Techniques

Last week we defined our bedside table in terms of functionality, features and style deciding which features we wanted to carry over from the bed and dressers in the set. We settled on overall [...]

Q & A: Knocking Apart Loose Joints   Q: I tried reversing a clamp to pull out the rungs of an old chair that needed regluing, but I couldn’t get all of the rungs out.What do I do? [...]

Groovy Dowels Have you ever tried gluing a pin made from dowel rod in a blind hole? If so you've probably encountered the nasty air pocket that forms at the bottom of the hole and makes [...]

Q & A: Sawdust in the Garden?   Q: I spend as much time tending plants in the garden as making sawdust in my shop.Are there any problems with using the sawdust and chips in my [...]

A question I am often asked is “How do you design furniture from scratch in SketchUp?” followed by questions such as “Do you sketch something on paper first and then transfer it [...]

When I teach woodworking, most of my job is diagnosing defective dovetails. Tail walls that are not 90°. Floors of pin and tail boards that have lumps aplenty. My diagnosis tools are my sensitive [...]

If you think there are hard-and-fast rules about designing dovetails, don’t read any further. You’ll get an ulcer. North Carolina woodworker Mark Firley has collected a set of 472 photos of [...]

Large Sheet Crosscutting Crosscutting large sheets of plywood on the tablesaw can be difficult, and I usually end up binding the blade, burning the wood, or worse. To get around this, I clamp a [...]

Q & A: Does Polyurethane Glue Fill Gaps? Q: I hate it when I slip up and make a joint that doesn’t fit tight. I heard that polyurethane glue will fill gaps and hold a loose joint [...]

There are several cut list producing tool scripts for SketchUp. The one I have written and made available is called CutList Bridge. It produces a CSV (comma separated values) file that can be [...]

Bench Helper I use this simple device when planing the edges of long boards. It's especially useful when the board is too springy to be clamped between a bench dog and a tail vise. I hold the [...]

Nice fitting drawers are one of my favorite parts of making stuff out of wood. There is nothing like the appearance of even and minimal gaps and nothing like the feel of an easy sliding drawer [...]