Author name: Enthusiast

  I have a confession. I love workbenches. My first project as a hobbyist was a workbench and ever since, I’ve been in love with all the things a good bench can do to help you be a better woodworker.   Workbench 1.0 My first bench was Tom Caspar’s Build a Workbench in a Weekend that appeared in the October 1996 issue of the excellent, but long past Woodwork magazine. […]

The post The BARN Workbench — Part One appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Here’s a problem you’re probably familiar with if you have old furniture or woodwork: finishes that are crazed. Old crazed finishes are very fragile. They damage easily. The best thing you can do to reduce damage is apply a slick furniture polish or paste wax. Slick furniture polishes are those that contain silicone oil. This oil is much slicker than mineral oil, for example. You can put a dab of […]

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I’m not looking for racks full of French tools, you understand – I want to see your pictures of tool racks inspired by Christopher Schwarz’s “I Can Do That” Tool Rack from the April 2011 issue (shown above – this link will take you to the article). It was based on a picture he saw in an engraving in a French book, and he likes it enough to still use […]

The post Show Me Your French Tool Racks! appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Do you have a copy of “I Can Do That! Woodworking Projects?”  It’s a great book for beginning woodworkers, but also for anyone looking for quick weekend woodworking projects. We recently updated it for a 3rd edition, adding 10 new projects – so now’s a great time to check it out if you haven’t already. While accessible to newcomers, the projects in this book use solid basic techniques and yield some quality […]

The post Book Giveaway: I Can Do That! Weekend Woodworking Projects appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Woodworking is largely an exercise in subtraction. For much of what we do that subtraction is obvious – we can see the kerf left from a saw, we can watch the shavings fall out of our handplane and we brush shavings away from the work surface when we sand or scrape. In these instances, we can quickly assess how the process is going. Is my blade dull? Is my blade canted […]

The post Video: Inside a Mortise with Frank Klausz appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

In part two of this series, several techniques and tools were shown for accurately setting origin points. You can use line-of-sight, feel, extrapolation from a known diameter, edge finders, wigglers, 3D sensors and more. Accuracy is critical and although all these tools and processes work well, setting origins can be time-consuming. So, in my own shop, I often use other methods and tools to locate and set my origin points. As a […]

The post CNC Skills: Origin Points – Part Three: New Techniques appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.