Shop Blog

I’m in the early planning stages for an upcoming project build for Popular Woodworking Magazine. The project will be a reproduction of a wardrobe cabinet from the early 1900s. I was trying [...]

With turkey day behind us, we’re heading full-force into Christmas. Many evergreens have been cut – most of them many months ago – to become holiday trees that we decorate. For me, this is [...]

We learn how to read a ruler in grade school, and for lack of more advanced instruction many of us go on reading a ruler for the rest of our lives – including in our shops. In many cases, [...]

How tight does my blade have to be?   Q: I have a heck of a time loosening the arbor nut when I switch blades on my tablesaw. How hard do I really have to crank on that nut when …

If, like me, you think every year at about this time, “I really ought to get started on making some Christmas gifts…” Tom Iovino at Tom’s Workbench can help. He’s [...]

I cannot give you the gift of better eyesight in the shop because, oh, wait, I actually can. Speaking as someone who has had pitiful eyesight since first grade, I have always looked for ways to [...]

Yes, I’m poking fun at Chris Schwarz and his “Anarchist’s Gift Guide,” but also at ourselves (in a tiny nutshell: a hegemonic government is one in which imperial dominance [...]

Double-Duty Roller Tables I like getting double duty out of my tools whenever possible. So, when I decided to build outfeed tables for my miter saw and tablesaw, I worked up this dual-use [...]

OK, I’m going to sound like I have a “man crush” on Joel Moskowitz with this blog entry. But when I think about the simplest inventions in my lifetime that have changed my work, the Gramercy [...]

My first experience using shellac in the mid-1990s was a disaster. The stuff wouldn’t dry. And when it did finally, kinda dry it was a gummy mess. So I stuck to pre-cat lacquer and other film [...]

We woodworkers work hard to put stuff together. But we suck eggs when it comes to taking things apart. Every woodworker – no matter how skilled – needs an “iron crow.” It’s a thin-bladed pry bar [...]

Tablesaw Sled Cutoff Block My sliding cutoff sled gets lots of use for repetitive cuts. In the past, I clamped a board to use as a stop, but moving it for different cuts became cumbersome. To [...]