Shop Blog

If you’re about to embark on building your first workbench, you might want to read this blog entry. I expect you to discard every piece of advice in it (most bench-builders do) and build the [...]

The topic of nails comes up quite often here in the Popular Woodworking Magazine (PWM) office and on the blogs. This morning I arrived in the office to find an e-mail from a reader that included [...]

Plans are underway in the U.K. for the third Spoonfest 2014 – The International Celebration of the Carved Wooden Spoon (Aug. 1-3, in Edale, in the stunning Lake District). It sounds amazing – [...]

On February 28th Trimble released the new versions of SketchUp: SketchUp Make 2014 (the free version) and SketchUp Pro 2014. The is not too much change visible from the outside, but a significant [...]

Steam Bent Music Stand “Learning to bend wood with steam takes practice, just like playing an instrument.” By Seth Keller Bending wood with steam always intrigued me, but I never tried it. The [...]

Pegged Tablesaw Tools For a nifty way to keep tablesaw accessories in reach, attach perf-board panels to the tablesaw stand. Drill holes in the legs of an open metal stand and bolt the perf-board [...]

While visiting the Boules in preparing to write the article, I noticed impressive marble slides awaiting final assembly and a touch of a finish. I asked them to tell me more about them. It turns [...]

No-Hassle Filter Cleaning My air filter works great and sure makes my shop a cleaner and healthier place to work. But cleaning the pleated filter was always a problem. Blowing or shaking it out [...]

Most of our readers have long since moved on from built-ins, and I have started to move on too, but it never hurts to circle back to some basics. If you’re like a lot of woodworkers, you got [...]

I prefer to use cut nails in reproduction work because they hold better and look right to my eye. But when it comes to cut headless brads, which are used to hold moulding in place while the glue [...]

Q & A: Soaking Stones   Q: I just bought a 6,000-grit Japanese waterstone mounted on a wooden base. Can I soak it like my other stones? Also, what’s the purpose of a Nagura stone? [...]

Water-borne Pore Fillers The first step to a glass-smooth finish. By Michael Dresdner Some of our favorite woods have large, open pores on the surface. Mahogany, walnut, teak, koa, ash, oak, and [...]