Shop Blog

Sila Kopf, renowned marquetarian will be one of the featured speakers at this year's Woodworking in America conference, held October 18-20, 2013 in the Cincinnati, Ohio area.

Adjustable Curves Laying out a large curve with a cobbled-together, oversize compass is a pain in the neck. Instead I use a bowed slat that can be adjusted to any curve. I used to bend the slat [...]

THE SLEEPER BENCH AND SEATS . THIS TIMBER WAS CAREFULLY PICKED FROM A YARD . SOME WERE BOWED SOME WARPED . BUT MANAGED TO PICK THE BEST I COULD FIND . .AFTER MACHINING / MOULDING THEN MARKING OUT [...]

In some high technology circles there is an expression they use when engineers move too quickly to launch a project. They have “go fever” and are willing to overlook horrible mistakes in order to [...]

On Hannah’s Inlaid Chest from our June 2013 magazine (issue #204), I scratched most of the string inlay by hand using tools from both Lie-Nielsen Toolworks and Lee Valley/Veritas. Of the [...]

I met Evan Court last month at CraftBoston, where he was representing the North Bennet Street School as one of the students in their furniture-making program. Here’s a brief and informal [...]

I’m in Fort Collins, Colo., for an in-house conference where editors and community leaders in all areas of our parent company, F+W Media, are getting together to share ideas, talk about the [...]

I have often found it beneficial to sketch furniture while examining it.  Unlike a photograph, a pencil insists a form be understood to be reproduced. But my sketches don’t always look like [...]

Most woodworkers design and build furniture that is rectilinear and orthogonal. This spares us from having to think too hard and reaching back into our high school geometry lessons. It also [...]

While I like and appreciate strict reproductions, I’ve always preferred to design my own stuff. How do I design a piece? In the only way I know how. It’s not easy. There are no formulas or rules [...]

Q & A: The Right Mortise/Tenon Fit Q: What’s the right fit between a mortise and a tenon? I’m going crazy trying to measure them with a dial caliper! A: You’re not alone. [...]

At my day job as wood-shop manager at Robert Lighton Furniture in New York, I often need to fine-tune furniture parts before I pass them over to our skilled sander, then on to the finishers. We [...]