Author name: Enthusiast

I just finished reading an article on filling pores, and it reminded me of several things I’ve been meaning to say. First, filling pores is primarily a refinishing operation because so much of the old factory-made and finished furniture is mahogany with filled pores. To reproduce the original look, a refinisher has to fill the pores. But mahogany isn’t used all that much by woodworkers today making one-of-a-kind furniture, and […]

The post A Few Thoughts appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

So this is clever (and a nice benefit for customers) – Lee Valley announced today a(nother) use for the Veritas Small Plow Plane; a beading blade kit is now available. That’s cool (I do love a nice bead) – but what’s perhaps more cool is that while the plane has been slightly redesigned to include this capability (and to improve the clamp mechanism on the depth stop), those who already […]

The post Convert Veritas Plow Plane to Beading Plane appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Readers of my personal blog know that I’ve run into some unexpected challenges with my little house rehab project: knob-and-tube wiring…and bats. The wiring is now about 80-percent new (the other 20 percent will be done later this year or next), but I have to wait for the bats to wake up from their winter naps before kicking them out (which is done by sealing up all but one likely […]

The post Build a Bat House appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

The frame saw that I devised for my students is, among other things, a great exercise in woodworking joinery. It teaches the student the importance of what I call ‘interdependency’. I use this term to describe the symbiotic relationship between two elements, in this case a joint, and their pivotal role (pun intended) in the success of the design, as accurate execution of our mortise and tenon joint will ensure the […]

The post Build a Frame Saw Part 2: Mortising appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

You often see cans of solvent finishes, including lacquer, and alkyd and polyurethane varnish, with instructions not to thin them. Manufacturers include these instructions in order to comply with VOC laws in some areas of the country, such as California. Adding thinner could take the finish out of compliance with the local or state laws, and manufacturers might be breaking the law if they advocated thinning. But they then sell […]

The post You Can Add All the Thinner You Want appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

In two weeks I’m moving to a new workshop (ground-floor storefront, yay!). But last night as I was trying to get to sleep I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to prop the lid of my tool chest open against a wall. Most old tool chests that I have seen don’t have any mechanism to keep the lid open, though these mechanisms do exist. Most of the time, […]

The post A Quick Hold-open Lid Stay for a Tool Chest appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.