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If you recall, a few years ago I wrote about the method I use to teach my students how to drill wide holes—around 1-3/8 inches or even wider—at the base...

Discover a bit about clean, accurate boring. There are many tools in modern woodworking you can use to bore holes: powered drills (both corded and cordless), drill presses, hand-powered eggbeater...

Hole saws provide an inexpensive way to bore large holes, but they have a maddening tendency to clutch the drilled disk afterward. I’ve found that the best approach for removing...

Today’s array of bits has nothing on historical practice. In my attempts to recreate period work, I’ve many times come across the need to make holes that no modern tool...

Vintage hand drills – sometimes called “eggbeater drills” – are common, useful and easy to fix up using stuff you already own. You can buy hand drills all day long...

When I build a reproduction, I try to remain as faithful as I can to the construction of the original – even if my modern brain says it’s not ideal. The...

First a warning: Don’t read this blog entry if you already obsess too much over the details of your furniture. This entry could only make things worse. Years ago, a...

Quick reminder: I’ll be in southwest Michigan this Saturday (June 4) giving demonstrations and generally mopping up the drool in my vicinity at the open house of tool collector John...

File this one under: Tricks that everyone knows but me. Whenever I work against a fence on my drill press, I constantly huff and sweep the table clear of shavings....

In my blog earlier this week on drilling holes for bench dogs and holdfasts I mentioned a 3/4”-diameter up-cut spiral bit we use in a plunge router to make perfect...

Update: Thanks very much to those of you who placed a bid (and especially to rwyoung, who has the winning bid) and to those of you who posted entertaining comments....

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...