A toilet bowl floor gasket is an excellent lubricant for screws–much better than paraffin, soap, or all of the other materials I’ve tried. It’s very soft, so all you have to do to [...]
If your shop is inside or attached to your house, you know that migrating sawdust is a problem, especially if you do a lot of power carving. To minimize dust, I cut out one side of a 65-quart [...]
Here’s a fast, inexpensive way to keep your edge tools razor sharp. First, cut out a few 5″ x 3/4″ MDF discs. Drill a 1/4″ hole in the center of each disc. Next, glue different [...]
My task: 28 kitchen drawers of different sizes, all with hand-cut dovetails. The thought of laying these out was overwhelming, so I designed a jig to simplify the process. To make the jig, [...]
After completing the reconstruction of the main broken molding piece, I glued the molding back onto its panel and began restoring the adjacent corner that was also damaged and required repair. [...]
My dovetail jig doesn’t have a depth gauge, and with my engineering background, I like things to be precise. This depth gauge allows me to set my router bits to within .001 of an inch! I also use [...]
In the good old days, when a woodworker wanted to plane a board’s edge, he’d clamp one end in the bench’s face vise and support the cantilevered end with a free-standing devise called a [...]
After completing step (F), I used a gouge to hollow out the cove portion of the molding. I selected a gouge with a sweep that matched the cove radius and carefully shaved the wood in the [...]
The simplest tool in your chest is also the most sensitive and versatile; here’s how to set up a chisel to a high level and wield it like a maestro. It’s almost impossible to build furniture [...]
When making tenons for breadboard ends and other wide workpieces, the router is my tool of choice. Ensuring perfectly aligned rabbet shoulders on both sides of the board was a problem until I [...]
Learn how to choose and use these versatile shaping tools. As a Windsor chairmaker and spokeshave maker, I use a spokeshave more than any other tool. I have three: two straight shaves (large and [...]
Any push stick adds a measure of safety, but I prefer using one that straddles the saw’s fence. It lifts right off when I’m done. A saddle-style push stick has two clear advantages. First, [...]
