30-Minute Marking Gauge

Make this handy little gem for less than $5. You’ll need one piece of hardwood for the beam and another for the fence. You’ll also need two 1/4-20 threaded inserts and a thumbscrew. [...]

Flexible Clamping Pads

t's tricky to keep clamping pads positioned when gluing curved surfaces, so I came up with these flexible pads. To make them, cut multiple kerfs in a piece of plywood. Next rip the plywood [...]

Easy-Tighten Bar Clamp

Bar clamps are great tools, but sometimes it's tough to get a good grip on the small wood handle. To get extra torque, I drilled a hole in the handle and inserted a dowel. It gives me a lot [...]

Bottoms-Up Glue Cup

Whenever I need a small amount of glue, I reach for a paper cup. And since I visit the neighborhood coffee shop every morning, I always have a supply of used cups! But instead of filling the cup [...]

Vacuum Glue into a Crack

        Last fall while moving into a new house, I dropped my kitchen table off the back of my pickup truck.   The solid oak top suffered a serious crack near one corner. [...]

Power-Grip Clamp Handle

I love adjustable clamps, but I used to have trouble gripping and tightening the handles, especially at the end of a long day. Glued-on pieces of drawer liner ($5 per roll at most home centers) [...]

Deep-Reach Handscrew

Recently, a friend asked me to reglue the buckled veneer in a tabletop. The problem was located too far from the edge to clamp with my longest handscrew, so I added wooden fingers to nearly [...]

Easy-Grip Handles

  After 37 years of pushing pencils and typing on a keyboard at the office, my grip is not what it used to be. So I found an easy way to get a powerful yet comfortable grip on my clamp …

Instant Wheel-Dresser Support

I use my grinder almost exclusively for beveling my chisels, so I like to keep the tool rest set to produce the 25-degree bevel I prefer. Having to reset the angle after using my diamond wheel [...]

Tidy Stripping

When stripping a chair or table, place each leg in a coffee can. Any excess stripper drips right in, and when you take off the finish, you can simply push your scraper down the length of the leg. [...]

Benchtop Mortisers

For $250 and half an hour’s worth of simple improvements, you can cut precise mortises all day. Mortising machines first answered the prayers of mortise-cutting woodworkers over 120 years [...]