Archives

I recently made a couple of recipe boxes with finger joints. I didn’t have enough regular clamps to glue both boxes at once, so I decided to use band clamps. During my dry run, I discovered that [...]

I’m making and installing approx. 5000-bd.ft. of hard maple trim. Keeping track of what I’ve already sanded is difficult, so before sanding, I rub artists non-oil pastel chalks (also available at [...]

I don’t have a compound miter saw, but I figured out how to cut the compound bevel needed at the top and bottom of splayed legs. My answer is to use my basic miter saw and a piece of scrap.…

“Measure twice cut once” is probably the most commonly passed-on bit of woodworking advice. With that in mind, we’ve gathered some of our favorite tips to make measuring easier, [...]

Now that arthritis has a grip on me, I have trouble getting a good grip on clamp handles. My solution is easy and costs nothing. I carve grooves lengthwise on the handles using a medium-sized [...]

Floor Sweep Dust Port My router table is probably the most-used tool in my shop. I have dust collector ports on the fence, but when I rout with a bearing-guided bit, it still makes a huge mess. [...]

My oscillating spindle sander’s auxiliary table makes quick work of edge sanding short boards and forming perfect circles. Make the table from melamine or a laminate-covered material and fasten [...]

I devised a new way to fit a shelf into a dado. I use my router to make a tiny adjustment to the shelf’s thickness instead of fine-tuning my dado set with shims to match the plywood’s thickness. [...]

Pattern-Cut Finials The traditional way to make a square finial on a bandsaw is to mark and cut the pattern on one side of the blank, then tape the offcut back on to the blank in order to guide [...]

Staple Set Pneumatic staplers don’t always set 1/4” crown staples flush.  Driving them the rest of the way with a hammer causes the staples to kink,  so I designed this easy-to-make tool, which I [...]

Being an impatient sort, waiting for glue to reach the bottle’s spout became a pet peeve of mine. To put an end to this, I made a stand with a hole in the top matching the diameter of the [...]

When stropping my plane and chisel blades for that final honing, I always want to be sure that there is little to no chance that a freshly sharpened blade will slide off of the strop and [...]