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A dedicated shooting plane is a luxury item, much like a European table saw with a beautiful sliding table or a full keg of beer by your bedside. For many years, I’ve used my jointer plane to [...]

The best things about the craft of woodworking – the things that bring pleasure in the work – are beyond my skills as a writer, teacher or friend to explain. Example: Powered jointers are – in my [...]

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. [...]

Anything – a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g – that reduces the time I spend sharpening my tools makes me giddy. Care Bear giddy. Monchichi giddy. Making tools dull is more fun. A few years ago I found a way to [...]

Handplane irons should be sharpened completely straight across. No curve. Ever. No, scratch that. All bench plane irons should be sharpened with some sort of curve. Always. Ah yes, this is one of [...]

One of the best things about the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool event we hold in our shop each year is getting to hang out with the toolmakers and demonstrators who come to town for the event. One of the [...]

For years now, Lie-Nielsen has made 55° frogs for its No. 4-1/2 bench planes. I’m a big fan of higher planing angles, but I’m not as big a fan of the No. 4-1/2. I prefer the smaller smoothing [...]

The best sharpening advice I ever heard was from Tony Konovalov: Grind, hone and get back to work. Or, to put it another way: Which is more fun? Making your tools sharp or making your tools dull? [...]

I made some cavetto moulding for a version of The Schoolbox I’m building. And because a cavetto is one of the easiest mouldings to make with a round plane, I decided to demonstrate the basics of [...]

I’ve been meaning to write up a review on Veritas replacement blades and cap irons for months, but every time I sat down to do it I realized that I didn’t have the tooling here at [...]

If you had only one bench plane, it would be nice if that plane could do both roughing and smoothing chores. Woodworker John Wilson tackled that problem in our April 2011 issue with his [...]

I love “before” and “after” photos of things. This week I picked up a nice 3/16” side-bead plane from Josh Clark (aka Hyperkitten). The tool is a gem. The boxing is perfect. The sole is straight. [...]