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Achieving exact thickness is really important when making splines to reinforce box corners. The splines have to fit perfectly in the saw kerfs—a few thousandths of an inch one way...

Machine joints that look hand-made. Imagine cutting through dovetails with pins and sockets spaced any way you like—as if they were cut by hand. Now imagine cutting them without using...

Demystify cutting tenons on curved parts using these simple steps and jigs. Ever wonder how furniture builders cut joinery on curved parts? A common place to see this is on...

My task: 28 kitchen drawers of different sizes, all with hand-cut dovetails. The thought of laying these out was overwhelming, so I designed a jig to simplify the process. To...

In the good old days, when a woodworker wanted to plane a board’s edge, he’d clamp one end in the bench’s face vise and support the cantilevered end with a...

When making tenons for breadboard ends and other wide workpieces, the router is my tool of choice. Ensuring perfectly aligned rabbet shoulders on both sides of the board was a...

These simple shop-made helpers will make marking less of a chore. Marking out dovetails for hand cutting goes much easier with these helpers. Held in place while hooked over the...

When I first started teaching the 8th-grade stool-making class, I needed to find an easy method for my students to mark the leg length accurately before trimming them to a...

Crosscut sleds have been around for a long time, but few are ideal. Many are heavy and hard to store. Most develop an extra-wide saw cut in the fence and allow the blade to throw sawdust in your [...]

I used to have three shooting boards for planing end grain: one for 90° cuts, one for 45° horizontal miters and one for 45° vertical miters. Now I’ve combined them...

I wanted to rout some shelf dados, but I didn’t have the correct-size bit for the job. Fortunately, my dad stopped by and, as usual, had the answer to my...

Instead of measuring for my circular saw’s offset each time I need to make a cut, I use a modified edge guide. I screwed two 3/4″ x 3/4″ x 12″...