Author name: Enthusiast

When you open the October 2016 issue to the Letters and Tricks of the Trade columns, you’ll notice a new look. With this issue (it begins mailing on August 3), we welcome Martha Garstang Hill as the technical illustrator for Popular Woodworking Magazine. It has been difficult to say goodbye to Mary Jane Favorite, who’s been doing our drawings for many years (more than two decades, I think!) – but […]

The post Meet Martha Garstang Hill, Architect & Technical Illustrator appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

I just talked with Mike Siemsen about running the Hand Tool Olympics (HTO) at Popular Woodworking in America 2016. Once again, he’s graciously agreed to wrangle his crew of expert hand-tool woodworkers to run the competition (and teach folks who are new to the included “sports”) for the 2016 conference (in the Marketplace Sept. 16-17, at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center). And then I came across this altogether embarrassing video […]

The post A Boring Embarrassment from the Past appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

This article originally appeared in the December 2014 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine “Saw Sharpening 101” by Matt Cianci pages 36-39 We’ve all been there: You reach for your saw in the middle of a project, and before you start the cut, you drag your finger along the teeth and say to yourself, “Meh…they’re sharp enough.” But you soon find out they are anything but. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could sharpen […]

The post How to Sharpen Saw Blades appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

I just chatted with Linda Rosengarten of Hock Tools about Woodworking in America 2016 (Hock Tools will be in the Marketplace Sept. 16-17, along with many other top-quality makers), being too busy, and scraper planes. Linda is working on an upcoming newsletter for Hock Tools (click here, then click on “Hock Tools’ Newsletter” to sign up) and called to ask if we’d allow her to link to an image from […]

The post Make a Scraper Plane appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

In the February, 2015 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine I wrote an article on teak oil. If you’re interested in a more extensive explanation than here, I encourage you to go back to that issue and read the article. I titled the article “Teak Oil: The Oil That Doesn’t Exist,” because there’s no such thing as teak oil. I had suspected this from as far back as the early 1990s […]

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One of the little challenges for beginning handplane users to get a clean surface at the start of the cut, particularly with a smoothing plane. They push the tool forward and it leaves little bumpy chatter marks for about 3/8” of an inch until the plane starts to settle down and cut cleanly. The problem is particularly exacerbated in hard woods, such as white maple. One of the reasons these […]

The post Start Handplanes on the Skew appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.