Tools

It’s an age-old question I hear uttered hundreds of times a year: What hand tool should I buy first? Without context, the question is impossible to answer. Most times, I...

One of the first things that many people notice when advancing the blade of a Preston/Record style shoulder plane (today’s Clifton and Lie Nielsen planes are based on that design)...

A few years ago, my friend Cambell Albritton gifted me with a small Clifton #410 shoulder plane that he no longer needed. The plane was still in its original box...

Demystifying volts, amp hours, and types of cordless tool motors. More and more, cordless tools are becoming everyday fixtures in the woodworking shop. The most common of these is the...

After 50 years of woodworking, I’ve got a confession to make. I enjoy fixing up an old machine or rearranging my shop more than woodworking itself. A few years ago...

How to choose, condition, and clean a finishing brush. It’s really tempting to buy an inexpensive brush for finishing. Say you spend $4 on a standard paint brush and throw...

An ancient European tool that still has a place in the modern American shop. Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the November 2008 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. Why...

This versatile hand tool should be every woodworker’s first plane purchase. As a “professional woodworker” I often get asked what’s the best bang-for-the-buck tool by people getting into [...]

These five specialty chisels will be the perfect compliment to your bench chisels. The amount of woodworkers that I meet that don’t have a good set of chisels nearly floors...

Most of the clamps in our woodworking arsenal are designed to produce tons of pressure per square inch. While we use them to hold pieces over the workbench, close joints,...

No matter what your style of woodworking, you need a basic set of hand tools. Here’s where to begin. When I came to America, I had a lovely wife, two...

A well-equipped shop will have a variety of clamps for different situations. Here’s our favorites. I think that you’ve probably heard the saying that “a woodworker can never have too...