20 Tried and True Clamping Tips

Oxalic acid makes black marks disappear. Nasty stains can occur during glue-up if steel clamp beams are left in contact with wood dampened by glue squeeze-out or by scrubbing off the glue. [...]

Sure Shot

SURE SHOT When I found out my wife was pregnant with our first child, I decided to make a cradle. Nine months seemed like plenty of time, but naturally, I finished building the cradle with only a [...]

‘Old Arn’

Finding and restoring vintage shop machinery. Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the October 2016 issue of Popular Woodworking You pick up an old handplane at the local flea [...]

Feeler Gauge for Jig Setup  

Did you know that feeler fauges are not just for machinists or for checking and adjusting our steel and cast iron woodworking equipment? How do I know this? Because I recently found out that a [...]

Ripping Thin Pieces

While making Shaker boxes, I built a jig to accurately rip 1/16″ thick strips without getting my hands too close to the blade. In fact, I can leave the guard on the saw. The jig has two [...]

Choosing Combination Squares

Select a reliable tool with these simple tests. I can’t think of one project I’ve made that hasn’t involved using one or more of my combination squares. I use these to lay out joints and cuts, [...]

Digitize Your Miter Gauge

Here’s a hi-tech way to set your tablesaw’s miter gauge to within 1/10 of 1° of any angle. It really works well for cutting picture-frame miters. The key is to use a digital angle gauge. I bought [...]

Circular-Saw Depth Gauge

Setting the depth-of-cut on my circular saw was awkward at best before I made this handy gauge. It’s just a thick block of wood with 1/4″ wide slots cut at precise, incremental depths. I [...]

Instant Rosewood

I like to use purpleheart pen blanks because they’re less expensive than other exotic hardwoods. Recently, I stumbled on a cool trick. I discovered that I could cause the wood to overheat and [...]

Dovetail Starter Notches

Christopher Schwarz once demonstrated a time-honored trick for hand-cutting tenon shoulders. After laying out the joint, he chiseled directly downward onto the shoulder cutline, then made a [...]