West Tool Collectors Association national meeting it [...]

Thanks to my daughter’s fourth-grade class, I’ve discovered another good source of small-scale drawbore pins for cabinet work. This morning I had to give a small chat about my job...

When you are making big mortises, such as those in the Roubo-style Workbench in Issue 4, it’s a good idea to bore out as much of the waste as possible....