Can Soap Flakes Go Bad?
I’m a big fan of a soap finish for certain projects. It doesn’t provide a lot of protection to wooden objects, but it is completely safe, easy to apply and quick to repair. But this week I [...]
You Can’t Ruin Your Woodworking Project With a Finish
There are really only two things they (or you) can do with a finish that can’t be fixed fairly easily. One is to apply a stain to a blotch-prone wood, and the other is to apply a stain to any …
Skip the Fancy Digital Indicators for Machines
I’ll probably get in trouble for this one, but here goes. Don’t waste your money on the digital indicators that people strap to their planers, drum sanders, drill presses and routers. They are [...]
Post your English Arts & Crafts Project Pics!
One of the rewards for writing articles and books about woodworking is seeing what readers do with your designs–or in the case of my recent book English Arts & Crafts Furniture: [...]
A Custom CNC for Designed for Digital Woodworking
In this video, I take Popular Woodworking readers on a tour of my custom 38″ x 72″ x 10″, twin-spindle CNC. Over the last few years, I’ve written several articles and dozens of [...]
Welcome to October
In the October issue of Popular Woodworking (on newsstands and at shopwoodworking.com now), you’ll find a bunch of great projects and articles. This issue was a lot of fun to put together, and [...]
A Cheap Bench – The Art and Craft of Cabinet-Making
Its been a year and a half since I moved into my new home in Cincinnati. Before the move, we lived in a parsonage (a church-owned home) while I served as a United Methodist Pastor in the west [...]
Use Technology to Eliminate Bugs in Reclaimed Wood
Commercial bought lumber, such as the one found in lumber yards and in the big-box stores is almost always guaranteed to be kiln dried. This means that the lumber was heated in a kiln in order to [...]
Use Rosin to Tighten up Your Band Saw
No matter how nice your band saw is, it’s still a fussy instrument with a lot of settings that are shaken loose by vibration. A block of rosin can improve things immensely. Rosin is a tree-sap [...]
I Can Do That! A Labor of Love
We’ve just finished shooting the eleventh episode of Season 4 of I Can Do That (a cool router bit storage cabinet), and I thought it useful to reflect on what is truly a labor of love for [...]
Bending Plywood for a Piano Table
There are lots of methods for handling curved work–steam-bending, band sawing sections out of hefty timber, and bent lamination, to name just three. For a current commission, I’m using a [...]
Woodworking is Easier Here
When people choose where to live, they often look at the quality of the schools, the cultural amenities, the traffic and the local economy. All those are good things to consider, but I would like [...]
