Techniques

Have you ever wondered why there are specific rules for the sizes of mortise-and-tenon joints? Did you know there are rules? If you consult the 19th and early 20th century texts, they state that [...]

One of the curious aspects of investigating drawboring has been the mystery surrounding antique drawbore pins. Almost all of the examples of pins I come across are big , too big for cabinet work, [...]

I’ve been doing quite a bit of drawboring lately while building a couple cabinets for the next issue of Woodworking Magazine. And it’s given me a chance to try a couple of new [...]

The historically correct shape of the drawbore pin shown in our Autumn 2005 issue has come into question this week. Joel Moskowitz, a tool historian (correction: and a user) and the owner of [...]

My boss at my last job had a test he gave to all job applicants. He simply asked them: “How many hours do you sleep at night?” If they answered “seven” or anything less, [...]

There is a lot to know about nails. Don’t laugh or scoff. I’ve been digging deep into my library this week and have come up with some stuff that is wild and weird from the world of [...]

So many woodworkers resist using hammers, and I suspect it’s because they use one that’s more suited for framing a house or cracking walnuts. In browsing through old tool catalogs, [...]

The first handplane I ever bought was a Popular Mechanics block plane I purchased one night at Wal-Mart. There was no blade-adjustment mechanism. No adjustable mouth. And the iron was so soft [...]

Question: I am building the Shaker Side Table (Issue #2). I built the cabinet from the first issue (I used cherry and spalted maple – it came out pretty nice). The table calls out for two [...]

Many cabinets with shelves are built using a common method: You plow dados in the sides of the cabinet. And then you glue the shelves into the dados. Perhaps you glue on a face frame to the [...]

In looking at a lot of old fine furniture, you might be surprised how much of it is made using nails. In fact, I’m often shocked at how bad a reputation the nail has among woodworkers. I [...]

The scrub plane is unusual in that it doesn’t fall neatly into the traditional English system of classifying bench planes. Rough stock was prepared first with a “fore plane,” [...]