Archives

When I first learned about the so-called Golden Mean or Golden Section I was enthralled by the concept. I actually remember the moment. I was in the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., [...]

With every project there is always some tool that deserves an Academy Award-style acceptance speech. “In building this chest of drawers I’d like to thank my mom for birthing me, Hanes [...]

Really, I have enough clamps , a couple dozen , to do just about anything. If I can’t clamp it, I can always use pinch dogs, drawboring or some other dodge to get the job done. But I [...]

In the shop, my mechanical pencil is as important as my eyeglasses. I use a mechanical pencil with a 0.5mm lead to darken in my knife lines when cutting dovetails, tenons or other joinery. I like [...]

I feel like a dirty English tool dealer this morning. But I’m OK with that. Recently I purchased a bunch of brass-bound folding rules to give to co-workers and friends. Most of these were [...]

My grandfather’s folding rule reads from right to left, while my tape measure reads from left to right. I never thought much about it, though I always did like using my folding rule when [...]

Last week Roy Underhill took me to the back room of his new school in Pittsboro, N.C. “Is this the office?” I asked. “No,” Roy said with a wicked grin. “This is [...]

I’ve had a vintage panel gauge for many years, and I’ve hated every minute of our relationship. The beam flops around in the head, no matter how Conan you go on the thumbscrew. And so [...]

In our June issue, our I Can Do That feature is a mitered CD/DVD rack. Our goal for these columns is to show that attractive, well made projects can be made with a minimal amount of tools and [...]

A new unit of measure attempts to trump the troublesome imperial and metric systems. For as long as I can remember, the woodworking community has been divided between metric people and imperial [...]