Author name: Enthusiast

Here’s a tip that you will thank me for if you aren’t already doing it. When you want to secure the lid on a paint, stain or finish can, step on it rather than hammer it closed. Using your body weight to close the can has two advantages. First, you don’t have to have a hammer handy. Your foot is always with you. Second, and more importantly, you don’t risk […]

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When you’re building casework, your parts really need dead square ends if you hope to fit drawers, dividers or a gallery inside. I don’t trust any table saw gizmo to give me square cuts. And I don’t trust my shooting board, either. The only thing I trust is a square that has been tested for accuracy. To check my carcase parts, I have a couple of huge Starrett squares that […]

The post Check Squareness on Big Pieces appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Before I developed the tool tote project, I did some online research and discovered that there are two major trends in the design of simple wooden totes: (A) Those whose tall end-walls flank the side walls and (B) those whose side-walls flank the end-walls. This raised the question: Which of the two designs would better suit our project? When I design a project for my students, especially when teaching my young […]

The post Build a Tool Tote With Your Kids: Part 2 appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

I have a confession to make. I am not a hand tool woodworker…but I want to be. I have only been around power tools for most of my life. I worked for a contractor through college. The only hand tools we used in my shop class were a rasp and a file. The furniture business that I worked for only used hand tools for precision work (but at times, oh how I […]

The post ‘Intro to Hand Tools’ appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Sometimes I feel the need to test myself, particularly when it comes to crap I say and crap I do. For many years I’ve contended that using handplanes is faster in almost every workshop situation – versus even a random-orbit, DA and drum sander. (I’ve not faced an industrial wide-belt sander. Yet.) Recently I bought a nice drum sander for dimensioning thin lams for a big load of bent lamination […]

The post Faster and Better and Healthier and…. appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

I’m delighted to welcome to the pages of Popular Woodworking Magazine James “Jim” McConnell, whom you may know from his blog “The Daily Skep,” where he writes thoughtful and engaging posts, mostly about hand-tool woodworking. Jim worked out of a power-tool- dominated shop for a number of years, before being seduced by a vintage Stanley jack plane, and binge-watching sessions of Roy Underhill’s “The Woodwright’s Shop.” Now, he’s a committed […]

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