Master these skills and you can build anything. From chests to cupboards to cradles, frame and panel joinery opens a whole new world of possibilities.

Battens: Just one proven method to keep you on a level playing field. The best way to keep a tabletop flat is to make it flat in the first place…

From butt joints to dovetails, every builder should know these essential woodworking joints —and when to use each one. The following is a small sample from the book The Complete…

Cutting rabbets by hand can quickly and easily be done with vintage and modern planes alike. Both just take a little know-how. I would consider a rabbet joint an essential…

Not too big, not too small. This chest is a handy size for a basic set of tools. Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the June 2009 issue of…

This joint adds strength and beauty to any corner. And it’s easier to cut than you might suspect. I first saw this joint illustrated in “The Encyclopedia of Furniture Making,”…

One of the most popular projects my students ask to build is a sword. Alongside boatmaking or crafting a gnome house, swordmaking has become one of the signature fourth-grade projects…

Stop measuring and simply learn how to saw straight. The dovetail is an ancient joint widely used in cathedrals, barns and Egyptian furniture. It is the right joint for many…

Sam Maloof is a midcentury craftsman most famously known for his sculptural chairs. This is evident in the rounded corners, molded seats, and curved arms and backrests. His joinery also…

Accidental musing on craftsmanship and building things to last. On a cold rainy day in December 2014, I was returning home from running errands in my Washington, D.C., neighborhood. Diane…

Joinery machines are much more than one-trick ponies. Here’s an intro, and why you should consider adding one in your shop. There are several machines that come up as “shop…

Woodworking is sweet when everything fits right. Here are 10 ways to ensure your mortise-and-tenon, dado, dovetail, and edge joints close up tightly. 1. Cauls distribute pressure It’s not easy…

Perfect box joints of any size every time. I got tired of making a new box joint jig each time I wanted to change the width of the joint fingers….

This traditional joint ensures the only cup on your tabletop will have coffee in it. The breadboard end is a traditional device for preventing a broad panel such as a…

Build a tool chest that’s worthy of your tools. Customize it to fit exactly the tools you want. Project #2115 • Skill Level: Intermediate • Time: 4 days • Cost:…

A system as elegant as the joint itself. Compound-angle dovetails are some of the most beguiling joints in all woodworking. But, as John Lennon once suggested, they can be as…

Fine furniture calls for an elegant drawer. A master cabinetmaker shares his approach to design and fitting. There are just a few things my partner at Philadelphia Furniture Workshops, Alan…

Tool: Quick-Release Pock-It Hole Clamp Shop Now Manufacturer: Rockler MSRP: $25.99 Pocket hole joints are quick and easy to make. For some applications, such as face frames, they’re perfect. But…

Save on clamps with this traditional technique for panel glue-ups. A “spring joint” is a traditional method where you join the edges of two boards to make a wider panel…

How to make strong mortise and tenon joints with a plunge router and a tablesaw. Imagine turning the clock back 500 years and visiting a fellow woodworker in any large…

A hassle-free fast track to frameless cabinets. I’ve always liked the clean, modern look of cabinets built without face frames. My early attempts involved building plywood boxes first and applying…

Puzzling lubrication. Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the August 2010 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine I ran out of mutton tallow this morning! I searched my tool chests,…

Practice Traditional Building Joinery on a Smaller Scale Project #2104 • Skill Level: Advanced • Time: 2 Weeks • Cost: $300 During my 14 years living in Europe, I marveled repeatedly at…

I use biscuit joints in lots of small projects, particularly for joining rails to legs. I usually reference from the bottom of the plate joiner rather than use its fence….

Like many woodworkers, I own a basic half-blind dovetail jig, which I use only occasionally for making utility drawers. During the interim, I tend to forget the setup procedures and…

Cutting your own dovetails is a right of passage for many woodworkers. Many out there find it intimidating when they first start though. Here are a few techniques that will…

Hand tools are the way to go for this traditional joint. Tapered sliding dovetails are multipurpose joints traditionally used for drawer dividers, holding legs in place on a pedestal table…

Discover five cross-grain construction strategies to help keep your tabletops and chest lids flat. Cross-grain construction tends to freak out most beginning woodworkers, but it’s a viable construction method in…

Plow planes are some of the easiest joinery planes to use , once you know a few tricks to getting good results. I struggled with the tools until Don McConnell…

This versatile router joint is perfect for production work. When I need to batch out a bunch of drawer boxes, I use a lock miter router bit. Not only does…

How do you make strong joints in wood like this? When I need wood for a project, my first stop is a small mill near my shop that specializes in…

Your joints will last for decades if you know how to apply your glue. Much of woodworking is joinery: An edge-to-edge joint is used to join two or more boards…

Some people get pretty worked up about using the right word for the right joint. Perhaps they have a point since imprecise use of terms can lead to confusion. So,…

Editor’s note: This dovetail method is referenced in the October 2021 issue of Popular Woodworking, so we are republishing it to the home page. The blog below was originally published…

Destroying 10 joints taught us surprising lessons about joint design, wood failure and the tenacity of modern glue. Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the December 2005 issue of…

Our staff offers simple, strong and fast ways to make this important furniture component. In woodworking magazines, books and plans there’s almost always an omission that’s big enough to drive…

Simple joinery creates a compact cabinet with full-size storage.    When I spied an old machinist’s chest loaded with narrow drawers in my neighbor’s garage, I knew my small tools…

An elegant exercise in bent lamination and joinery. When I started taking woodworking classes, I needed a convenient way to carry my tools. After looking for just the right toolbox,…

To build the ultimate jig, use a tap. When I build a jig or fixture that needs to come apart, I don’t use wood screws, I use machine screws–and tap…

Research gives names to unknown artisans. David Rowley, Freegift Wells, Amos Stewart, Orren Haskens, Eli Kidder…ever hear of these guys? They were Shaker cabinetmakers, the names behind one of the…

This extra-long mortising fence helps you cut “blind” joints in your work. Cabinets and furniture often have “blind” joints − dados, grooves or rabbets that are stopped at one end…

Creative thinking and dirt-simple jigs make the joinery a straightforward task. Full-Size Plan:  Download I tend to think of Chippendale chairs as highly ornate. But there are startlingly simple examples of…

A good substitute for traditional methods, this joint is strong and easy to make. A couple of hundred years ago, most drawers were assembled with hand-cut dovetail joints – half-blinds…

Build a dedicated setup that creates perfect joints every time. Imagine routing perfect box joints whenever you want, without having to waste time setting up your router table. This notion…

Simple joinery allows (time to add) cool design details. I like traditional joinery, and I enjoy working with hand tools. But I also like completing a project without having it…

Cut precision joints on a large top. Breadboard ends are old devices for improving a solid-wood top. They act like cleats to hold the top flat, which is particularly important…

Methods that allow wood to move with the seasons. About a decade ago, I made a drop-leaf table for a book of projects. When it came time to mount the…

Jointing with a Planer I across some wonderful oak boards for a small table I wanted to build. The problem was the boards were too wide for my jointer, and…

Board-Stretching Joint I bought a planer/molder so I could make my own moldings. My living room required one 28‘.-long molding, but all I had to make it were 12‘. boards….

Kreg recently rolled out their new line of pocket hole jigs, meaning that the hold K3/4/5 hierarchy is no more. In its place is a new series of jigs aimed…

Period woodworking trades in London were strictly regulated. I’ve temporarily put down my 5⁄16” joiner’s mortising chisel in favor of a 2″ chisel for chopping carpenter’s mortises. I’m timber framing…

Tool: Groove Center Buy Now Manufacturer: Prazi MSRP: $149 A lock miter is an excellent joint for building boxes and small cases. It creates lots of surface area for glue and…

Baffle your friends with perplexing joints Press a dovetailed board into another board with matching sockets, and you’ve created woodworking’s most iconic joint. The dovetails and sockets wedge the boards…

b Tool: Beadlock Pro Manufacturer: Rockler MSRP: $149.99 I looked to the Beadlock Pro recently when I found myself needing four loose-tenon joints for a project – I wanted an economic but…

Conquer some fun joinery challenges with this geometric Baillie Scott build. As soon as I saw Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott’s 1901 occasional table on display at the Museum of Modern…

Tool: Rectangular Mallet Manufacturer: Blue Spruce Toolworks MSRP: $85 For some woodworkers, building your own mallet is a rite of passage. After using dozens of student-made mallets, however, I wonder…

When you slide open a small drawer that fits nice and tight, it’s a pleasure to see well-crafted joints.  Small, handcut dovetails answer well, but sawing and chopping them requires…

Tips and techniques for beautiful bowties Furniture made from thick wood slabs, with gorgeous grain and natural edges, at once rustic and refined, has remained popular ever since George Nakashima…

With a router, straight bit and plywood scrap, turn a weak joint into a superhero of strength. One of the strongest joints in woodworking is a properly fit mortise-and-tenon and…

Though not traditional, router patterns make quick work of the inlay. In southeastern Pennsylvania, just northwest of Philadelphia, is Chester County. It was one of the original three counties formed…

Many countries have their own woodworking traditions, which are often a combination of mythology and ideology. The Japanese  are no exception, and those traditions are part of the foundation of…

Simple tools, techniques, and joinery deliver elegant results. It’s the stuff of arguments: Which tools in the shop are really the most important for joinery? It’s almost like arguing the…

Tool: Kreg K5 Manufacturer: Kreg Price: $129 Pocket hole joinery has been synonymous with the name Kreg for years. Kreg’s jigs have always been affordable and user-friendly. With the new K5…

Extra-large finger joints add a distinctive touch to any project. Every woodworker is going to ask, “How did you do that?” Most finger joints are pretty small in scale and…

Editors note: This item no longer appears to be available. Dowels and loose tenons have been around for some time. Both have stood the test of time, making strong, simple,…

Sam Maloof’s sculpted rocking chairs are iconic, so much so that his name is synonymous with that furniture style. As his chair designs advanced, so did their construction.

You can use a router to joint two boards at once. This is a really handy trick if you don’t have a long-bed jointer or you don’t have a jointer at…

The Brits love a bandsaw. Or rather they’re not all that fond of table saws (a much longer post…). But because of their love of bandsaws they use them. Not…

These jigs help you hand cut flawless mortise-and-tenon joints. By Jeff Miller Mortise-and-tenon joints tend to frustrate woodworkers far more than dovetails do. That’s no mystery; they are genuinely harder…

Editor’s note: We have some great content on drawboring – check out Chris’s article here and some of Chuck’s period furniture observations here. Andy Rawls submitted this video and caption…

I’ve long been struck by the aptness of our English word “cope” – “I just can’t cope,” “I’m barely coping” – in light of its meaning in a woodworker’s lexicon. Sure,…

Curvy furniture is great to look at and usually offers a tactile aesthetic that makes it appealing. Holding it all together is the joinery – and whether it’s dovetails, tenons or lap…

One of the first joints I learned to cut during my City & Guilds of London training was the T-bridle, which we used for the leg-to-rail connection on a modern…

Let’s face it, a lot of woodworking is really box building. The good news is that a little bit of simple joinery and a little extra effort can make any box…

In the next few months, I’ve got a lot of furniture to make; Josselyn (my partner) and I just moved to Cincinnati from Maine. Last week, I built a new coffee…

The dovetail is the drawer joint of choice in many a classic drawer, but for a more mechanized world, the drawer joint of choice is often the half-blind tongue-in-groove. Sturdy, interlocking,…

Frank Klausz reveals the family secret – how to make the watertight wood-on-wood joint for the bottom of his sharpening pond – a boatbuilder’s joint taught to him by his…

  My workbench project is now underway, but I’m going to avoid showing any detail or videos on the build process until it’s finished. However, I will be posting some…

Normally, a planer can’t take the twist out of a board; it merely makes the top side parallel to the bottom. To get a board flat without a jointer, fool the planer into thinking the bottom of your board is already flat.

Woodworking is a craft steeped in knowledge handed down through generations. The techniques have been tested and rethought and retested time and time again. While experimentation is a wonderful thing…

  I’ve wanted to make a new mallet for a while now and at last found a bit of time to take the project forward. I knew I’d want to…

Any experience making or repairing chairs gives you a little bit of insight into how important the joinery is in chairs. And chairmakers have long used socket joints – joints made…

Q: I would like to try biscuit joinery but I do not own a biscuit joiner. Is it feasible to use a router to make the slots? A: A router…

Router Table Box Joints Making box joints on a router table is a time-saving alternative to making them on the tablesaw. You don’t have to fuss with a dado set,…

Perfect Edge Joints A 6-step tune-up sets your jointer straight. By Dave Munkittrick   Jointers are simple machines with few moving parts, but the two beds, the fence and the…

Loose Tenon Joinery Rout 4 variations of these super-strong joints with a versatile shop made jig. By Bill Hylton I’ve used a number of different methods to create mortise and…

Carbide Cutterheads for Jointers Cut manufactured materials and make fewer knife changes By Dave Munkittrick The latest thing in jointers is the segmented carbide insert cutterhead. Instead of high-speed steel…

In the lowboy build that I’m working on for the February 2014 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine, I’ve decided to use pocket screws to attach the lowboy top instead of…

Miter joints can be a real source of frustration. The pieces need to be the exact length and the cut surfaces need to be as close to perfect as you…

In 2006, as I began my first round at Popular Woodworking Magazine (PWM), I was told I had to build a workbench. Even with then editor Christopher Schwarz chest deep…

Tool snobs beware: This post is about an inexpensive tool that is useful for woodworking and without an ounce of style or charm. In the cabinet industry, plastic laminate files…

It’s not often you get a chance to use egg-crate joinery in period furniture work. In fact, building the Carolina cellarette in the February 2013 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine…

Extra-Large Loose Tenons By Brad Holden Big parts require big joinery. The success of Festool’s Domino joiner, a portable machine that makes smallscale loose-tenon joints, has prompted Festool to up…

By Christopher Schwarz From the Spring 2004 issue of Woodworking Magazine, pages 8-11 When I was taught to cut rabbets in my first woodworking class, we made them with two…

Joinery is one of the most important skills to have as a woodworker, and it’s also one of the most talked about, demonstrated and addressed. Now, you can get a complete library of joinery resources – 20 different items for less than $90, in Popular Woodworking’s Joinery Made Easy Value Pack.

In the world of design, you read a lot about the acceptance or rejection of symmetry. Wait, wait. Don’t go away. This blog entry, by the way, has to do…

I’ve been working on a cherry and bird’s-eye maple entry table for the October 2012 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine, and as I was installing the upper drawer stretcher I…

Slideshow: Keyed Miter Joints   I like the decorative effect that keyed miter joints lend to an otherwise simple box. But they also add a great deal of strength to…

From mastering hand tools to router basics, 18th-century joinery to Japanese hand tools and joinery, you’ll find it all among the five new DVD selections now available  to order at…

I started using stringed packing tape to glue up mitered joints on small jewelry boxes years ago. To glue up mitered boxes you just tape the points of the miters…

Internet woodworking forums are great places. You can observe or enter into a debate about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and you can follow…

Anyone who has glued up a few doors knows how frustrating it can be attempting to build assemblies that turn out both flat and square. As I’m working on a…

Table Saw Blades & The Laws of Physics If you wanted to make a device to throw pieces of wood at a high rate of speed, how would you design…

Perfect Edge Joints A 6-step tune-up sets your jointer straight. By Dave Munkittrick Purchase the complete version of this woodworking technique story from AWBookstore.com. Jointers are simple machines with few…

This is a stupid trick. In fact, I’m sure you have a better way to do this. But I don’t. This week I glued up a couple Welsh stick chairs…

Contributing Editor Glen D. Huey made this short video while working on the cover project for the upcoming November 2011 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine (which should start arriving in…

Last winter, I was puzzling out a way to make edge joints that are just the opposite of what we normally want – perfectly straight. I wanted free-flowing curves and…

New Connector System from Lamello New Clamex® P biscuit shaped connector system from Lamello allows users to quickly and easily create nearly invisible Ready To Assemble (RTA) connections. Made from…

I’ve been working, albeit slowly, on a small desk from the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) – I wrote about full-blind dovetails found on the desk in an…

Iron Out Those Dents Here’s a classic tip that everyone should know: It’s not hard to make a dent in wood and fortunately, it’s not hard to get one out,…

I’ve told this story to many woodworkers, but I have yet to post it in a blog. One day before Dad passed, he called me to complain that he was…

“The Joinery Challenge,” a new DVD from Ron Herman, is now available for pre-order at ShopWoodworking.com (and on sale for $5 off the regular price through the end of June)….

If you’re interested in learning to cut dovetails by hand, boy do you have choices. Google hand-cut dovetail videos and the returns total more than 100,000 (no, I didn’t count…

What makes woodworking fun for me is that I learn something new nearly every day. This past week, Monday was a day filled with learning – I spent the day…

As I’ve written before in this blog, many woodworkers are amazed to learn that I hand-cut my dovetails even though I consider myself mostly a power-tool woodworker – I would…

Between meetings, classes and regular living, I’ve cut 132 dovetails during the last couple weeks to build my next project, which will be featured on the cover of the June…

“Now let us drink to the success of our hopeless endeavor.”— Russian dissident toast My plan for the June 2011 cover project was a 17th-century “book press” from Samuel Pepys…

When I first started working here at the magazine we actually had time to go out for lunch each week (we now eat at our desks), and one day after…

I’m just about to resaw my maple version of Roubo’s Folding Bookstand that’s based on Roy Underhill’s article, and I made a full-size pattern of the elevation of the project….

After making the down-and-dirty folding bookstand in a video last week, I decided to make another pair as a very late Christmas gift. I am not a good friend. These…

If you are having trouble with the Roubo’s Folding Bookstand article from the February 2011 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine, I urge you to attempt to lay out the joints…

One of the most-popular projects I made last year was the Moxon Double-screw Vise from the December 2010 issue. It’s popularity was eclipsed only by the Handplane Birdhouse in the…

I have four bookcases filled with woodworking books in my office at home, another two bookcases in my office at work and boxes and boxes of them in the basement….

Clenching a nail – sometimes spelled “clinching” – is an essential traditional woodworking skill. But until you are clenching like a pro, there are some baby steps you can take….

Whenever I teach a class, at least one student will say to me “you really don’t like measuring, do you?” I don’t dislike measuring, but I try to avoid it…

Peter Follansbee and Mike Siemsen have cleared up the mystery of the pinwheel-shaped wooden nails. The pinwheel shape of the nails is caused by the shell or gimlet bit used…

The pegs that hold the joinery of old furniture together are always interesting. I’ve seen pegs with their heads shaped square and octagonal, which are obviously the product of either…

Whenever I stink at something in woodworking, it becomes my lunch-hour obsession. While chomping an apple, I’ll read everything I can about the topic. Then I’ll steal off to the…

If you ever needed more evidence that woodworkers have always been a parsimonious lot, look no further than the December 1901 issue of the British magazine The Woodworker. In an…

General Tools recently announced the release of the E

There are few things worse than too-soft screwdrivers. Lima beans, Care Bears and eye surgery with a teaspoon immediately come to mind. When I blogged about my favorite “perfect handle”…

I have four sets of screwdrivers. Three for loaning and one for using. The set I never loan is made up of tools that were made (mostly) by the H.D….

Plate Joiner Tips and Techniques 12 ways to build cabinets faster and better with biscuits By Jon Stumbras   Fast, Accurate Face Frames After you’ve put together a few face…

In my DVD “Building Furniture With Hand Planes,” we offer plans for a Shaker Hanging Cabinet, which is what I’m working on throughout the DVD. However, as some viewers have…

This week I’ll be taking a sack back Windsor chair class with maestro Michael Dunbar at The Windsor Institute, his school in Hampton, New Hampshire (a state my daughter has…

If you ever decide to delve into traditional woodworking, you quickly learn that wedges are your friend. Build chairs? You need to wedge all the joints. Traditional doors? Wedge your…

For this Roubo workbench to work, I’ve got 16 joints that have to come together all at once. There is not an option to glue things up in stages and…

If you’ve been trying to reach me during the last few weeks, I apologize. The answers to your questions are: 1. Almost any species of wood will do fine for…

I don’t like adverbs , you know, words like “extremely,” “fallaciously” or “throbbingly.” But I am at a complete loss to otherwise describe the wack-nutty bendable wood that Jeff Miller…

I’m thankful when I can see disaster coming. Being able to spot a potential problem is the gift of experience, but it is also like a tranquilizer dart used to…

To modern eyes, old-school workbenches look like they are going to self-destruct. The legs are tenoned into the benchtop (which moves with the seasons). And stretchers (that don’t move) are…

After a little tweaking of the mortise, the first leg went in. You can see a gap at the shoulder (it’s about 1/16″ now). That’s actually what’s left of the…

I started cutting the mortises and the dovetail sockets in the benchtop today and I can tell you a few things: 1. The dovetail socket takes about half the time…

Things I hate: Gouging my own eyes out with a spoon, and being pulled away from a project for more than a couple days. It’s been a week since I’ve…

All week I’ve been itching to saw these joints that connect the legs to the benchtop. I’ve never cut a 5″-deep dovetail joint in a 6×6, so I wasn’t sure…

A few weeks ago I posted a blog entry about using a flush-cut saw to slice tenon shoulders. I must have written it poorly because several readers requested a video…

I’m think I’m a decent dovetailer. My joints are tight and I get things done. Heck, I can even teach dovetailing to others when pressed. So why don’t I post…

Many woodworkers think it’s bonkers to use a curved cutting edge in a jointer plane. After all, the plane is designed to make things straight and flat, so using a…

Perhaps I’m the oddball here, but I’ve always found cutting tenons by hand to be more challenging than any sort of dovetailing. Tenons require a lot of precision sawing if…

My next project is a close copy of a walnut side table from the White Water Shaker community. We’ll be publishing the plans in an upcoming issue and donating the…

Dovetail maestro Rob Cosman again makes us all feel inadequate with his latest video in which he cuts a half-blind dovetail joint in 6 minutes and 52 seconds. Cosman uses…

My sister-in-law killed her college landlord with a voodoo doll, so don’t try tell me that curses don’t exist. The curse du jour is an innocent flat-panel door I’m building…

One of my favorite advertisements shows a guy with a handsaw staring at a chair that has legs that are about 4″ long. In his efforts to stop the chair…

10 Techniques for Tighter, Faster, Stronger Miter Joints By Gary Wentz Miter joints provide one main advantage over other joints: A miter joint hides end grain and brings face grain…

Tablesaw Box Joints A shop-made jig with micro-adjust guarantees perfect joints. By Tim Johnson   Box joints are the savvy woodworker’s alternative to dovetails. Strong, great-looking and quickly made, box…

Perfect Butt Joints in Laminate An underscribe router attachment guarantees success. By Brad Holden   Long countertops or those that turn corners need butt joints. You can use several methods…

During the Woodworking in America Conference, there were two quotes that really stood out from all the bon mots that were hurled. First up, Toshio Odate: “I speak broke English….

Even though I am 100-percent confident in my ability to join two boards together using the tail-of-the-bird joint, I am always riveted when I get to see how other accomplished…

Back in June, some of you might remember that I was building an Ohio copy of a fascinating three-legged Chinese stool. And some of you might also remember how I…

Question: I often see dovetail layout lines left showing on the exterior of pieces. As I’m in final cleanup up of a blanket chest (yes, the Union Village chest from…

This morning I decided to repair the vintage Chinese stool that we knocked apart earlier this year. Senior Editor Robert W. “Bob” Lang is building a couple reproductions for the…

3 Tapered Legs on the Jointer Advanced jointer techniques yield smooth, consistent tapers. By Seth Keller After I learned to cut tapered legs on the jointer, I never went back…

One of best ways to learn how a piece of furniture is put together is to take it apart. Many of the best furniture makers I know who work in…

In early Gustav Stickley pieces, doors with divided lights were joined with mitered mullions. It’s an intriguing look, but was used only for a few years. My next project for…

I have never used the right amount of glue , well that’s the way everyone else sees it. Whenever Publisher Steve Shanesy comes in while I’m gluing, he’s bound to…

Though Charleston is the most ethnically diverse and open Southern city I’ve ever visited, its taste in furniture has long been English. And because I am working on a book…

In my review of drawbore pins in the Summer 2009 issue, one of my gripes with many of the tools were the round handles. A round handle plus a round…

Don’t buy the knife shown above. You’ll likely find it useless for dovetailing. It will languish at the bottom of your tool box, mocking you every time you push it…

The words “always” and “never” will get you in trouble , so you should always endeavor to never use them. During the early stages of learning to cut dovetails, I…

Do you like stories about gladiators? How about stories about idiot woodworking editors? This week I was finishing up work on the joined Chinese stool for the cover of the…

With every project there is always some tool that deserves an Academy Award-style acceptance speech. “In building this chest of drawers I’d like to thank my mom for birthing me,…

Traditional cut nails can be made from pretty soft steel, especially the useful cut headless brads. As a result, you have to be careful when installing them. Here are some…

When making through-mortises by hand, one of the occasional problems is that you get a little mallet happy, you drive the mortise chisel a little too deep and you blow…

One of my hobbies is chairmaking. That statement might sound kinda dumb. After all, I’m a long-time woodworker and making wooden chairs is woodworking. No? No. Making stick chairs uses…

In the tool world there is an ugly (and erroneous) slur. When one company copies the tool of another company, they call it a “cheap Chinese copy.” Never mind that…

I like a good carcase saw in the same way I like to eat most parts of the pig. I like the way that its well-tuned crosscut teeth slice into…

When I build a frame-and-panel assembly such as a door, face frame or back, I almost always add “horns” to the stiles. As a result I almost always get the…

While I own an electric plunge router and all manner of bits and guides, I tend to cut my stopped dados using hand tools for a couple reasons. One: I’ve…

For those of you who chisel out all your waste when dovetailing, this post is not for you. Please move along. There’s nothing to see here. OK, now that we’re…

There are lots of people who will show you how to handplane the edge of a board. A few less who will show you how to really flatten the wide…

The hardest thing about dovetailing isn’t the sawing or the chiseling or the layout. It’s the seeing. I don’t think I can teach anyone to see, but I can show…

While my dad was sleeping off the flu in February, I was plundering his drawers. The man has an English chest problem like I have a hammer problem. I pulled…

The last few weeks I’ve been doing lots of hand joinery, and in that short period of time I have completely fallen for my Blue Spruce Toolworks mallet. It’s the…

In the shop, my mechanical pencil is as important as my eyeglasses. I use a mechanical pencil with a 0.5mm lead to darken in my knife lines when cutting dovetails,…

When most people think about cutting dovetails, they think: handsaws. However, there’s more to dovetailing than sawing. You also need to be mindful of your handplanes when you’re dovetailing. They…

How to tune up your band saw and  get it sweetly singing .

Milford Brown writes: Since you are interested in the older hand-powered woodworking, I wonder what, if anything, you know about the history of marking knife use? I recently had occasion…

While teaching a class on handsawing a couple years ago, one student lost his cool. He was cutting a tenon for his sawbench, and he strayed over the line and…

When I glue up panels from several narrow boards, I use my jointer plane to dress all the mating edges. While our power jointer is fairly well tuned, it’s rarely…

I noticed the head on my trusty Hamilton hammer was loose last weekend as I was driving a bunch of nails (good thing I have an extra hammer or two)….

In my kindergarten class, someone was snitching cookies from the lunchboxes of the rest of the class. (Spoiler alert: It was the fat kid.) While the teacher’s investigation was ongoing,…

Despite the fact that monkeys were as rare as hen’s teeth in the mountains of Arkansas, the highest praise for intelligence there was to be called a “clever monkey.” To…

Blacksmith David Maydole was the SawStop of the 19th century. Sometimes hammerheads would fly loose from their handles on the job site. This could be troublesome or deadly because occasionally…

Some of the best workholding ideas rely on simple wedging action. This weekend I stumbled onto one more great wedging trick using cut nails. This might be old hat for…

The most stressful glue-up of my life was assembling my tool chest in 1998. The main carcase had 120 mating surfaces that had to be glued. Foolishly, I chose yellow…

Some day I expect one of my little girls to tell a school counselor (between sobs): “Daddy has a hammer problem.” My, ahem, problem started innocently enough years ago. I…

This week I’m at my father’s house in Charleston, S.C., to get my USRDA of grits, tasso and shrimp. Whenever I visit the Holy City, I always make sure to…

There are so many ways to construct a drawer that someone could write an entire book on the variations across time and cultures. I’d buy it. One curious drawer detail…

Making Cathedral Doors A complete recipe for making beautiful cathedral raised-panel doors. By George Vondriska Cathedral raised-panel doors are beautiful, but they can be intimidating to make. After many years…

Stile and Rail Joinery A reversible stile and rail cutter makes perfect-fitting frames for doors and cabinets without dowels, mortises or biscuits. By Tim Johnson One of the best buys…

You can do fancy things with a hammer and the right nails. And lately, I’ve been doing a lot of practicing with cut nails for a series of projects I’m…

Making Lipped Drawers With A Dovetail Jig By Tom Caspar You can do more with your half-blind dovetail jig than meets the eye. You’ve probably used it to make drawers…

Tips for Building Cabinets with Pocket-Hole Joinery New tools and improved techniques make pocket-screw assembly faster than ever. By Brad Holden Many production shops use pocket-hole joinery to build cabinets…

Lock Miters This simple set-up process guarantees perfect joints! By George Vondriska Lock miters are strong, attractive joints that make assembly easy. So why the heck don’t we use lock…

After watching Frank Klausz cut a set of dovetails in three minutes using a special bowsaw blade (see the video here in our video section), Rob Cosman decided to show…

I’m passionate about cooking, but I don’t get excited about cooking equipment. I’ve got decent cookware, questionable Far East knives bought from an infomercial and (somehow) enough silicone basting brushes…

10 Tips for Perfect Miter Joints Make Micro Adjustments with a Disc Sander No tool can tweak a miter’s fit as easily as a disc sander can. You can shorten…

I’ve spent a good deal of energy investigating through-tenons. When I started collecting Arts & Crafts furniture in 1990, I quickly became attuned to spotting the joint in pieces for…

Whenever John Economaki of Bridge City Tools teaches classes about furniture design, he always asks his students a question that seems to have no good answer. The question goes something…

When it comes to dovetailing, I’ve never really had a dog in the fight between dovetailers who cut the pins first and those who cut the tails first. I was…

One of the best recommendations I’ve ever received in the world of hand tools came from a power-tool user who has 660-volt three-phase pumping through his veins. It’s 1996, and…

When I first opened the package, I assumed that the tool inside was a prototype that had a plastic blade. That happens occasionally here at the magazine when a manufacturer…

As woodworkers dive into handwork, they usually start with a block plane, then the bench planes, the saws and the joinery planes. Joinery planes , such as plow planes, router…

In our June issue, our I Can Do That feature is a mitered CD/DVD rack. Our goal for these columns is to show that attractive, well made projects can be…

For me, finger joints have always been the nerdy, square cousin to the dovetail. Finger joints are immensely strong when glued properly. But they are usually used by beginning woodworkers…

If you haven’t surmised it yet, one of the themes running through the Spring 2008 issue is the fact that accurate sawing has a lot more to do with accurate…

I’m always looking for little tricks to improve dovetailing, especially the part I dislike: transferring the tails’ locations to the pin board. Sawmaker Mike Wenzloff stumbled across this interesting short…

There is something deep inside our DNA that ties us to the chest as a form of furniture. First off, how many other kinds of furniture do we have that…

I am planning to order a corner chisel, to use when I install hinges, and have seen several styles.  Which do you prefer? That’s a question I received from a…

Some tools are like high school girlfriends. It’s all hot and heavy and kissy-kissy for the first few weeks, and then things cool off and you wonder what you were…

Adrian Mariano writes: I just watched your DVD (“Forgotten Hand Tools” from Lie-Nielsen Toolworks) in which you advocate the use of nails and drawbores to overcome the flaws in the…

This weekend I put the finishing touches on two Stickley tabourets; and while the little tables turned out to my satisfaction, the construction process proved quite vexing considering there are…

This week I’m getting ready to build a Shaker firewood box for the I Can Do That column in our sister publication, Popular Woodworking. I really like building projects for…

Sometimes your woodworking improves like a slow and steady climb up a mountain. Sometimes, however, you get to ride the elevator. When I first started woodworking, I used a carpenter’s…

Whenever I get into some serious handwork, I always try to boil down the processes so that I can 1) remember it myself and 2) occasionally explain it to others…

“But lo! Men have become the tools of their tools.”– Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), “Walden” When I started building furniture on my back porch after college, I was sure of…

I enjoy a good beating. Chopping dovetails or mortises is almost as pleasurable as sawing or planing. So, as you can imagine, I’m picky about my mallet. For years I…

This weekend we gave away our antique Arts & Crafts sideboard to some friends who have just bought a house and I installed the new Gustav Stickley 802 sideboard I’d…

Editor’s note: I know that some of you are having difficulty posting comments on occasion. Sometimes, the captcha function rejects your code on the first try. When this happens, it…

Contemporary writing on woodworking, of which I am woefully guilty, always seeks to make the craft as simple as possible. We try to make the joints easy, quick and straightforward….

Today is “Blasphemy Friday.” I’m preparing the panels to start assembling this Gustav Stickley No. 802 sideboard and wondering if my project is going to self-destruct after a couple years….

I’ve always been geeky about sharpening things, not in the sense of polishing chisel backs to #32,000 grit, but having a good edge before going to work. Before using a…

Question: Looking over the current and past issues of Woodworking Magazine, I see how drawboring or wedging a mortise and tenon joint will improve the strength and fit of the…

In the Stickley side table from the November 2006 issue, there are enough variations of mortise and tenon joints to give your hands and your head a real workout. One…

I’m a big fan of cut nails. They hold far better that modern wire nails and they really have the right look when it comes to building reproduction furniture, which…

If you do any work at all with hand tools, a good marking gauge is an essential piece of equipment. It is the tool that guides all your other tools:…

One of the best things about going to an exhibit of new or antique furniture is getting to examine the joinery , closely and from the inside of the piece….

Like most home woodworkers, my dang day job tends to get in the way of my woodworking. Despite the fact that our magazine’s woodshop is exactly seven paces from my…

Some projects play along nicely; others tend to fight you all the way. The Creole Table is shaping up to be a bit of a raging Cajun. My goal this…

One of the big challenges in building a project for publication is to come up with techniques that use common tools and skills to produce results that others can replicate…

I like working with walnut, but I hate marking it. Its dark color makes pencil lines disappear. And its open grain hide knife lines as well. Dovetailing is a particular…

I always enjoy tours of tool factories to see people (or robots) make things that are useful to my work. How a company can harness hundreds of minds and hands…

After finishing college, two of my closest friends joined the Peace Corps and were posted to rural Morocco. But within a year they were back in the United States: 20…

In China, 2005 was the year of the rooster. In our shop, 2005 was the year of the anvil. We built a guillotine out of framing material and dropped anvils…

Trestle tables have always looked notoriously spindly and rickety to my eye. Compared to a traditional apron table, there’s just not much material there. Add to the fact that they…

I get called a Luddite all the time for my affection for hand tools (Recent quip from spouse: “You know, we own a blender for a good reason”). I certainly…

One of my favorite movies as a teen-ager had a scene where a 1940s-era G-man goes to a mystic for help in becoming a superhero. The G-man shows the mystic…

One of the themes coursing through the next issue of Woodworking Magazine is rethinking the role of nails in woodworking. And so I’ve been whacking a lot of cut nails…

Thanks to my daughter’s fourth-grade class, I’ve discovered another good source of small-scale drawbore pins for cabinet work. This morning I had to give a small chat about my job…

When you are making big mortises, such as those in the Roubo-style Workbench in Issue 4, it’s a good idea to bore out as much of the waste as possible….

Have you ever wondered why there are specific rules for the sizes of mortise-and-tenon joints? Did you know there are rules? If you consult the 19th and early 20th century…

One of the curious aspects of investigating drawboring has been the mystery surrounding antique drawbore pins. Almost all of the examples of pins I come across are big , too…

I’ve been doing quite a bit of drawboring lately while building a couple cabinets for the next issue of Woodworking Magazine. And it’s given me a chance to try a…

The historically correct shape of the drawbore pin shown in our Autumn 2005 issue has come into question this week. Joel Moskowitz, a tool historian (correction: and a user) and…

There is a lot to know about nails. Don’t laugh or scoff. I’ve been digging deep into my library this week and have come up with some stuff that is…

So many woodworkers resist using hammers, and I suspect it’s because they use one that’s more suited for framing a house or cracking walnuts. In browsing through old tool catalogs,…

Question: I am building the Shaker Side Table (Issue #2). I built the cabinet from the first issue (I used cherry and spalted maple – it came out pretty nice)….

Many cabinets with shelves are built using a common method: You plow dados in the sides of the cabinet. And then you glue the shelves into the dados. Perhaps you…

In looking at a lot of old fine furniture, you might be surprised how much of it is made using nails. In fact, I’m often shocked at how bad a…

Question: Why doesn’t your article recommend pinned mortise and tenon, at least for the back three pieces? Instead you show pocket screws. – Pam Niedermayer Short answer: Because that would…