Author name: Enthusiast

Why does so much factory furniture, made with dowel joinery in the last forty or fifty years, often not hold up well? I have two explanations, both of which are shown in these pictures of chair arms. The first is that the dowels aren’t coated well with glue. The way gluing on a production line so often works is that a little glue is dropped into the dowel hole as […]

The post Gluing Dowel Joints: Why Factory Furniture Dowel Joints Loose so Quickly appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

My PWM baseball cap has already seen heavy use – it’s my go-to hair-containment method while working in the shop and on my house (and given the state of my home and large number of projects to go, I’d best get another cap or three…). We have a limited number of these caps available through ShopWoodworking.com ($12). They’re 100-percent cotton, slate blue (my favorite color…so yes, I picked it) and […]

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Professionals in the field of fine woodworking, with a minimum of four years of experience, are invited to apply for a $2,500 grant from the Krenov Foundation to use for a stint as an artist-in-residence or visiting scholar or faculty collaborator at a nationally recognized woodworking school or craft center. Applications are available at thekrenovfoundation.org/professionaldevelopmentaward, and must be submitted along with a statement of purpose, resume, financial forms, digital photographs of […]

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Woodworkers use waxes (and other things) to decrease friction, but what about when we want to increase friction? Lately I’ve been trying inexpensive rosin – intended for the bows of stringed instruments – with excellent results. Rosin is a byproduct of heating tree sap to make turpentine or a variety of other products and has a variety of uses in industry and the arts – everything from ballet dancers to […]

The post Rosin – Your Sticky Friend in the Workshop appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Several years ago I made a bookcase in red oak as a birthday gift for my husband. I wanted to make it looked like old wood that had been painted, then stripped…poorly. (Yes, some readers will conclude that I have a warped aesthetic.) I decided to use milk paint because the relatively brittle finish seemed like a good candidate for easy sanding. So I mixed up the paint as usual and started […]

The post Milk Paint Pickling Technique for Oak – Farmhouse-Style Wood Finish appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Track saws are a favorite among on-site installers and carpenters, for breaking down sheet goods, trimming floors, and other operations common on the job. Their portability and accuracy make them a godsend for contractors. Many woodworkers have a circular saw in their shop and use it for crosscutting, kerfing out large joinery or cuts where the tool needs to be brought to the work. The addition of a track (made at home […]

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