Quit Crying and Get to Work

So you can’t afford (insert dream tool here). Boo hoo. Hit the flea markets then start making sawdust. Yeah, you heard me. Oh sure, I know exactly how it is. The new catalogs come piling into [...]

Soft Maple

Scientific Name: Acer rubrum Other Common Names: Carolina red maple, Drummond red maple, Red maple, Scarlet maple, Swamp maple, Water maple. This wood is often found in the same bin as Silver [...]

Spray Can Storage

I’m a great fan of aerosol finishes, especially now that many of them have adjustable tips that make much less splatter. But my shop got so cluttered with half-used cans that I had trouble [...]

In Tune with Woodworking

The best work is often built one piece at a time, so toss your cutlist. I have been in professional piano repair and tuning for more than 30 years. My father taught me how to tune by ear. That’s [...]

Packaging Tape and Web Clamps

The strong adhesive and tough plastic of packaging tape allow it to work as a hinge on long, mitered corners. After carefully cutting the miters, lay the boards outside-face up and side by side [...]

Low-tech, Low-cost Leg Vise

My tight finances forced me to devise an alternative to an expensive bench vise. This simple leg vise – cobbled together from a board, a 3⁄4“-diameter pipe clamp, and a short length of [...]

Baltic Birch Plywood

Normally we cover solid wood in the Wood Encylopedia, but we thought it might be useful to discuss a versatile material for everything from jigs to drawer parts and scroll saw projects. What is [...]

Grizzly Electric Sawmill Review

Tool:Electric Sawmill G0960 Shop Now Manufacturer: Grizzly MSRP: $3159 As a sawmill owner, I cut lumber for a variety of outlets. Most, I cut for myself. I then dry it and sell it to woodworkers [...]

Quickie Center Finder

Woodworkers are both cursed and blessed with our hopelessly archaic system of measuring. When it comes time to divide any distance in half, like marking the center of a board’s edge for resawing, [...]