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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 on eBay and never deplete the [...]

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 original builder of this early [...]

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 high-end finish carpenter [...]

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 Sindelar. [...]

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. Why? If even one errant shaving [...]

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 holes. Several readers have [...]

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. To those of you we offended, [...]

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 to make the hole. The [...]

Wiktor Kuc and I have an unusual relationship. I’ve never met the man, but I send him articles about tools for his web site, WKFineTools.com. And occasionally, out of the blue, he’ll [...]

I’m packing up all the tools I’ll need in North Carolina for the coming week, and I was a bit shocked this morning as I went through my checklist. One of the “Woodwright’s [...]

I love me some blue masking tape. I have at least four rolls of the stuff at my bench and use it for all sorts of tasks, from shimming a …

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 for [...]