Archives

Replaceable Fence Faces It’s hard to improve on the performance of a T-square fence, but I think I’ve done it. I got frustrated with clamping on an additional subfence every time I [...]

Bandsaws for Cutting Metal and Wood   Q: I plan to buy a bandsaw, and I’d like one that can cut metal as well as wood. I’ve seen some two-speed bandsaws advertised. How well do [...]

Minimize Router Burns End grain burns easily on maple and cherry, and those burns are hard to remove. After sanding my fingers to the bone following one particularly unfortunate routing pass, I [...]

Scratch-Free Flush Cuts No matter how carefully I cut with my economy-model flushcutting saw, it always left scratch marks on the wood’s surface. To solve the problem, I attached a playing card [...]

Glue Squeegee I stack-laminate boards to create turning blanks. Each blank contains numerous laminations, so I have to work fast during assembly. To spread glue quickly and evenly, I use a [...]

Q: I make my own guards and router bases from plastic. How can I drill clean holes without the bit grabbing the plastic? A: A simple solution is to file a flat edge on a regular twist bit’s [...]

Stuck Gib Nut Q: I managed to round-over a gib nut on my planer’s blade holder. I’ve tried everything to free that nut. Any suggestions? A: AYou can free a stuck nut by striking it with a center [...]

Shop-Made Sanding Blocks   Q: Commercial sanding blocks all have some kind of padded bottom. Do my shop-made blocks need to be padded, too?   A: Yes they do. Padded blocks have two [...]

Faster Sharpening One of my favorite sharpening tools is a diamond paddle. I use it for router bits, knives and, most importantly, scrapers. The problem is that it cuts so fast the tiny spaces [...]

The primary advantage to square-drive screws is they are much less prone to “cam-out.” Cam-out refers to the slipping of the bit in the screw head as the screw is driven.

Q: Try as I might, I can’t seem to get a good edge on my bowl gouges. Are bowl gouge sharpening jigs worth looking into? A: Bowl-gouge sharpening jigs do a great job. The jigs give many turners a [...]

Saber-Saw Cushion The next time you use your saber saw, forget about hauling out the sawhorses or cantilevering a hard-to-hold workpiece off your bench. Extruded polystyrene insulation board, the [...]