Shop Blog

  What is the best design for a round mallet? It has to do the job, feel good in your hand and remain comfortable as you use it. Three weeks ago, while at Peters Valley, I had a chance …

We all know that Joseph Moxon didn’t invent the Moxon vise. But perhaps the Italians did? I spent a fatigue-fueled weekend researching some red herrings and stumbled on this circa 1300 hand-drawn [...]

I came to the Popular Woodworking team with an interest in woodworking, but since working here, I seem to have been drawn specifically to woodturning. I find it fascinating, and as with any [...]

I learned how to make tools from two places: 1.With Hammer in Hand (The book about the Dominy workshop) and 2. American museum tool collections. When I looked at these collections, I saw an [...]

It’s a “pride” of lions, “murder” of crows, “gaggle” of geese and “pod” of dolphins. So what, then, is the proper term for a gathering of [...]

I use round-head mallets almost all of the time. I find that they are very effective in driving my gouges and chisels decisively into the wood. There are cases where I prefer to use [...]

I count myself among the luckier people in the world for having had the chance to hang out with Toshio Odate and Laure Olender for a couple of days in Connecticut. Sure, we were there to film [...]

There’s something very graphical about the design of the Mid-Century Modern Bookcase I built for the October 2015 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. Viewed head on, the arrangement of [...]

If you read Don Williams’ blog, you already know that he lost a fight with a wheelbarrow. Unfortunately, Don broke his hip last week, and while the doctors have given him every indication [...]

I decided to avoid giving a written comprehensive lesson in how to prepare stock by hand (although I did record a video for you to watch – see below). I want to instead discuss the mindset of the [...]

One of my favorite parts of teaching woodworking is showing up at a school the day before my class begins to see what the previous instructor is doing. Today I arrived at the Connecticut Valley [...]

There are lots of great vendors making Moxon-style vises for sale (see a partial list at the end of this entry). But now you can add Nick Dombrowski to that list; and to me, that’s a huge deal. [...]