Author name: Enthusiast

In all honesty, woodworking shows are nice but very predictable. If you subscribe to a woodworking magazine, receive periodical catalogs from Lee Valley, Rockler, Woodcraft, and follow a blog or two, then you are most likely up to date with what’s new in our field. However, for me at least, a woodworking show’s most alluring commodity is the opportunity to test some hand tools and to look at the occasional […]

The post A Bag Like No Other – Nantucket Bagg appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

The tools at the bottom of my chest are the heavy and expensive stuff – the planes and saws that get constantly used. At the back of the chest are my moulding planes. And the front wall of my chest has a tool rack that contains the stuff I need to grab without even looking at it. Let’s start with that rack. The Tool Rack From left to right: My […]

The post The Tools in the Bottom of my Tool Chest appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

May the worst tape win It did. A few weeks ago, the Popular Woodworking editors and I thought it would be fun to have a little contest for readers of this blog. Being a bit of an obsessive when it comes to quality tape measures and spending years searching for the best ones we thought it would be fun to see who had the absolute worst tape measure.  By that, […]

The post Winners of the Ugly Tape Contest appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Three days after performing the finish experiment I wrote about in last week’s post, I was cleaning up the mudroom and had to move the samples. When I picked up the one finished with Osmo Polyx Oil, I was astonished to find that the stains from red wine and hot sauce had disappeared completely. I looked at the Cabot water-based poly and Minwax Helmsman spar varnish samples, which had also […]

The post Finish Test Follow-up: A Surprise Ending appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Last week I discussed the Zona Razor Saw and how it’s the ideal saw for beginning dovetailers. It’s just $12 to $15 and cuts extremely well. This saw got me thinking about what other inexpensive tools could fill out the kit for the beginner (or someone who is short on money). So here’s my best shot at this list. I’ve also included (at times) what I think is the next […]

The post A Dovetailing Kit for Beginners appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

The bottomost till in my chest carries the heavy stuff that isn’t on the floor of the chest, and stuff that doesn’t fit in the top two tills and has migrated downward. Three of my essential planes are here, as are some of my most important measuring equipment. When you keep most of your tools in one chest, little is non-essential material. Let’s begin on the left side of the […]

The post The Tools in the Third Till of my Tool Chest appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.