Archives

An 18th-century French workbench is quite possibly the most perfect design ever put to paper. In the 18th century it was common for the workrooms and living areas of a home to share the same [...]

Is it necessary? And if so, what are the best techniques? Like any tool or machine, a workbench requires accessories (jigs, fixtures, appliances) and occasional maintenance to actually do [...]

This workbench form is uncommon today, but it is still a sound bench because it allows you to perform all of the critical workbench operations with relative ease. Benches are a triumph of [...]

This past weekend, while waiting for a store to open so I could get a quart – my favorite color of Olde Century paint – I ducked into a local antique shop to kill 15 minutes. In the front of …

If a leg vise has a disadvantage – and I’m not quite willing to admit that it does – it would be its parallel guide. The parallel guide is a strip of wood at the bottom of the leg vise …

When I was planning my “petite Roubo” 18 months ago or so, the original idea that Christopher Schwarz and I cooked up was to use one slab of wood for an 18″ to 20″-wide [...]

  It seems I have more holdfasts than internal organs. And yet, when I was dropping something off at Managing Editor Megan Fitzpatrick’s house this week, I was struck by two holdfasts in her [...]

The day before I started at Popular Woodworking Magazine in August of 2005 was the last day I had occasion to iron a shirt. But today, I pulled my iron out from the deep recesses of a cabinet in [...]

I know the exact moment that Roy Underhill cracked my workbench open during Woodworking in America last weekend. There was a disturbance in the Force. In other words, my phone went nuts with [...]

With less than a week before Woodworking in America commences, I’ve been scrambling to gather enough benches for all the classrooms – and I thought I had them covered without hauling my [...]

In our eMail newsletter, I wrote that I was finally taking home my pine “petite Roubo” (which is basically the same bench featured on Christopher Schwarz’s video “Build an [...]

I have always waited for and dreaded the day when someone made a commercial workbench that I would consider buying. That day might (almost) be here. This week I am in Warren, Maine, to shoot a [...]