Tricks of the Trade

I don’t have a compound miter saw, but I figured out how to cut the compound bevel needed at the top and bottom of splayed legs. My answer is to...

“Measure twice cut once” is probably the most commonly passed-on bit of woodworking advice. With that in mind, we’ve gathered some of our favorite tips to make measuring easier, [...]

Now that arthritis has a grip on me, I have trouble getting a good grip on clamp handles. My solution is easy and costs nothing. I carve grooves lengthwise on...

Floor Sweep Dust Port My router table is probably the most-used tool in my shop. I have dust collector ports on the fence, but when I rout with a bearing-guided...

My oscillating spindle sander’s auxiliary table makes quick work of edge sanding short boards and forming perfect circles. Make the table from melamine or a laminate-covered material and fasten it...

I devised a new way to fit a shelf into a dado. I use my router to make a tiny adjustment to the shelf’s thickness instead of fine-tuning my dado...

Pattern-Cut Finials The traditional way to make a square finial on a bandsaw is to mark and cut the pattern on one side of the blank, then tape the offcut...

Staple Set Pneumatic staplers don’t always set 1/4” crown staples flush.  Driving them the rest of the way with a hammer causes the staples to kink,  so I designed this...

Being an impatient sort, waiting for glue to reach the bottle’s spout became a pet peeve of mine. To put an end to this, I made a stand with a...

When stropping my plane and chisel blades for that final honing, I always want to be sure that there is little to no chance that a freshly sharpened blade will...

There’s never enough storage space in a shop, is there? When I recycled some old kitchen cabinets to use in my shop, I added one more drawer to each one—in the toe-kick space.

Sharpening the bevel of a drawknife can be a challenge. Lap the flat side then use this method to do the bevel side. Using 3⁄8” or 1⁄2” or 3⁄4” PEX...