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Take the money and run. At least, until you’re caught. Every professional woodshop has heard horror stories about subpar work and unreliability of some shops. They give the good shops a bad name, [...]

Welcome to The Splinter Report, where I gather the assorted interesting and amusing things I’ve seen in the woodworking world. This week we’re looking at giant saws, Honda Civics, and [...]

Here’s a simple, invisible repair for an all too common mistake. Say you’re flush-trimming a board and, for whatever reason, your router’s bearing dips into a dent and makes an [...]

Bye-Bye Birds-Eye An Army buddy from northern Michigan stopped when he came upon a truck that had overturned and scattered its load of lumber. The trucker, who was unhurt, told my friend to take [...]

Breezy Bandsawing Reasoning that I’d only be cutting small stuff in my basement shop, I parked my bandsaw diagonally in a corner. Then I decided to make one of those arched-top garden arbors. My [...]

Super Sander After years of hard use, my tablesaw’s 120-volt motor finally expired. Eureka! This was the perfect opportunity to acquire a more powerful machine. I purchased a new 240-volt [...]

Wedged Woodworker Winter comes early here in Oregon, a fact I’d forgotten as I carried a custom kitchen cabinet to my truck. This cabinet was long and slender, to go above an extra-wide range. As [...]

Flaming Scroll Saw When I work in my garage shop, I keep the garage door open to let the sunlight stream in. After working for several hours one fine afternoon, I smelled something burning—that [...]

Most of us share this pathological habit that’s hard to break. I have a problem. A compulsion, really. It’s not as serious as, say, alcoholism, a food addiction, or an unhealthy fascination with [...]

Bow Blues After preparing the laminations, bending form and heat box for the fiberglass longbow I planned to build, I mixed the epoxy—and promptly began to mess up the entire project. First, I [...]

Pants on Fire When Daylight Savings Time begins, I make it a point to change the batteries in the three smoke detectors in my workshop. It was that time again, so I bought new 9-volt batteries [...]

Cordless Curler As I leaned over to press down while drilling some holes in a board, my long hair slipped into the drill’s vent slots and got caught in the motor. Before I could release the [...]