Projects

I have long awaited this first major release of SketchUp from Trimble. SketchUp 8 was a major release under Trimble, but very shortly after they acquired SketchUp, so I can…

Q & A: Clean Up Squeeze Out Q: I saw one of those woodworking wizards on television the other day. As I watched the guy build a three-day project in 30 minutes, I noticed he washed off glue [...]

Bevel Gauge For years I ground a way-too-shallow edge on my favorite chisel. It wouldn't hold up worth beans, so I dug through the junk drawer for something I could make a bevel gauge out of. [...]

In this fourth and final part of The Dough Box, I add the lid and lid trim to complete the model. Than I discuss some of the strange issues surrounding compound angles. Along the way I introduce [...]

Rubber Band Veneer Clamp I had tried everything to successfully glue veneer on curved surfaces: cauls, three-way clamps, string and tape, you name it. Nothing ever worked as well as this homespun [...]

Are you a tails or pins first kind of woodworker? If you want to start the woodworker’s equivalent of a bar fight, simply blurt out in a crowd of woodworkers that the best way to cut [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Q & A: Sawing Aluminum Q: Can I cut aluminum with my chop saw? A: Yes.Most carbide blades work fine for occasionally cutting aluminum, but we recommend using a special, non-ferrous [...]

Comfortable Dovetails Like the majority of wokbenches, mine is fine for planing but too low for cutting dovetails without prolonged stooping. My answer is to clamp a heavy backing board, as shown [...]

Normal 0 0 1 377 2153 17 4 2644 11.1282 0 0 0 I recently attended the JLC Live event in Providence, RI. It's an event for builders and remodelers. Since Festool was showcasing some new tools [...]

A student wrote me and asked how I might go about drawing a Dough Box in SketchUp. He sent me a hyperlink to a miniature which he wanted to scale up and build. I brought the picture into SketchUp [...]