Author name: Enthusiast

When people injure themselves in the shop, their first reaction is to grab the wound and refuse to look. Sadly, this is the same attitude many woodworkers take with the squareness of their components: They refuse to look and hope things will work out. While there are lots of areas of woodworking where squareness doesn’t matter (stick chairs, for one), if you are going to build rectilinear boxes and hope […]

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You may already know about the French cleat, but if you haven’t heard of it, this neat trick is a great simple way to hang cabinets, wall racks or shelving. In this excerpt below, Popular Woodworking’s very own David Thiel explains how he used this simple yet effective method of wall-mounting to hang a wine rack  – a project that is featured in the new book “Simple & Stylish Woodworking: 20 Projects for Your Home.” […]

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CNC Skills: Part One: All about Origin Points The Origin Point is your prime reference position No matter what kind of woodworking you do, reference points and accurate measurements are critically important for woodworkers. This is particularly true when using any kind of woodworking machinery. For example, if you’re using a table saw to rip a board to 4” wide, set your fence to 4”. To set up that fence […]

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I was hanging out at the Lost Art Press open house last weekend, and Dayton-area woodworking and tool collector Eric Brown brought down a crazy box to show Christopher Schwarz and me. It’s made with the same sort of dovetails you may have seen on the Single Brothers’ Workshop at Old Salem, or other Germanic timber structures. These dovetails, constructed solely of tails, weren’t meant for small-scale work…but there’s a […]

The post Box Made with ‘Log Cabin Dovetails’ appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

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 […]

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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 […]

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