Tools

This year I’ve made friends with my chisel plane. In fact, I don’t think I could have installed the Benchcrafted wagon vise as a retrofit without it. Today I got another lesson in [...]

For me, there is something that is far more interesting than the purported uses of “the nib” of a handsaw. And that is: The origin of the term “jack plane.” In my book [...]

I never got to meet James Krenov, and so last week I hesitated to write anything about his death. But as I drove home on Friday afternoon I forgot to turn on the stereo in my car, and my …

When I teach people how to sharpen and set up a handplane, I can jabber endlessly to little effect. Sure, I’ll get in a few jokes about lemurs and frogs (and their forbidden love), but I [...]

The first time I ever met toolmaker Ray Iles, we got into a conversation about the planes made by Karl Holtey. I asked Ray: Have you ever used one of Holtey’s planes? How do they work? [...]

It’s little wonder that Stanley chose to bring its No. 62 low-angle jack plane back to life when the company decided last year to re-enter the premium handplane market. After all, the [...]

When I began teaching at woodworking schools several years ago, it was the most selfish act imaginable. I didn’t do it to share what I know about woodworking. I didn’t do it to [...]

We reviewed six premium carcase saws in the Autumn 2009 issue of Woodworking Magazine, and while all of the saws performed quite well, the Gramercy carcase saw took top honors. (That bit of [...]

While I was poking around the Blue Spruce Toolworks booth at Woodworking in America and trying to figure out how I could escape without spending money (and failing), something curious caught my [...]

Veritas is set to release two new backsaws in the next couple weeks that are based on the same architecture as the Canadian company’s very successful dovetail saw. The saws were available [...]

I could barely get out of bed this morning. It wasn’t because of a hard night of slamming Maudite. Or because I had worked every waking hour for the last seven days. It was because of my [...]

Several customers have asked why the pages in their brand new copy of “Handplane Essentials” have a slight wave to them, like David Hasselhoff’s hair in a botanical garden. The [...]