Archives

Made from reclaimed timbers and off cuts a bug house made for a friends little boy .All been pinned and glued with a felt roof .…

  Slice Steel on Your Bandsaw   Q: I’ve heard of a technique called friction-cutting that allows you to cut steel on a woodworking bandsaw. What is friction-cutting and does it [...]

Making Curved Doors Kerfkore flexible panels handle curves with ease. By Brad Holden Curved doors and panels add elegance to any project, especially kitchen cabinets. Making these complicated [...]

Shop-Built 3-Jaw-Chuck A cheap, effective turning tool.   Three-jaw lathe chucks are virtually indispensable for a turner, yet the cost of buying one can be prohibitive. Three-jaw chucks are [...]

Replaceable Fence Faces It’s hard to improve on the performance of a T-square fence, but I think I’ve done it. I got frustrated with clamping on an additional subfence every time I [...]

Reading Grain Direction “Going against the grain” is a familiar phrase. It means doing something the wrong way.When you’re talking about wood, you always want to go with the [...]

Bandsaws for Cutting Metal and Wood   Q: I plan to buy a bandsaw, and I’d like one that can cut metal as well as wood. I’ve seen some two-speed bandsaws advertised. How well do [...]

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 cutterhead all [...]

Minimize Router Burns End grain burns easily on maple and cherry, and those burns are hard to remove. After sanding my fingers to the bone following one particularly unfortunate routing pass, I [...]

Turning a standard rolling pin (“French Rolling Pin,” page 25)     Tips for Buying and Using Rough Lumber (“18 Shop Storage Tips,” page 32)     Plans [...]

Scratch-Free Flush Cuts No matter how carefully I cut with my economy-model flushcutting saw, it always left scratch marks on the wood’s surface. To solve the problem, I attached a playing card [...]

Q: Does varnish go bad sitting on the shelf? A: Unopened varnish should last for years on the shelf when kept away from excessive heat. When a can is opened and the finish exposed to oxygen, [...]