Author name: Enthusiast

Combine power and hand tools to improve your joinery skills. by Thomas J. MacDonald first published in the December 2012 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine Building a toolbox much like this one was a real turning point in my woodworking career. It was 1999 and I had begun classes at Boston’s North Bennet Street School’s Cabinet and Furniture Making program. At the time, I was a pretty good carpenter and […]

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Blacksmith Peter Ross recently sent me a link to the video below that shows production nailmaking of shoe nails in a town in Austria. These guys are working at breakneck speed – forget those modern videos you see of amateur smiths working in their garages. If you’ve never read about pre-industrial nail production, it was a hard life. In the United Kingdom and its colonies, nailmaking was many times a […]

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When you shoot end grain with a handplane, you have to be wary of spelching – when the end grain breaks off at the end of your stroke. There are several ways to avoid spelching; one of the quick ways is to use sandpaper. This trick works best when you are just trying to clean up some end grain by removing tool marks. If you are instead trying to correct […]

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Part One: Questions & Answers about Mills & Bits Yes, the topic of CNC mills can be complicated. Because of the overwhelming minutiae of design detail and a bewildering number of choices, there’s more than enough to intimidate any CNC user. But, it doesn’t have to be that way. Fortunately, woodworkers have a fairly narrow focus: Cutting wood on a CNC. We have special considerations to consider but the good […]

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Asher, who turned two last week, shows a promising appetite for woodworking tools. He is a frequent visitor to my home shop, where he examines the tools that he can reach. Mainly he’s drawn to clamps, bench bulls and, recently, a great looking Craftsman hand drill that I salvaged from the trash two months ago. When I say “I salvaged from the trash” I mean I actually picked it up […]

The post Tool Lubrication & Asher’s First Eggbeater Hand Drill – Part 1 appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

I got a call from a fellow who made a Sam Maloof-style chair and screwed up the finish using Maloof’s formula. I thought, how can you screw up a Maloof finish? Maloof combined three products – polyurethane, linseed oil and tung oil – to give him the look he liked on his chairs. Then he wiped on and wiped off several coats of the finish, rubbing each coat with his […]

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