Author name: Enthusiast

We’ve made it three seasons without building a workbench for I Can Do That. It’s been requested and we’ve wanted to make one for a while but we just hadn’t gotten to it. But now it’s here. It features torsion boxes, unique joinery and home center materials – a perfect recipe for someone who wants to grow in their skillset. In this build, took full advantage of the table saw […]

The post The I Can Do That Workbench – Part 1 appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

This week on PopWood Playback, I took a quick look at the Bosch GKF12V-25N palm router. My initial impressions are good. The unit has an impressive fit and finish and I found no trouble in edge routing simple chamfers and roundovers. I will conduct a significantly longer test for an upcoming review on the tool, but I was just too curious about this router and wanted to get my hands […]

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Editor’s note: If you have a trick of the trade that we can share, email me at david.lyell@fwmedia.com! This one comes from Andy Rawls, a furniture maker in Texas. You can find his work on his website, YouTube channel and Instagram.  I recently shot a video for my Youtube channel showing how I restored a Stanley No. 4 hand plane. The process requires the clean up of several bolts and […]

The post How to Polish a Chip Breaker Bolt – Andy Rawls appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

A good workbench is worth its weight in gold, and building your own workbench is often the first right of passage for an aspiring woodworker. For workbenches, there’s also a balancing act between weight and portability, size and strength, materials and vises. While the Portable Moravian Workbench may look a little different than the English and French designs that are so popular, this design, based on an 18th-century workbench from […]

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Shellac is a great finish. It dries fast and if used correctly, can build up a decent protective layer on wood very effectively. It is not resistant to water or alcoholic beverages as varnish or lacquer are, but it is very forgiving to apply. Perhaps more importantly — it keeps my students busy. This last point needs some clarification. Towards the end of the trimester, when my 9th-grade students are […]

The post Why I Like to Use Shellac as Our Go-to Finish in My Box Making Class appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Over my career making and restoring furniture I’ve found washcoats helpful now and then when staining wood. A washcoat is a finish, any finish, thinned with two or more parts thinner and applied to wood under a stain to partially seal the wood so penetration of the stain is limited. The purpose is to reduce blotching in blotch-prone woods such as pine, cherry and birch. That is, in softwoods and […]

The post How Wood Conditioners are Giving Washcoats a Bad Name appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.