Sharpening for Woodturners
Turning tools come in many shapes. Here’s how to keep those shapes sharp. Many years ago, I was cooking with a friend who was home visiting his parents during a college break. He struggled with a [...]
10 Tricks for Tighter Joints
Woodworking is sweet when everything fits right. Here are 10 ways to ensure your mortise-and-tenon, dado, dovetail, and edge joints close up tightly. 1. Cauls distribute pressure It’s not easy to [...]
How to Make Breadboard Ends
This traditional joint ensures the only cup on your tabletop will have coffee in it. The breadboard end is a traditional device for preventing a broad panel such as a tabletop from cupping. It is [...]
Resurrecting Chisels
Old chisels can be brought back to life using these simple steps. If ever there was a type of used hand tool that was a good candidate for restoration, it’s a chisel. Lots of good deals on old [...]
How to Build Easy Small Drawers
Cut completed boxes from a simple glue-up. If your shop is like mine, every horizontal surface collects stuff—the necessary minutiae of woodworking. It’s all good stuff, to be sure, but it can [...]
7 Tips for Making Bandsaw Boxes
The biggest benefit: less sanding. Big Slice, Big Blade When you’re cutting the back off a big box, your best bet is to use a 1/2″ 4 TPI (Teeth Per Inch) hook-tooth blade, and guide the cut [...]
Make Your Own Copper Hardware
It’s surprisingly simple to make your own Stickley-style pulls. The simple lines and honest joinery of the Arts & Crafts period have always appealed to me. The fumed quartersawn white oak and [...]
Hand-Cutting Dovetails
Basic steps for beautiful joints. Dovetails. They get put on a pedestal as a sign of quality. And while not every project or furniture style warrants them, I enjoy sitting down, listening to an [...]
Three Ways to Make Edge Joints
By hand or power? With a spring joint or not? One of the most important joints in woodworking is the edge joint. Without it, our projects would look like they had been built from narrow popsicle [...]
Quick Rip Fence Adjustment
Like any table saw rip fence, mine needs occasional realignment to the blade. Because my miter gauge slots are aligned parallel to the blade, I just set my fence parallel to the right-hand slot. [...]
What, Why & Hows of CNC Machines
What is a CNC? Why might I want one & How does it work? Over the last decade, CNC machines have become a common topic in woodworking. Most know that they cut things out, but that’s the extent [...]
Build Furniture Without a Shop
A few tools can go a long way. When you get started in woodworking there are many paths to follow, forks in the road, dead-ends and shortcuts. It’s a journey that our forebears would make with [...]
