Different finishes look different on different species. There are many reasons to choose one finish over another. Usually the most important is for protection and durability – how well a finish protects the wood from moisture and how resistant the finish is to being damaged by coarse objects, heat and solvents. Other significant factors include…

Nobody likes wrapping up the last bit of finishing on a project and suddenly catching a run or imperfection you missed earlier. You can either ignore it, or more likely sand it down and fix the blemish. Thankfully, it’s easy to avoid this problem with the correct lighting. While having a well-lit shop with light…

Simple to Super Durable Outdoor finishes have one thing in common; they all require maintenance. Of course, paint is unequaled at protecting the wood from its two biggest enemies: moisture and ultraviolet (UV) light. Moisture causes the wood to rot, and sunlight bleaches out its natural color. Still, who wants to cover up beautiful wood…

Tools solve problems in wood. Hand tools bought just to collect do not serve you well. But tools bought when you need them will serve many projects to come. Don’t hesitate to buy a good hand tool suitable to the task. The tools mentioned here actually stand a chance of being useful in the hands…

Practical solutions to common plane problems. When a plane is working right, it can produce a silky-smooth surface that absolutely glistens. When it doesn’t work, you get an ugly surface covered with blemishes. The problem can be your sharpening, your technique, or the plane itself. Quite often, it’s the plane. These troubleshooting tips should go…

These once-standard tools still have a place in the modern shop. Here’s what you need to know about the use, care and keeping of drawknives and spokeshaves.

Cutting your own dovetails is a right of passage for many woodworkers. Many out there find it intimidating when they first start though. Here are a few techniques that will help you out (or help you improve the skills you already have). 1. Cut By Hand When dovetailing by hand, be bold. Don’t bother with…

Hand tools are the way to go for this traditional joint. Tapered sliding dovetails are multipurpose joints traditionally used for drawer dividers, holding legs in place on a pedestal table and attaching tops to case pieces. The primary reason for a tapered joint (instead of a straight joint) is the reduced friction over its length….

Discover five cross-grain construction strategies to help keep your tabletops and chest lids flat. Cross-grain construction tends to freak out most beginning woodworkers, but it’s a viable construction method in many cases. Wide tables and chest lids often employ breadboard ends to keep things flat, as well as cover end grain. If it’s done right,…

I use a portable circular saw to break down plywood and other sheet goods into manageable pieces before bringing them to the table saw for final sizing. I prefer to do the job on sawhorses rather than crouching on the floor. Unfortunately, you normally need three or four horses to provide enough support to prevent…

The next time you use your jigsaw, forget about hauling out the sawhorses or cantilevering a hard-to-hold workpiece off your bench. Extruded polystyrene insulation board, the rigid pink sheets used in housing construction, makes sawing easy, whether you’re cutting a small piece of hardwood or a full sheet of plywood. During the cut, the workpiece…

Strength, patience and a sharp saw turn scraps into treasure. The hardwoods I use are almost always riven or split from a log. When I need thinner pieces than usual, I split them again. But there are times when I have mill-sawn stock and the way to get that thinner is either plane it down…

After creating the facets (drawing and image below), we need to round over the mouse’s back. To read the first part of the story click here. Add two additional guidelines above and below the facet and ask the child to rasp and round those areas. Rasp the lower round-over band from the middle of the…

This coming Saturday I am going to teach a remote whittling class for children, hosted by Peters Valley School of Crafts. Unlike in-person teaching, where the teacher is present in the class/shop and can have much tighter control over the pedagogy, the equipment, and can routinely intervene with the individual student’s project, the nature of…

With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, I was obligated to change my curriculum and put our traditional shop work on hiatus. Since I wasn’t able to use our benches, vises, and clamps I had to lighten up the projects, forgo the use of gouges, mallets, and chisels, and come up with mainly whittling projects…

Every woodworker knows not to rely on inside measurements made with a tape measure. Instead, I use two steel rules with dimensions that run to the edges. I butt one rule at each end, so the graduations overlap. To calculate the exact inside measurement, I read one ruler from the 10-in. mark on the other…

Tool: 3-In-1 Digital Laser Measurer Shop Now   Manufacturer: Dremel MSRP: $79 Dremel recently released a new 3-in-1 digital measurer that would be a great addition to a carpenter’s toolkit. In addition to the laser measure, it has a tape measure attachment and a wheel attachment for measuring curved and uneven surfaces. All functions are…

Lasers are popping up on all sorts of tools. Are they useful – or just clever marketing? We investigate. Editor’s note: David asked this question way back in 2005, but with tool manufacturers still putting lasers on all sorts of tools, it remains relevant. If you take a look at all the new tools that…

Whenever creating small pieces that include a routed detail of some sort, it’s best to do the routing on the larger “parent” board, and then separate the small piece from the larger. However, this isn’t always possible, and you may find yourself needing to rout a small piece. The question, of course, is how to…

I have long used my car’s scissor jack for house and shop projects including lifting a settled deck and leveling workbenches. And when I needed to install a new set of cabinets in my shop, I realized that a pair of these jacks would be perfect for positioning and leveling them. I picked up a…

Hoisting heavy sheets of plywood and MDF onto my tablesaw is not my idea of workshop fun. That’s why I devised this pivoting rack— and began storing my sheet stock vertically. The rack’s frame fits around the two base uprights and pivots on bolts. A cleat at the bottom keeps the sheet from sliding off….