Tricks of the Trade

To avoid making a new wooden drill press table each time one gets full of holes, I made a table with a dovetail-shaped sliding insert. The insert has room for many more holes, and is easily [...]

I wanted to use my benchtop belt sander as a safe and accurate way to grind my hand tools. By adding a little extension table that is co-planar with the sanding surface, I can use my honing [...]

Go to your local building supply store, and find a cheap plunger (mine was $3). Then take the handle off and use it for a jam chuck on your lathe – mine gets the most use when reversing hollow [...]

Following up on a promise from a previous trick, in this video, we take a look at how to replace the sandpaper on a disc sander. If “big deal” is running through your head, then [...]

Many new chisels, especially most premium-quality chisels, have sharp lands (the beveled side edges). Some people wear cotton gloves to protect their hands when using these, but I don’t like the [...]

When applying laminate on a narrow edge, it’s a little tricky to not tip the router and undercut the edge while trimming laminate. The surface on which the router must balance is often not wide [...]

I learned this in engineering school and soon found out it worked for my router. It is called the “right-hand thumb rule.” When trying to remember which way your router bit is spinning so you can [...]

You can use a router to joint two boards at once. This is a really handy trick if you don’t have a long-bed jointer or you don’t have a jointer at all, and you’re working with [...]

Here’s a tip on how to cut curves on the bandsaw. When cutting a circle or an odd shape from a square piece of lumber on a bandsaw, you’ve probably dealt with the annoying corners that try [...]

When you don’t need an absolutely accurate line drawn on a piece (say for a shooting/nailing line or layout line) all you need is a wooden folding ruler, a pencil and your two hands. Lay the rule [...]

Tools for measuring. Tools for Accuracy. ACCURACY IS IMPORTANT PART OF WOODWORKING I’ve been working as a furniture maker for quite a while, now. Along the way, you refine your processes, develop [...]

I needed to cut long boards on the table saw, but had only a small table for the outfeed and none for the infeed. So I built this handy infeed table using scrap plywood and a sawhorse, both of [...]