Shop Blog

Air-Drying Lumber It’s the low-cost, low-tech way to dry lumber. Here’s how to do it right. By Dave Munkittrick Want a truly cheap and easy way to dry lumber? Consider air drying. [...]

  When it comes to understanding the history of furniture, I think John Gloag put it best when he wrote: “Nearly all articles of free-standing furniture are variations on two basic shapes: a [...]

Air Scrubber Trio Three shop-made machines that clear the air. By Ed Krause   Dust haze.Even if you have a dust collection system you’ve probably found yourself in the middle of it. This [...]

Faster Sharpening One of my favorite sharpening tools is a diamond paddle. I use it for router bits, knives and, most importantly, scrapers. The problem is that it cuts so fast the tiny spaces [...]

A student emailed me and asked: “How do I model the cut a core box router bit makes in SketchUp?” At first glance you might think the answer is the usual – model the shape of [...]

Last week I started down the slippery slope of defining some of the differences between the various periods of furniture (read it here). This week, I’m just jumping off the cliff. Even if [...]

During the second world war steel became a rare commodity. In fact, many metals became rationed for certain applications and this led engineers to revisit the use of "older" [...]

I don’t turn pens much, and the word “fireplace” is a dirty word in our house (thanks to an incident involving a flaming log and full nudity). So my scrap pile is always overflowing. I give away [...]

You don’t have to build or buy a new workbench if you’re frustrated with the one you have. There are ways to improve your bench so it will be more useful. Here are some strategies. Problem No. 1: [...]

These days when you read about high school wood shops, it’s almost always in the context of a program shutting down, the equipment auctioned off and resources diverted to sending every kid that [...]

(Gil, with a plane in his hands, standing in his shop located near Jerusalem, Israel) Gil Arad is an Israeli furniture maker, a teacher and a designer. In a recent blog post I showed his first [...]

Reclaimed Lumber Back at the beginning of April I wrote about some household items I made using leftovers from a commissioned project. Well, I thought I'd show you the original project. [...]