Tricks of the Trade

Tube Extractors are the Best Option Sawtooth edges make these small tools very handy to have around the shop. Use a drill press, if possible, to bore a clean hole around the screw. Or, a [...]

Attach a 3/4″ x 2-1/2″ x 28″ board to your miter gauge (not an original idea), then put a piece of masking tape on the table saw in front of the blade insert. Then cut partway [...]

A stop block provides the most accurate and efficient way to crosscut multiple workpieces to the same length on a miter saw. For safety, the “keeper” section of the workpiece is normally held [...]

I make a lot of wooden toys and find my disc sander indispensable for both shaping and smoothing small parts. Unfortunately, this calls for the use of both coarse and fine discs, and I have only [...]

If you enjoy making your own woodworking tools, as I do, here’s a good-quality marking knife you can create from a humble used-up spade bit and a small scrap of wood. To make the knife, begin by [...]

When mortising I found it difficult to remove waste left at the bottom of the mortise by my hollow-chisel mortising bit. Prying it out with a bench chisel often damaged the shoulder of the [...]

I recently converted a common #220 Stanley block plane into an effective rabbet plane. I think a block plane’s comfort, low profile and blade angle can provide precision for paring tenons, [...]

I was intrigued with Nick Engler’s Ingenious Jigs article from December 2001 that showed you how to make a jig for cutting perfect dados in the sides of case pieces. After my last project, where [...]

Many years ago my carpenter square mysteriously disappeared at the start of my basement finishing project. So I started using a butt hinge to mark lumber. It worked better than I had hoped. My [...]

Chiseling and paring away the waste between dovetail pins can be largely eliminated by using a Forstner bit to remove the waste. Set up a Forstner bit (the diameter equal to your drawer side [...]

Most shops have two types of router bits – dull and sharp ones. It’s easy to tell the difference because the sharp bits ease through the wood while the dull bits labor. Sometimes a good cleaning [...]

Here are some useful sawhorses for woodworkers like me, who have limited room to work, and even less room dedicated to storage. I cannot claim design rights for these because I got the general [...]