Archives

When you don’t need an absolutely accurate line drawn on a piece (say for a shooting/nailing line or layout line) all you need is a wooden folding ruler, a pencil and your two hands. Lay the rule [...]

Tapes and Rulers Early on, I remember reading somewhere that you should never rely on measuring tapes in a woodworking shop. Only use your rulers, never tapes. Though I understand the conclusion [...]

Tools for measuring. Tools for Accuracy. Precision Instruments for Woodworkers is a 4-part series. I’ve been working as a furniture maker for quite a while, now. Along the way, you refine your [...]

Whenever I leave town to teach a woodworking class, I make two stops to pick up a supply of two essential things for project layout. The first stop is the office supply store for a box of Bic [...]

In this short video, executive editor Robert W. Lang demonstrates how to find the center of a board using a combination square, it’s easy, accurate and no numbers were harmed in the making [...]

Years ago, when I was woodworking as a full-time occupation, I remember a couple jobs in particular that required me to set up a drill press to drill a sequence of holes where accuracy was a [...]

Making woodworking tools doesn’t interest me as much as making furniture, but my recent encounter with Henry O. Studley’s tool chest has me eyeing the metals section of the  McMaster-Carr web [...]

Exotic woods don’t blow my skirt/kilt/skort up much. In small doses they can look beautiful, but for the most part I find them oily, difficult to work and far too wild looking for full-size [...]

Sharpening a spear-point marking knife isn’t difficult, but it sure seems to flummox some woodworkers. The bevels on the knife are small, and if you aren’t used to freehand [...]

Today I’m in Portland, Maine, eating myself sick at Duckfat and studying the architectural details on the old houses in this coastal city. As I started picking apart some Victorian houses on the [...]

Tool seller Patrick Leach has a new sliding bevel in the works that does something that no other modern bevel does: It locks at a perfect 90°. Yup. Sliding bevels are great at describing almost [...]

If you remember the Veritas Dodeca-Gauge – the company’s hilarious April Fool’s prank that featured a marking gauge with 12 independent sliding rods – then the company’s newest tool might look a [...]