Author name: Enthusiast

I’ve run into this problem often enough that I thought it worth discussion: People apply a stain and don’t have enough time to get the excess wiped off before the stain dries. The results are streaks that are difficult to remove. It used to be that all stains carried by home centers and paint stores were oil stains – that is, stains that thin and clean up with mineral spirits. They were […]

The post Why There Are Streaks in Your Wood Stain appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

I am delighted to announce that we now offer Nancy Hiller’s hilarious, earthy – and cautionary – look at life as a custom furniture maker – “Making Things Work: Tales from a Cabinetmaker’s Life.” If you’re thinking about chucking it all, assuming “all” means a steady job with employer-sponsored health insurance and a regular paycheck, to hang out your lovingly hand-crafted shingle as a furniture maker, you should absolutely read […]

The post ‘Making Things Work: Tales from a Cabinetmaker’s Life” appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

If you’re serious about woodworking, you know that you’ll likely continue to refine your craft until you wind up in an exquisitely detailed coffin you built yourself – there’s a lifetime’s worth of learning in this avocation. New tools land on the market. New techniques change the way you approach your work. You learn new tricks by talking to other woodworkers. And that’s exactly the reason “Handplane Essentials, Revised & Expanded” by Christopher Schwarz […]

The post Book Giveaway: Handplane Essentials Revised & Expanded appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

If you build furniture out of wood, you’ll find that once your design becomes more than a collection of straight lines and begins to include curves, shapes and other details – you enter the world of pattern shaping. What is pattern shaping? It is a woodworking process for accurate duplication. Instead of creating repeated parts from scratch, an existing pattern of the part is used to produce an exact copy. Shaping a part involves machining it […]

The post CNCs vs Pattern Shaping appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

When traveling, there are many times when I wish for a toothed planing stop, especially when installing stuff where I rarely even have a bench. Enter the Whipple Hook from Lee Valley Tools. This early 20th-century patented $9.50 gizmo turns any wooden surface into a functional planing stop with the addition of two screws (so don’t use this in your hotel room). This week I installed it on the corner […]

The post Whipple Hook: Turn Any Board into a Bench appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Look for the new “Woodworking Legends: Garry Knox Bennett” video in mid-May (it will be available at ShopWoodworking.com). On it, fellow furniture making giant Alf Sharp chats with Garry about his life, his work, his woodworking philosophy and more. On this excerpt (rated PG-13 for language), Alf and Garry take a walk through Garry’s shop to take a look at his impressive collection of “old arn” – including a 30″ […]

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