Author name: Enthusiast

When starting in woodworking I couldn’t afford a good set of trammel points. I had my grandfather’s set, but it didn’t lock down well. Then one day woodworker Troy Sexton showed me how he drew large arcs and I realized that I already owned an effective trammel. Troy uses a yardstick (or meter stick if you are metric). Then he bores holes at all the locations where he wants to […]

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“Popular Workbenches” is often suggested as a title revision for the magazine, given the number of workbench plans we’ve offered over the years. And it’s true that we have published a generous number of them – but every one is different! And given that a worksurface of some kind is integral to any workshop, well, it’s a perennially important topic. So in this post, just for fun (and to procrastinate […]

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Digital woodworking comes with a lot of moving parts: new hardware; new software; new methods and skills. But it’s the machinery itself that gets most of the attention. CNCs, Laser Cutters and 3D printers are all impressive machines. Watching them work, and the resulting precision, is the main focus of this new way of woodworking. With all that amazing machinery magically moving around, it’s easy to miss the most important […]

The post Creating in CAD: Variations on a Theme appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

If you go back to the early issues of U.S. woodworking magazines in the 1970s and ’80s and read about oil finishes, you’ll come away confused. The more you read the more confused you’ll become. I know this because I was there. The claims and explanations were all over the map. More often than not they were contradicting each other. The problem of course began with the manufacturers and their […]

The post Oil & Varnish: A Refresher appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

In the recent Don Weber “Build a Welsh Stick Chair” class/video shoot, Don brought some pre-bent arms for us to use, simply to make things move along more quickly (filming a woodworking video is sometimes like filming a cooking show – some parts are prepped ahead of time). But he did bend a couple on camera, using a simple and inexpensive steam box setup, made with items you can easily […]

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In Part One, I introduced the Laguna IQ 24″ x 36″ CNC. Above is Part Two of the video review. Conclusions I’ve had a Laguna IQ in the shop for a few weeks and put it to use on a variety of projects from part cutting to 3D carving. Like all the machines in this the class, I expected that the design, choice of components and solid construction would give […]

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