Shop Blog

It’s widely believed and promoted that the proper finish for 18th and 19th-century antique furniture and reproductions is shellac. The reason is that shellac was the finish that was most likely [...]

So as not to have this interpreted as a ruse, I perhaps should have waited until Monday to open the entry period for the 2016 PWM Excellence Awards. But this is no joke: We’re giving the [...]

Gizmodo posted this morning about a new “transparent wood” that is ready for mass production, developed at Sweden’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology. The post notes that it can [...]

All of our vises at school have cast iron jaws that can damage work and tools. So, I am in the process of lining them with wood inserts to save our rasps and gouges from damage. This also allows [...]

At the beginning of a hand tool class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking, one of the students stopped me as I was passing by his bench. “I have a question for you,” he said. “What is this [...]

I’m nearly done with my workbench project, I promise! I’ll break down the build soon with plenty of videos and explanations as to the whys and wherefores. I wanted to get the project [...]

For me, nothing says summer like a porch swing. As a kid I would spend hours reading on my parents front porch swing, with my over-sized Labrador sitting next to me.  I would hold the swing still [...]

We’ve just launched the full website for Woodworking in America 2016, September 16-18 in Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati, and registration is now open (early bird rates through June 10). This [...]

It seems like everything is becoming smart these days: smart phones, smart watches, smart cars, smart drugs. There are even smart coatings (paints and finishes). I’ve blogged about one already, a [...]

The craft is clogged with so many counter-productive myths and practices that someone could make a career out of a “Mythbusters”-like approach to woodworking. If I could eliminate one myth from [...]

As in so many other industries, the companies who supply us with paints and finishes are consolidating at a rapid rate. When I started in this field 40 years ago, there were all sorts of local [...]

Dennis McEvoy and Bart Slutsky of Rogerson’s Hardware in Hudson NY are doing the herculean job of keeping a great old American hardware store alive, and they are doing it well. Swimming against [...]