Author name: Enthusiast

Metal-bodied planes require so little maintenance (aside from sharpening) that it’s easy to forget that they do need some love every year to work smoothly. Recently I borrowed a friend’s smoothing plane to demonstrate a cut and was struck by how easily her iron adjusted. It was like silk. I thought my plane was in good shape, but I was way off the mark. So as soon as I delivered […]

The post Handplane Maintenance (That Most People Forget) appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

If you’ve ever used a hand-cut rasp or a hand-filed saw you know how their tiny imperfections from handwork make the tool cut smoother. When it comes to making chairs, the small handmade imperfections are what give it its strength. If you build a lot of casework, I am sure you are grunting in displeasure. Accuracy makes all your pieces go together easily and tightly, right? Well in chairmaking, that […]

The post The Strength of a Chair Comes from Imperfection appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

When our School’s Fall fair is over, we have the opportunity to pick up some of the leftover forest decor materials and store them for future use in our Manhattan-based woodshop. One find from past years’ Fall Fair was a hollow branch of about 8 inches in diameter. A week after the Fair ended, a volunteer parent mentioned to me that she wanted to build a Gnome house for her […]

The post Woodworking Workshop for Parents and Fall Fair 2017 – Part 2: How Build a Gnome house appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Once in a while I come across a Popular Woodworking inspired project on Reddit. It’s really interesting to see how people use the pages of our magazine to bring an idea to life. The user, bityard, came across Chad Stanton’s build article, Stacking Tool Caddy, from the December 2017 issue, while at his parent’s house. It sparked an idea for storing his rachets and sockets. The stacking caddy is an […]

The post Stacking Tool Caddy – Adapt a Project to Make it Yours! appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

One of the difficulties with learning to do French polishing is overcoming the exotic vocabulary that continues to be used by some: “charge the rubber,” “fad in,” “spirit off,” etc. This vocabulary was created by English craftsmen 200 years ago, brought to the United States, and it has continued to be used in instructions since. I just came across these terms again, which inspired this post. I’ve always thought it […]

The post French Polishing Vocabulary is Strange and Off-putting: I Think We Should Use Plain English. appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Tools for measuring. Tools for Accuracy. ACCURACY IS IMPORTANT PART OF WOODWORKING I’ve been working as a furniture maker for quite a while, now. Along the way, you refine your processes, develop techniques and create a lot of habits over time. Certainly, an important part of working professionally is to work efficiently —you learn very quickly that time is a fixed asset. You also learn that you have to work […]

The post Precision Instruments for Woodworkers — Part One: Standardization appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.