Woodworking Mistakes

One day while disposing trash at the landfill, I discovered a pristine miter saw. It looked perfect—well, almost. The blade was covered with nasty burn marks. I love fixing old...

Bye-Bye Birds-Eye An Army buddy from northern Michigan stopped when he came upon a truck that had overturned and scattered its load of lumber. The trucker, who was unhurt, told...

Breezy Bandsawing Reasoning that I’d only be cutting small stuff in my basement shop, I parked my bandsaw diagonally in a corner. Then I decided to make one of those...

Super Sander After years of hard use, my tablesaw’s 120-volt motor finally expired. Eureka! This was the perfect opportunity to acquire a more powerful machine. I purchased a new 240-volt...

Wedged Woodworker Winter comes early here in Oregon, a fact I’d forgotten as I carried a custom kitchen cabinet to my truck. This cabinet was long and slender, to go...

Flaming Scroll Saw When I work in my garage shop, I keep the garage door open to let the sunlight stream in. After working for several hours one fine afternoon,...

Bow Blues After preparing the laminations, bending form and heat box for the fiberglass longbow I planned to build, I mixed the epoxy—and promptly began to mess up the entire...

Pants on Fire When Daylight Savings Time begins, I make it a point to change the batteries in the three smoke detectors in my workshop. It was that time again,...

Cordless Curler As I leaned over to press down while drilling some holes in a board, my long hair slipped into the drill’s vent slots and got caught in the...

Back Leg Boo-Boo My wife asked me to repair a wobbly kitchen chair. All the joints below the seat had failed, so it didn’t take much to knock apart the...

Planer-Puss After my friend Jason and I purchased a truckload of rough lumber, we headed for his garage workshop to plane the boards before divvying them up. All of Jason’s...

Flying Sawdust Last summer, due to the heat, I covered my portable saw with a canvas tarp and retreated to the cooler air inside my basement shop.  For two months,...