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The Popular Woodworking Magazine editors have assembled a short “e-mag” of five of my most popular articles from the magazine that you can download for $3.99 from ShopWoodworking.com.
Titled “The Best of Christopher Schwarz,” here’s what you get:
The Dutch Tool Chest (small and large versions)
This is a fantastic tool chest that I’ve used all over North America. It holds a shocking amount of tools, keeps them handy to grab and the chest takes only two days to build. The article includes complete plans for both a large and small version of the chest.
Coarse, Medium & Fine
Getting to publish this article in Popular Woodworking was a personal landmark for me. It was an explanation of how bench planes function in the shop and how they can easily be integrated with a power-tool shop. Thank goodness that readers loved it. At the time some of my fellow editors weren’t so sure we should be writing about hand tools. This article helped convince them.
Monticello Stacking Bookcases
This is one of my all-time favorite projects I built while at the magazine. This huge and modular bookcase holds a ton of my woodworking books. What I love most about it is that it’s made from pine, which has aged beautifully) and the joints are mitered through-dovetails. I became very good at making this joint while building this project.
Build Furniture With a Hammer
When I was learning woodworking, I was told time and again that nails were for houses, not for furniture. Historical research proved that statement to be dead wrong. This article explores how the right nail, the right hammer and the right set of skills can produce durable nailed joints. This article angered several readers who claimed we were giving up on fine furniture. That’s crap. Fine furniture has always used nails.
How to Saw
Again, this was another difficult article to get published. Is sawing anything more than moving the tool forward and back? Yes, it is. This article explores all the techniques I’d learned from old texts, other instructors and personal experience to make you a better sawyer.
FYI, I don’t make a dime if you buy these articles. If you use this link, however, the corporate people will know that people read this blog. So thanks, either way.
— Christopher Schwarz
Here are some supplies and tools we find essential in our everyday work around the shop. We may receive a commission from sales referred by our links; however, we have carefully selected these products for their usefulness and quality.
