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Thanks to my daughter’s fourth-grade class, I’ve discovered another good source of small-scale drawbore pins for cabinet work. This morning I had to give a small chat about my job at [...]

When you are making big mortises, such as those in the Roubo-style Workbench in Issue 4, it’s a good idea to bore out as much of the waste as possible. This isn’t exclusively a [...]

Have you ever wondered why there are specific rules for the sizes of mortise-and-tenon joints? Did you know there are rules? If you consult the 19th and early 20th century texts, they state that [...]

One of the curious aspects of investigating drawboring has been the mystery surrounding antique drawbore pins. Almost all of the examples of pins I come across are big , too big for cabinet work, [...]

I’ve been doing quite a bit of drawboring lately while building a couple cabinets for the next issue of Woodworking Magazine. And it’s given me a chance to try a couple of new [...]

The historically correct shape of the drawbore pin shown in our Autumn 2005 issue has come into question this week. Joel Moskowitz, a tool historian (correction: and a user) and the owner of [...]

There is a lot to know about nails. Don’t laugh or scoff. I’ve been digging deep into my library this week and have come up with some stuff that is wild and weird from the world of [...]

So many woodworkers resist using hammers, and I suspect it’s because they use one that’s more suited for framing a house or cracking walnuts. In browsing through old tool catalogs, [...]

Question: I am building the Shaker Side Table (Issue #2). I built the cabinet from the first issue (I used cherry and spalted maple – it came out pretty nice). The table calls out for two [...]

Many cabinets with shelves are built using a common method: You plow dados in the sides of the cabinet. And then you glue the shelves into the dados. Perhaps you glue on a face frame to the [...]

In looking at a lot of old fine furniture, you might be surprised how much of it is made using nails. In fact, I’m often shocked at how bad a reputation the nail has among woodworkers. I [...]

Question: Why doesn’t your article recommend pinned mortise and tenon, at least for the back three pieces? Instead you show pocket screws. – Pam Niedermayer Short answer: Because that [...]