Tricks of the Trade

To set the height of a router bit—within .001″, if necessary—I made this simple stand for my caliper. It works on a router table or a hand-held router. Two screws...

A friend needed a small tool to clean out glue inside small places. So I made him a mini-scraper using an indexable blade from my planer, screwed to a turned...

I had a project on which I needed to rout out a large area about 3⁄8” deep. It was a wooden case for a Nook reader, and the eReader had...

Who says you can’t put a square peg in a round hole?  My scrap bin is made from round cardboard tubes made for concrete forms. These tubes are available at...

Bottle Cap Jig Knobs I’m always trying to use up scraps and stuff that would otherwise end up in the trash. My latest devices are jig knobs made with plastic...

“You can’t have too many clamps,” a wise cabinetmaker once said. That is certainly true, but in a small shop, you can easily run out of room to store them....

Find magic in the mundane using this humble problem solver. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned as a woodworker is to never underestimate the seemingly mundane. I have...

When buying supplies for my shop, I often visit a store where stuff costs around $1. Many items sell for much more at a home improvement store, so I save...

While making Shaker boxes, I built a jig to accurately rip 1/16″ thick strips without getting my hands too close to the blade. In fact, I can leave the guard...

Here’s a hi-tech way to set your tablesaw’s miter gauge to within 1/10 of 1° of any angle. It really works well for cutting picture-frame miters. The key is to...

Venetian blinds purchased from a home center come in a variety of standard sizes. They are cut to the correct width by the retailer, but to adjust the height you...

Setting the depth-of-cut on my circular saw was awkward at best before I made this handy gauge. It’s just a thick block of wood with 1/4″ wide slots cut at precise,...