Shop Blog

As an editor, my work involves poring over woodworking books. And as guy who’s trying to learn a bit of woodworking and build a few things in my spare time, that’s not a bad way to spend the [...]

During the last few months I’ve been revising “Handplane Essentials,” an out-of print book that we published while I was the editor at Popular Woodworking Magazine. The revisions, additions and [...]

I’m building a pair of Roman workbenches in my shop that I’ll be demonstrating at Woodworking in America this fall (Sept. 16-18 in Covington, Ky.). This will be my only public appearance in 2016 [...]

To maximize the beauty of curly maple (also bird’s-eye maple), you want the curls to “pop” – that is, be significantly darker than the rest of the wood. To do this you need to get more color into [...]

What do you do when the critters outside eat your flowers? If you ask Jon Slaton, he will tell you that the best thing to do is to make some wooden flowers and stick them in your pots. Jon, who [...]

Here’s a caution when stripping paint or finish from furniture or woodwork. Most of the newer “safer” strippers are sold in plastic containers and contain the solvent n-methyl pyrrolidone (NMP) [...]

When I build a piece for a customer I show them the drawing and build it (mostly) to the print. But when I build a spec piece, such as this modern campaign chest, the customer is my eyeballs. And [...]

Now that I have been at Popular Woodworking for a while, and finally settling into my new home (apartment), it’s time to do some actual woodworking. While it’s true that I have a laundry list of [...]

Seasoned, well-dried wood is good, but not for all things. For the last two years I’ve been editing a book called “Woodworking in Estonia,” which is about the pre-industrial woodworking cultural [...]

Here is a question that has been going through my mind for more than a decade: When an 18th-century French woodworker started building a workbench, what was the moisture content of the wood? Had [...]

It’s that time of year and you may be thinking about how to take care of your wood deck. Here’s the easy way to approach it, at least for decks made of rot-resistant woods such as redwood, cedar, [...]

Looking for ways to save money when building your workbench? Here’s some great advice for saving on lumber for your bench. (Excerpted from “Workbenches: From Design & Theory to [...]