Archives

7 Tips for Better Drum Sanding By Randy Johnson If you hate sanding (and who doesn’t?), a drum sander can be a godsend. Just feed in your boards, or even completed doors and other projects, [...]

Ladder Lumber Rack I organized all my short boards by turning an inexpensive 6-ft. stepladder (about $30 at a home center) into a lumber rack. Now every board is easy to see and reach. My ladder [...]

3 Kitchen Storage Projects Squeeze more space from your cabinets with customized roll-outs. by Eric Smith and David Radke It may seem like a paradox, but even kitchens that are overflowing have [...]

12 Tips for Better Biscuit Joining Improve performance and expand function. By Richard Tendick Make corner splines Decorative corner splines sure make an ordinary box look great. But they can be [...]

Dual-Grit Disc Sanding My disc sander is indispensable for both quick wood removal and final smoothing. I got tired of changing and wasting discs every time I needed a different grit, though, so [...]

Snag-Free Hose By Peter Natoli I love using dust collection with my orbital sander, but the hose always caught on the edge of my workbench. I fixed this problem by suspending the hose and cord [...]

Flexible Spray Gun Pickup Tube My HVLP spray gun came equipped with a standard metal fluid-pickup tube. It works fine until I tip my gun to get inside a cabinet. Then the gun sputters and spits [...]

Longer-Lasting Polyurethane Glue Polyurethane glue is great stuff but has a short shelf life after the bottle is opened. That’s because the humidity in the air inside the bottle causes the glue [...]

Clandestine Tool Chest By Patrick O’Donnell I transformed this dresser for my daughter, who didn’t like the way her husband’s metal tool chest looked in their apartment. For [...]

Get the Burn Out By Dave Munkittrick Arrgh, another burned cut! Don’t you hate it when this happens? Here’s a fix. Shim out the workpiece with thin cardboard and take a second light [...]

Ribbed Saw Table Fillers I like my contractor’s saw just fine, except for the ribbed extension tables. The openings can be a real finger pincher when sliding the rip fence across them. [...]

Chair Leg Repair My kitchen chairs are hardly valuable antiques, so when I broke a rung on one I wanted a strong but simple fix. I drilled out the broken tenon from the mortise and plugged [...]