Tools

Some wide chisels and narrow plane irons don’t work well with the cheap-o side-clamp honing guide. They are too narrow to fit between the walls on the top of the guide. And they are too [...]

Senior Editor Glen D. Huey and I cut dovetails in completely different ways. But we entirely agree on one point: People make the joint a lot more difficult than necessary. There is a time for [...]

Cutting joinery by hand isn’t a romantic journey to the charms of bygone days. For me, it’s a way to obtain better results in less time. I got tired of fiddling with table saw setups [...]

When it comes to powered machinery, I’m a fan of using carbide inserts in the cutterhead instead of traditional straight knives. The cutters last longer, they do a better job on figured [...]

Sometimes when I write, I come to a question that paralyzes me – and I cannot continue until I get it answered. As a newspaper journalist, I was trained to “write my way around the [...]

Reason No. 50 that I dislike chipbreakers: They can prevent your iron from retracting all the way into the mouth of the tool. Sometimes I think chipbreakers are a cruel joke on the woodworking [...]

People gripe that the vintage tools and books I write about often go up in price after I post an entry. I actually think the effect is mild and temporary, except in two cases: Robert [...]

Here’s a short trailer of the forthcoming DVD “Build a Sawbench with Christopher Schwarz” that will be released in a few weeks. If you pre-order the DVD, you’ll save $5 [...]

Right in the thick of Woodworking in America – somewhere between duck fat fries and falling asleep in a puddle of what I hope was my drool – Mark Harrell of Bad Axe Tool Works put a saw down on [...]

When your handplane won’t create a perfect surface, there are several things to check. Here’s how I diagnose the problem when it looks like I’m making plane tracks in my work. [...]

In a bar outside Philadelphia, Thomas Lie-Nielsen, John Economaki and I are having a drink and talking about the people who are getting rich selling tools. I’m on my second beer and running [...]

If you use saws powered by meat and muscle, you need a pair of sawbenches. Both you and the saw work a lot better when your work rests on these kneecap-high platforms. For the last five years [...]