Archives

Reason No. 50 that I dislike chipbreakers: They can prevent your iron from retracting all the way into the mouth of the tool. Sometimes I think chipbreakers are a cruel joke on the woodworking [...]

People gripe that the vintage tools and books I write about often go up in price after I post an entry. I actually think the effect is mild and temporary, except in two cases: Robert [...]

When your handplane won’t create a perfect surface, there are several things to check. Here’s how I diagnose the problem when it looks like I’m making plane tracks in my work. [...]

Before After When setting up bench planes, the enemy is plane tracks – the ugly step created on a board when one (or both) of the corners of the tool’s cutter digs into your work. In my [...]

No one told me that setting up and using a scraper plane was a pain in the butt, so I didn’t think I had done anything special when I got my Stanley No. 80 to take perfect shavings my first [...]

I’m off to the airport in a few minutes to head to Metten, Germany, the headquarters of Dick GmbH. I’ll be teaching a class called “Classic Joinery” and we’ll be [...]

One of the world’s biggest tool collectors is bringing his brand-new traveling tool museum to Northern Kentucky on Oct. 1-2 to show it off to the public at the Woodworking in America event [...]

I wrote a short review of Karl Holtey’s No. 982 smoothing plane for the October 2010 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine (which is mailing now to subscribers). And you don’t write a [...]

Learning to sharpen has little to do with your sharpening stones. It has a lot more to do with being able to see your progress and knowing when to stop. Showing a class of woodworkers what a [...]

My first Stanley shoulder plane (a No. 93) was the worst plane I ever bought. The sole was more than 1/8″ out of alignment, and it took me a couple hours on a belt sander to even get the [...]

I don’t relish handing out bad reviews of tools. But as someone who gets stoned occasionally by an angry mob, I know that a critical review can help improve the quality of my work in the [...]

Router planes are the Starsky. Handsaws are the Hutch. These two tools work together all the time in my shop. In fact, all the sawing classes I teach are actually classes on the router plane in [...]