Archives

I’ve been working, albeit slowly, on a small desk from the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) – I wrote about full-blind dovetails found on the desk in an early post (read it [...]

Iron Out Those Dents Here’s a classic tip that everyone should know: It’s not hard to make a dent in wood and fortunately, it’s not hard to get one out, either. All you need is [...]

I’ve told this story to many woodworkers, but I have yet to post it in a blog. One day before Dad passed, he called me to complain that he was having to fit every tenon to it’s mortise by [...]

“The Joinery Challenge,” a new DVD from Ron Herman, is now available for pre-order at ShopWoodworking.com (and on sale for $5 off the regular price through the end of June). This [...]

If you’re interested in learning to cut dovetails by hand, boy do you have choices. Google hand-cut dovetail videos and the returns total more than 100,000 (no, I didn’t count them). Yesterday I [...]

What makes woodworking fun for me is that I learn something new nearly every day. This past week, Monday was a day filled with learning – I spent the day with Ron Herman as he filmed the [...]

As I’ve written before in this blog, many woodworkers are amazed to learn that I hand-cut my dovetails even though I consider myself mostly a power-tool woodworker – I would say I’m about 70 [...]

Between meetings, classes and regular living, I’ve cut 132 dovetails during the last couple weeks to build my next project, which will be featured on the cover of the June 2011 issue of Popular [...]

“Now let us drink to the success of our hopeless endeavor.”— Russian dissident toast My plan for the June 2011 cover project was a 17th-century “book press” from Samuel Pepys library – considered [...]

When I first started working here at the magazine we actually had time to go out for lunch each week (we now eat at our desks), and one day after eating at a Thai restaurant we wandered into a [...]

I’m just about to resaw my maple version of Roubo’s Folding Bookstand that’s based on Roy Underhill’s article, and I made a full-size pattern of the elevation of the [...]

After making the down-and-dirty folding bookstand in a video last week, I decided to make another pair as a very late Christmas gift. I am not a good friend. These will be maple and sized more [...]