Tricks of the Trade

Rare earth magnets make really slick hinges for small boxes. The lid on this ring box pivots on two hinges made from 10mm magnets—nothing more. Each hinge is composed of two magnets: one is glued [...]

When I’m sanding pitchy wood or removing old finish, my sandpaper gets really gummed up and I can’t get it clean with the rubber eraser-type cleaner. I used to throw it away and buy more. [...]

Hole saws provide an inexpensive way to bore large holes, but they have a maddening tendency to clutch the drilled disk afterward. I’ve found that the best approach for removing a stuck disk from [...]

I needed a way to lift pieces off the surface of my bench for finishing, so I made some 3/4″ x 2″ x 3″ blocks and inserted 1/4″ x 1-1/4″ dowels into them. [...]

I’ve dried my own lumber for years, but I always had a problem getting enough weight on top of the stack, to keep the upper boards from warping. Here’s a solution: Use clamps made from threaded [...]

Whenever creating small pieces that include a routed detail of some sort, it’s best to do the routing on the larger “parent” board, and then separate the small piece from the larger. However, [...]

I have long used my car’s scissor jack for house and shop projects including lifting a settled deck and leveling workbenches. And when I needed to install a new set of cabinets in my shop, I [...]

Hoisting heavy sheets of plywood and MDF onto my tablesaw is not my idea of workshop fun. That’s why I devised this pivoting rack— and began storing my sheet stock vertically. The rack’s frame [...]

Nobody likes wrapping up the last bit of finishing on a project and suddenly catching a run or imperfection you missed earlier. You can either ignore it, or more likely sand it down and fix the [...]

I needed to cut stopped grooves on a round surface – and while I could have cut them on the stock while it was square, then proceed to turn it on the lathe, I didn’t want to worry about catching [...]

  I built a deep drawer for my workbench so I would have lots of storage, but it created another problem. The tools I wanted were always at the bottom of the heap. I solved my frustration by [...]

I designed an outfeed support for my table saw that doesn’t take up any floor space. It’s made of plywood, hardwood and a store-bought roller. Three main design features enable it to work well. [...]