An Economic Truth About Cut Nails
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I prefer to use cut nails in reproduction work because they hold better and look right to my eye. But when it comes to cut headless brads, which are used to hold moulding in place while the glue dries, I dont think these nails are the right choice for me. While cut nails are always more expensive than the equivalent wire nail, cut headless brads are crazy expensive. A 1 []
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posted at: 12:12am on 28-Feb-2014
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Hollow-chisel Mortiser in Action
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Hollow-chisel mortisers are one of my favorite tools. When mortising machines were first invented, a drill bit and a chisel were mounted side by side. Ralph and Robert Greenlee changed all that, and production woodworking forever with the invention of the hollow chisel. Its quite an accomplishment to drill a square hole, and while the device is simple, the relationship between the bit and the chisel is critical. If there []
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posted at: 12:02am on 26-Feb-2014
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A Better Blanket Chest Design
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Im working on a book project at the moment in which were including an article that refers to another articleand Im out of pages. So instead of editing around the problem (no time for such shenanigans), Ive decided to post said another article online, and provide a link in the text. I figure I might as well share another article with everyone. So below youll find A Better Blanket Chest []
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posted at: 12:02am on 26-Feb-2014
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Reverse Hide Glue's Bond
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Whenever I talk about glue to clubs and classes, I hand around a bottle of liquid hide glue and ask them to tell me what its disadvantages are. It's weak. Actually no, it produces a bond stronger than the wood itself. It stinks. Hide glue smells only as bad as a wet rawhide chew toy. It's not bad at all. It is sensitive to heat and moisture. Ah, but that []
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posted at: 12:02am on 26-Feb-2014
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Esherick Revisited
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In the June 2013 issue (#204) of Popular Woodworking Magazine I wrote about Wharton Esherick (read the article here) and got a bunch of e-mails regarding some of the pieces pictured in the article. One piece in particular seemed to garner more attention than the others, however. Whartons three-legged stools evidently were not only popular with his patrons, but with magazines readers as well. The funny thing about getting requests []
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posted at: 12:16am on 25-Feb-2014
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Frank Klausz's Your First Toolkit
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Im at work on a Sunday procrastinating on a personal project in the shop. So, Im spending a little time at my desk answering e-mail and trying to work up the energy to go back to my massive pile of plywood. One question in my inbox today was, What tools do I need to get started? (It's a question we get a lot.) Im going to let Frank Klausz []
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posted at: 12:01am on 24-Feb-2014
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When Weird Chests Look Less Weird
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For most of my life, I thought wood that was grain-painted looked like an unprintable bad word that rhymes with bass. Many pieces of furniture were grain-painted to make a less-expensive wood look like a nicer wood. During the Arts & Crafts era, pine was painted to look like quartersawn oak. If you go back in time a little further you see plain woods that were painted to look curly []
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posted at: 12:02am on 22-Feb-2014
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For Those Who Love Books, Travel & Joinery
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When I was a kid, I used books to escape from my (boring) Arkansas upbringing. Today, I use books to escape from the drudgery of air travel. Every room in our house is full of books, and there is never enough room for them all. So as a woodworker, I'm always building more bookcases that stack on top of other things, including other bookcases. This week I started building []
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posted at: 12:02am on 22-Feb-2014
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For Those Who Love Books, Travel & Joinery
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When I was a kid, I used books to escape from my (boring) Arkansas upbringing. Today, I use books to escape from the drudgery of air travel. Every room in our house is full of books, and there is never enough room for them all. So as a woodworker, I'm always building more bookcases that stack on top of other things, including other bookcases. This week I started building []
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posted at: 12:06am on 21-Feb-2014
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Congrats to Glen Huey, Editor, American Woodworker
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Glen Huey, currently managing editor for Popular Woodworking Magazine, has earned a well-deserved promotion. But first, a little back story: In January, our parent company, F+W Media, acquired New Track Media, a company with a portfolio of magazines, books, supplies and events that help people get better at what they love to do, in other words, interest areas that fit in perfectly with the F+W family of magazines, books, []
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posted at: 12:06am on 21-Feb-2014
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Restoration Versus Conservation
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Since my post on drawboring last week (read it here), Ive gotten a number of requests for information about furniture restoration and conservation. One common thread seems to be people using those terms interchangeably. While they may both deal with repairing furniture, Ive never thought the two terms had the same meaning. Restoration is something I started doing right out of high school. The cabinetmaker for whom I worked also []
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posted at: 12:06am on 21-Feb-2014
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Improve Hand Plane Performance
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There was a time when nearly even adult male in the United States owned a Stanley #4 smooth plane. The one I have was passed down to me by my dad (a chemical engineer) who got it from his dad (a tool and die maker). When I was a kid, dad dragged the thing out every few years, sharpened it on a Norton oil stone and had at the edge []
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posted at: 12:04am on 20-Feb-2014
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Compulsory Viking Tool Chest
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A few weeks ago, I posted about Build a Viking Tool Chest, a start-to-finish instructional DVD (also available as a download) from woodworker and blacksmith Don Weber. He shows you not only how to build the historic chest, but how to make your own period-correct hardware. At the time, it was on pre-order; its now available in our store, and when you purchase through ShopWoodworking.com, you get a bonus []
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posted at: 12:04am on 20-Feb-2014
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Be The Best Woodworker in The World
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One great aspect of being senior editor ofPopular Woodworking Magazineis I get to meet people from all over the world who have the same warped (pun intended) sense of humor as I. So, naturally, when I got an email from John Madden (who is a Laguna representative down under, check out Gregory Machinery's web site for more info) letting me know that Laguna Australia is running a contest called The Laguna []
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posted at: 12:12am on 15-Feb-2014
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Always Check the Basics
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Most everyone is familiar with the saying When the editor is away the other staff members will play (or youre familiar with a similar saying). Late last week and early this week, our editor was away for a short vacation down south. The other staff members, two of whom were legitimately working on upcoming projects for the magazine, were in the shop doing what we do. I was out there []
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posted at: 12:12am on 15-Feb-2014
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5 Must-build FREE Project Plans!
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When I started work at Popular Woodworking in 1996, the goal was to cram as many projects into each issue as possible. No techniques. No tool reviews. Just 17 to 20 projects. Oh, and we couldn't use outside authors to help. As a result, we were building all day, everyday. And we were always trying to goose the numbers so we could increase the total count of projects in the []
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posted at: 12:12am on 15-Feb-2014
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A Few Florida Furniture Sightings
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While I was in Sarasota, Fla., for a short vacation/mini family reunion last weekend, much of my time was spent in family activities (and listening to my 4-year-old niece sing Katy Perrys Roar), but I did have a few woodworking sightings in my travels. My mother and I took advantage of Monday free admission to the Ringling Museum of Art and walked the grounds of Ca D Zan (pictured above). []
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posted at: 12:05am on 14-Feb-2014
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Workbenches, Mexi-Roman Style
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Discussions about the proper height for a workbench always crack me up because they are usually myopic in the extreme. When you look at workbenches across long periods of time and across cultures, there is a lot more diversity. Roman workbenches, for example, were about knee high. And lest you think that bench went out of style with togas and public baths, think again. These sorts of benches have never []
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posted at: 12:05am on 14-Feb-2014
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Stop Your Workbench in its Tracks
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While this isn't the dumbest shop trick ever (that honor belongs to: "A coffee mug is a good place to store pencils") it's close. About six months ago, I became crazy annoyed about my workbench moving while under heavy planing. The bench weighs about 350 pounds, so it wasn't a matter of mass. For some reason I picked up the wooden wedge jammed under one of the legs that keeps []
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posted at: 12:00am on 13-Feb-2014
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Top 6 Ways to Become a Better Woodworker
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These are my top six ways to elevate your woodworking game. I present them in reverse order, so if youre looking for the top way, jump to the last entry. .6 Dont point out your mistakes. Most woodworkers always begin to show a piece by stating whats wrong with his or her work. That immediately cues viewers that there are problems, that undermines your work. Professional woodworkers never point []
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posted at: 12:00am on 12-Feb-2014
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SuperMax, Little Guys Building it Bigger and Better
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Trying to make contact with all the different hand and power tool manufacturers out there takes up a lot of my time here at the magazine. I'm always searching for new products. They may be new to the market or just be new to the magazine, but I'm searching for them, nonetheless. Every once in a while I stumble across more than just a great company; I get a great []
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posted at: 12:02am on 08-Feb-2014
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Read Your Own Blog, Dummy
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The alway-eagle-eyed Jeff Burks pointed out that I had already found an earlier reference to using a bow saw to saw out dovetail waste to the one I posted this morning. Back in 2010, I mentioned that Charles Holtzapffel explains the technique in "Turning and Mechanical Manipulation" (1856). Holtzapffel writes: The wood between the dovetail pins is generally cut out with the bow or turning saw, leaving the space as []
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posted at: 12:02am on 07-Feb-2014
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Sawing Out Dovetail Waste
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When I teach dovetailing to a class, one of the common questions is why I saw out the majority of the waste between the tails and pins, instead of chopping with a chisel. The simple answer is: That's how I learned to do it, I'm fast at it and coping saws are easier to sharpen than chisels (the last part is a bit of a joke, by the way). There's []
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posted at: 12:02am on 07-Feb-2014
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Fitz's Picks for February
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As you likely know, every month we offer a deeply discounted collection of books, CDs/DVDs and downloads as the Kit of the Month. Typically, we group these around a theme (workbenches, router joniery, shop projects, tables) but this month, my brain is the sole subject around which the choices coalesce. I chose 11 of my favorite items from the store (retail value of around $300) that were offering for $105. []
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posted at: 12:02am on 07-Feb-2014
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Shop Cleanup Project: Waiting for a Thaw
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Glen Huey (pictured above), Chuck Bender, Bob Lang and I got the shop maybe halfway done in yesterdays frenzy of cleaning and reorganizing, but we did run into a couple problems. Neglecting to measure, for example. (Yes, we took the vise off, then had no trouble getting that bench into the storeroom.) We moved the miter saw rack off the back wall where the garage door will go (soon, I []
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posted at: 12:09am on 06-Feb-2014
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The 2014 Columbus Woodworking Show
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I spent some time this past weekend at The Woodworking Shows in Columbus, Ohio. First off, trekking to the show is much better now that Columbus is an hour and a half away (as opposed to the 7 hours it took to get there when I lived outside Philadelphia). The second thing that struck me about the show as I arrived was the size of the crowd. It was huge. []
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posted at: 12:09am on 06-Feb-2014
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Butt Chisels & Butt Mortise Planes
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In the short video posted last Thursday (1/30/2014), Christopher Schwarz talks about chisels. At the tail end of the clip, he talks about butt chisels where he mentions that these chisels are shorter and have great balance when knocking out dovetail waste, but you use a bench chisel for that, too. So why do we have butt chisels? The term is said to originate from the carpenter trade where short []
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posted at: 12:02am on 05-Feb-2014
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If Cleanliness is Next to Godliness
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If cleanliness is truly next to godliness, then we are lords of the underworld. I took this picture (and shot the video below) whilst standing atop my benchmy bench to which one must take a wholly circuitous route past large builds, old projects, my pile of plywood, machinerymy fault for choosing the windows at the far side of the shop, I suppose. But the trip got a little harder after []
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posted at: 12:02am on 05-Feb-2014
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Can Workbench Legs be too Big?
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Jacques writes: I have your workbench book, and I am currently working on my version of the French bench. I had soft maple cut down from my woods, so I had it sawn, and I am working with it for the top. For the legs, a friend of mine gave me four beams that are about 9″ x 9″, out of some resinous wood. They are cracked and dry (must []
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posted at: 12:02am on 05-Feb-2014
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A New Cornerstone: The Bridge City TS-2v2 Try Square
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Last year, I spent several weeks editing a museum book for Bridge City Tool Works: Quality is Contagious: John Economaki & Bridge City Tool Works, 36 Years Through the Lens of Joe Felzman. It might just be the most gorgeous woodworking book ever published, and I've published some pretty ones myself. As I was editing this book, I got an intimate glimpse into the mind of John Economaki, the []
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posted at: 12:01am on 04-Feb-2014
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A New Cornerstone: The Bridge City TS-2v2 Try Square
Furnished content.
Last year, I spent several weeks editing a museum book for Bridge City Tool Works: Quality is Contagious: John Economaki & Bridge City Tool Works, 36 Years Through the Lens of Joe Felzman. It might just be the most gorgeous woodworking book ever published, and I've published some pretty ones myself. As I was editing this book, I got an intimate glimpse into the mind of John Economaki, the []
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posted at: 12:01am on 04-Feb-2014
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Restoring an Early Spiers Smoothing Plane
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The first time someone showed me a photo of an infill handplane, it was bewilderment at first sight. That's a handplane?, I asked. All I could see were a bunch of odd lumps of wood and some steel. This was years before both the Internet and modern toolmakers made this form of tool a common sight in workshops again. After years of looking at other people's infill planes, I became []
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posted at: 12:05am on 02-Feb-2014
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