Author name: Enthusiast

I’ve just finished writing an article on liquid hide hide glue for Popular Woodworking Magazine that takes a critical look at the adhesive compared to yellow glues. My hope is that it’s a fairly dogma-free article. While liquid hide glue will probably always be my favorite adhesive for interior work, there are some cases where another glue is a better choice. During the research for the article, I talked to […]

The post Rethink the Rules of Liquid Hide Glue appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

While teaching at Peters Valley, my class assistant, Anneloes Van Beek, and I decided to build a live edge furniture piece for the school’s benefit auction. We chose a flamboyant piece of maple which was rich with character, spalting and even some traces of bark. We contemplated what to do with it. It did not take long to realize that the most striking way we could celebrate this slab would […]

The post Live Edge Maple and Turned Walnut Waterfall Coffee Table appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

During the last seven years, I’ve slowly become a fan of using a monolithic slab for the top of a workbench. And I’ve also slowly begun to ignore all the criticisms of slab tops. I built my first slab-top workbench in 2009-2010, which was published in the August 2010 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. The top was some wet cherry that had been rotting in the log yard of Ron […]

The post On Thick, Wet Slab Tops for Workbenches appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

If you ever hear a criticism of the pioneering work of Karl Holtey it’s that his planes are “too perfect” or “lack a soul.” I’ve always been a little befuddled by these comments because I have used a good number of planes that have no soul by the likes of Harbor Freight, late-model Stanleys and other Far East makers. These “planes,” which can only be called by that word because […]

The post Karl Holtey’s Final Plane: The 984 appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Christopher Schwarz’s next book (I’ve been urging him to refer to it as a monograph, given its single subject and form – and perhaps my penchant for hyperbole) will be on two Roman workbenches – one ancient design based on an 18th-century drawing of a fresco at Herculaneum and a surviving fresco at Pompeii, and one early modern design (he’s calling that one the Holy Roman Bench) from a drawing […]

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While I love making cabinets, tables and bookcases, I have always been drawn to making chairs. At first I made Morris chairs because they were very cabinet-like – lots of 90° angles and traditional square-mortise joinery. There might be an odd angle or two for a builder to conquer, but nothing outrageous. Then I encountered John Brown, a Welsh chairmaker who made stick chairs that didn’t look like a frilly […]

The post It’s Chairmaking Season (For Me, at Least) appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.