Shop Blog

I use Southern yellow pine for a lot of shop projects, especially for building workbenches and sawbenches. But I also use it for some furniture. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in a [...]

Although I rarely work with metal (other than metal hardware such as hinges, pulls, z-clip tabletop fasteners and screws), every so often I have a commission for which a hefty piece of steel [...]

It would be hard to find a question in woodworking more often asked and more often inadequately answered than how to make cherry look old without blotching. How many magazine articles have you [...]

Last week, the woodshop across the street from mine caught on fire. Luckily, no one was hurt, the firemen arrived quickly and the damage wasn’t too bad – they’ll be back at work in a week. But [...]

Whenever I explain how “ripple moulding” is made by a “waving engine” – a circa 17th-century machine – most woodworkers are skeptical. First, they are skeptical that ripple moulding, which has [...]

Hey, welcome back. It’s me again, Daniel Fishkin. In my last post, I introduced you to the musical instrument called the daxophone and discussed the principles of building its tongues, which are [...]

Like any Arts & Crafts enthusiast, I like the Gustav and L. & J.G. Stickley classics. But ever since I started collecting the stuff 28 years ago, I’ve had a deep affection for pieces by [...]

I am making a bed headboard which requires multiple mortise and tenon joints on different wood thicknesses. I am routing my mortises and seeing the stop line that was laid out for the mortise was [...]

Cutting wedges, plugs or dowels flush with the surrounding surface is a source of great frustration for many woodworkers. Either you leave way too much of the plug behind, or you chew up the [...]

Maybe it’s because of the decades I spent restoring old and antique furniture, so I realize how difficult it can often be to match new parts to old. Or maybe it’s because of the scorn I feel for [...]

I had a chance to talk with Nicole Sweeney from NBC’s summer craft show Making It (with hosts Nick Offerman and Amy Poehler), which airs Tuesdays this summer at 10/9c. We talked a lot about [...]

A client recently commissioned me to build a 5-foot-square dining table. He’d seen the basic design online, but it wasn’t available in the size he wanted. Having built the table for [...]