Author name: Enthusiast

Perhaps it’s the American love for excess. But no matter how many examples I cite or pleas I make, most beginning woodworkers seek to build workbenches that are entirely too wide. Most historical workbenches are 18” to 22” wide – and they are that wide for functional reasons that I’ll explain in a minute. And yet, sawyers I know who cut slabs for benches are regularly asked for 32”-wide slabs […]

The post Woe be it to the Double-Wide Workbench appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

When you make furniture in order to eat or meet a deadline (such as birthdays), it’s difficult to stop yourself from crossing the finish line as soon as possible. Years ago I discovered that taking a day to simply “make pretty” did wonders for my work. What’s “make pretty?” It’s an expression I first heard from chairmaker Peter Galbert to describe how he fusses all the little details of his […]

The post Up Your Game with the ‘Make Pretty’ appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Wedging joints adds great strength, but it also is risky. A wedge can split the work, it can fail to dive into the tenon (sometimes popping out of the tenon), or the tenon itself can split when you hit it, making a mess of things. Here are three things I do to reduce the risk. 1. Make lots of wedges. When I make wedges, I usually make at least 100 […]

The post 3 Tips for Wedging Your Joints appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

A Good Year for Digital Woodworking Tools Using a 3-axis CNC, the underside of a sofa table’s ovoid shaped top is being rough cut in 3D. The edge is a combination of a tapered angular bevel on the sides that graduates to a progressively curved taper over the length of the top. Sounds complicated, but once you work out the design in 3D CAD software and do the CAM programming, it’s an easy […]

The post Digital Woodworking Tools in 2016 appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

All finishes craze ­– that is, develop small cracks – as they age, especially if they are exposed to a lot of sunlight. But there’s another type of crazing, and it can happen much faster. This is crazing caused by body sweat. You commonly see crazing of this type around cabinet-door pulls and drawer handles, and on chair backs, arms and wooden seats. This type of crazing is caused by […]

The post Crazing from Body Sweat appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

A stout “deadman” or “bench slave” is one of simplest jigs you can build, and it can be an invaluable addition to any workbench with a tail vise. You clamp this fixture, which is essentially a heavy block of wood that rests on the floor, into your tail vise and set a pin into an appropriate hole to support the end of long pieces of wood you want to work […]

The post Workbench Slave (aka Deadman) a la Tage Frid appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.