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Spade bits get little respect among woodworkers. They are regarded as coarse tools that tear up the work surface – good for plumbers and rough carpentry at best. Once you understand how to use [...]

I wear clothing until it falls off my body or until my wife refuses to leave the house with me – whichever comes first. My favorite sweatshirt is one I bought my first day of college in 1986. [...]

For the last month, I’ve been revising and expanding my first book “Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use” for F+W Media. The revised book is scheduled to be out by the [...]

At this stage in my life, I cannot take woodworking classes. I have the will and the money, but I also have kids, a wife with a crazy job and my own endeavors – a publishing company, a custom [...]

Once you set up a steambox, bending furniture parts is almost too easy. I’ve been bending wood using a variety of methods for the last 11 years. When I use steam, here is my current rig. The [...]

The Popular Woodworking Magazine editors have assembled a short “e-mag” of five of my most popular articles from the magazine that you can download for $3.99 from ShopWoodworking.com. Titled “The [...]

Author’s note: No, I haven’t gone all English or Canadian on you. The above headline is from the April 1925 edition of The Woodworker, my favorite old woodworking magazine. I enjoy reading [...]

I have more than a dozen tool rolls I’ve bought over the years to store rasps, wrenches, auger bits, carving tools and so on. They are my favorite way to protect edge tools in a tool chest – and [...]

Before you read beyond the first few sentences of this blog entry, there a couple things you should know: I have no problems sharpening a drawknife. Never have (except that time in the 1990s [...]

The notched batten – also called a “doe’s foot” – is a great way to restrain your work on the bench without a tail vise. With a holdfast and a doe’s foot, you can even work across the grain [...]

Old tool chests typically have two weak spots: the bottom and the hinges. The bottom gets rotted out because tool chests end up in unfriendly, poorly drained areas. That’s why many tool chest [...]

When the history of 20th-century woodworking machinery is written, someone will compose a poem, ode or opera to the Delta 14” band saw that was made in the United States. There are many flavors [...]