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Q & A: The Right Mortise/Tenon Fit Q: What’s the right fit between a mortise and a tenon? I’m going crazy trying to measure them with a dial caliper! A: You’re not alone. [...]

At my day job as wood-shop manager at Robert Lighton Furniture in New York, I often need to fine-tune furniture parts before I pass them over to our skilled sander, then on to the finishers. We [...]

Snap-On Soft Jaws I’ve been using an old metal-working vise in my shop for years. Occasionally I really do need a metal-working vise, but most often I use it to hold drawer sides up high [...]

Small Parts Organizer I’ve designed a small-parts chest that’s as useful as it is simple to make. I’ve found those disposable, plastic containers for leftovers are ideal for small parts, such as [...]

Q & A: Sawing Aluminum Q: Can I cut aluminum with my chop saw? A: Yes.Most carbide blades work fine for occasionally cutting aluminum, but we recommend using a special, non-ferrous [...]

Comfortable Dovetails Like the majority of wokbenches, mine is fine for planing but too low for cutting dovetails without prolonged stooping. My answer is to clamp a heavy backing board, as shown [...]

Normal 0 0 1 377 2153 17 4 2644 11.1282 0 0 0 I recently attended the JLC Live event in Providence, RI. It's an event for builders and remodelers. Since Festool was showcasing some new tools [...]

A student wrote me and asked how I might go about drawing a Dough Box in SketchUp. He sent me a hyperlink to a miniature which he wanted to scale up and build. I brought the picture into SketchUp [...]

Q & A: Warped Wood Woes Q: I ordered a milled piece of ebony through the mail last winter. It looked great upon arrival, but after a few days it was so warped and twisted that I [...]

  Jason was one of my students in the cardboard furniture class that I teach at 3rdWard NY. For his project he found an old World War II design of a fold-out table. He then tweaked and [...]

Starting today, and continuing each Friday, I'll be posting tips from the American Woodworker archives. This first one, however simple, is one of my all-time favorites, and one of the [...]

Shopmade Handscrews Thread your own wooden screws. By Steven Bunn Even though I have a small fortune invested in tools, I always seem to be short of wooden handscrew clamps. But daydreaming about [...]