Woodworking Mistakes

Kick the Can When I was a boy, my dad taught me a great way to re-seal a can of stain. He would place the open can on the floor...

SURE SHOT When I found out my wife was pregnant with our first child, I decided to make a cradle. Nine months seemed like plenty of time, but naturally, I...

Snake Surprise While I was visiting my brother in Florida, he showed me his latest toy, a Wood-Mizer portable sawmill. A huge hickory log was mounted on the cutting platform....

SUPER GLUED After making a small repair with super glue, I put the tube in my pocket and forgot about it. Later, when I saw the tube’s cap sitting on...

Backside Out After dabbling with woodworking for a couple of years, I finally got up the courage to build some kitchen cabinets, starting with an 8′ long upper unit. I...

Kitchen Kalamity The cherry salad tongs I’d made needed repairs. They were steam-bent, so they would “spring” when you squeezed them together. But the top portion where the two arms...

Clamp-Ka-Bob This morning I glued up a 4′ x 6′ tabletop made of maple 2x2s on my assembly table. I positioned 6′ pipe clamps alternately on the top and bottom...

While visiting the local Habitat for Humanity store I noticed a woodturning lathe. The store manager told me it had come from an estate and was almost new, so I...

Self Portrait Seeing that it was a very fine day, I began to carve a gnome. This little guy would be my masterpiece. Hours, then days passed as I worked...

Inside Job While building kitchen cabinets, I purposefully chose straight-grained lumber for the doors’ stiles and rails and bought expensive, highly-figured boards to make the panels. In [...]

Dust Bomb My neighbor has had a woodworking shop in his garage since I was a kid. Recently, when he discovered that mice and other furry critters were living in...

One Coat Coverage I had finished building new frame and panel doors for my kitchen cabinets and knew the stain would really make the grain pop. I laid the first...