Use a Photo to Make a SketchUp Model
With SketchUp, you can use a photo of a piece of furniture to make a model of the piece. From that model you can develop your plans for building a reproduction. Here’s an example using the [...]
New Bulletproof Vises from Lie-Nielsen
Lie-Nielsen’s heavy-duty chain-drive mechanism has recently been used to create two new vises from the Warren, Maine, tool manufacturer – a dovetailing vise and a leg vise. I got a chance to use [...]
Designing and Building a Wood Sculpture Stand, Part 3: Making the template
Now that I had my thick-walled hollow wooden form built, I had to draw the curved outline of the finished shape onto two adjoining faces of the form. The process is very straightforward. The [...]
Nails: As Important as Computers
Whenever I teach at a woodworking school, I’m always fascinated by what happens when I open my tackle box full of cut nails. Usually, the students react as if I’d opened a case of ticked-off [...]
Congratulations to Guitar-maker Extraordinaire Grit Laskins
William “Grit” Laskin, who makes guitars that look and sound out of this world, is a recipient of a 2012 Order of Canada, an annual award from the Canadian government honoring the [...]
What Makes a Good SketchUp Model? Components
How productive would you be in the shop if you tried to build furniture from blocks of Silly Putty coated with Crazy Glue? Imagine the mess if one board stuck to another automatically and both [...]
A Past, Caught in a Web
Typically when I delve into historic research, it has something to do with 16th- and early 17th-century playwrights and playhouses, social mobility and the burgeoning middle class… stuff [...]
On Symmetry and Screwing Up
In the world of design, you read a lot about the acceptance or rejection of symmetry. Wait, wait. Don’t go away. This blog entry, by the way, has to do with Audrey Hepburn’s gorgeous face. You [...]
WIA, PWM & More: A Video Chat With Al Navas
Al Navas, the owner of Sandal Woods Fine Woodworking (that’s his jewelry box with inlaid dovetails you see at left), invited the editors and publisher of Popular Woodworking Magazine to a [...]
Blue Tape Fixes Twisty Boards
While teaching a recent class, I nicked my thumb on something sharp, and the shop’s first aid kit was locked up for some reason. No matter – I closed up the wound with cyanoacrylate (Super Glue) [...]
Tapping Threads Without Tapping Out
Threading and tapping wood by hand can be frustrating, even when you know what you are doing. Today, 11 students and I at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship built Moxon-style vises to prepare [...]
Congratulations to the Workshop Makeover Giveaway Winner!
A hearty congratulations goes out to Bill Ketler of Silver Spring, Md., winner of our Workshop Makeover Giveaway, sponsored by JET Tools and Bessey Tools. He will be adding $6,000 worth of tools [...]
