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Although Takuji owns a miter saw but he likes to use a miter trimmer for the final adjustment of his miters. He uses a two blade mitering trimmer which, if placed in the conventional [...]

My friend and neighbor, Takuji Matsuda, enjoys the advantages of a western workbench. You read part one of my workshop tour here. But when it comes to planes, Takuji prefers traditional Japanese [...]

My friend and neighbor, Takuji Matsuda, is an untraditional traditional Japanese woodworker. He is one of a few remaining makers of a special kind of Japanese box called Kiribako, and perhaps the [...]

We are very fortunate to have cats, chickens and a toddler in our lives. In our garden and in the woodland behind it, we occasionally see deer, squirrels, chipmunks, turkeys and many types of [...]

After finding a rusted old Starrett ruler in a ‘Free stuff’ pile left by a neighbor, I decided to restore it and repaint the numbers and graduations. First, I placed it in a tray and covered it [...]

Strategies to have more control while removing rust with abrasives One of the best ways to give you more control when sanding rust and to make sure you only engage the corroded areas is to back [...]

Rust, the mortal enemy of steel and iron can be removed a few different ways. You can remove rust by eroding it with abrasives and steel brushes, you can use chemicals or acids, you can submerge [...]

If you happened to see a pile of free stuff outside of a neighbor’s house, or on the side of the road, or on the sidewalk of a busy street, would you stop by and sort through it? If it …

Many of us have experienced the phenomenon of F-Style bar clamp slippage. It can happen to quality clamps that had been put through extensive use, but it is more common with inexpensive clamps, [...]

Before taking my 9th grade students to visit Joseph Walsh’s exhibit last month (read more about the exhibit here), I made a mockup mold to show them how thin strips of wood (mahogany veneer in [...]

Two years ago, I built a jig to help me cut sandpaper sheets into a few different practical sizes for our classroom. The sizes that we use are eighths, quarters (long strips) and half sheets. The [...]

It seems that no other shop resource is treated with such obliviousness as sandpaper. Although sandpaper is responsible for the last steps of shaping much of our work, it doesn’t receive the same [...]