Shop Blog

The largest, and I think only, hide-glue factory left in the United States is Milligan & Higgins, located in Johnstown, New York, west of Albany, off Interstate 90. You can buy hide glue [...]

It is by mere coincidence that as I am about to wrap up my recent bundle of blog entries about live-edge design, my friend Daniella Ohad is releasing her highly engaging documentary about George [...]

I am not a joiner. Well, I am a joiner in that I join pieces of wood. But I don’t join clubs. I dislike clubs. But despite this, I love being a member of the Mid-West Tool Collectors Association [...]

A lot of woodworking problems can be avoided simply by monitoring the relative humidity in your shop with a simple and inexpensive hygrometer. In most areas of the United States, the target [...]

A dedicated sharpening station makes your work so much easier, but since leaving the magazine in 2011 I’ve never had the space (or a sink) for one. One day I saw this $20 boot tray at my home [...]

Well-made high-carbon scissors are a joy to use and are indispensable in my shop for cutting paper patterns to shape, trimming veneer and 100 other tasks. For years I used junky office scissors [...]

A few years ago, we published some books to help build your dream home. We covered subjects like home construction, remodeling and backyard buildings. They didn’t really fit with the mission of [...]

The most common questions that I hear are about how to go about learning to use digital woodworking tools? And, as woodworkers how do you use these tools to get the best out of them? In this post [...]

Now that Thanksgiving is over and all of my pants seemed to have shrunk, it’s time to get back to work. I made a quick SketchUp model of the traveling tool chest that I’ve decided to [...]

A reader thought he remembered my cautioning against applying paste wax over water-based finish or latex paint. His memory was that I had said that paste wax could damage these coatings. This is [...]

When both edges of your slab are “live edge” you can’t rely on them for crosscutting or sawing off accurate miters. This is because tucking a live edge against the fence of a crosscut sled will [...]

A common question is: “How can I know if the wood I’m using is going to blotch when I apply a stain or finish?” This question comes up most often when finishing cherry, which has become a very [...]