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While turning wooden pens, students in my woodshop classes kept wearing out the points on the live centers of our mini lathes. The points fit into the hollowed end of the pen mandrel. If the [...]

I buy glue in gallon jugs and, having tried about every glue bottle on the market, I thought I would never find the perfect one. My search ended while washing dishes with my wife one evening.  [...]

I made my own try square using a 1″ x 4″ corner mending plate and a couple scrap pieces of hardwood. To make one yourself, first check the mending plate to be sure it’s square. If [...]

Make your own light-duty one-handed workholding wonders. Like most workshops, mine is well-populated with spring clamps, the ubiquitous tool for applying localized pressure with one hand while [...]

Bench grips are handy for holding parts above the bench for routing, sanding or finishing.  To make them, just cut some wood and rubber shelf liner into 2″ to 3″ squares. Glue the [...]

I own several routers and they all have thin wrenches that are awkward to hold. To avoid frustration, I made the handles thicker by housing them in transparent plastic tubing from the hardware [...]

I have a hard time throwing things away, such as these chucks from a couple of worn-out drills. To put them back into service, I bought a 3 ft. long, 3/8″ dia. threaded rod at the hardware [...]

A sharp pencil is a must for accurate work, but having a pencil sharpener permanently mounted in one place isn’t always ideal. The further away I am from my pencil sharpener, the less [...]

Planing stock to fit standard dados is much easier than trying to find the right chipper and shim combination to fit the dado to your stock. I cut five grooves in a scrap of plywood, using only [...]

This light-duty clamp is ideal for small parts-and easy to make by the dozen. All you need are a couple wood scraps, a rubber band, and a short piece of dowel rod. You can vary the pressure by [...]

The dust collection port on my sliding miter saw missed a lot of sawdust, so I added an additional port mounted directly behind the blade. The port is a piece of 3-in. ABS pipe that’s cut at 45 [...]

They’re cheap! All you need is some PVC and plastic laminate. A central dust collection system is a big improvement to any shop, but the cost can really add up. With commercial gates going from [...]