Author name: Enthusiast

I’m always looking for ways to protect my pieces as I work on them at the bench. Simple things such as a moving blanket (see my entry on that here) can save you a day of clean-up on a project before you apply the finish. Now I have an additional defensive weapon. Earlier this year I did a collaborative project with Jameel Abraham of Benchcrafted. I built the tool chest […]

The post Cushion Your Work With Leather Battens appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

I’ll just come out and say it: I’m a hopeless antiquarian. For those of you who already know me, that will come as no surprise – but you should know it wasn’t always that way. My fascination with all things pre-industrial didn’t blossom into its present potency until I attended the National Institute of Wood Finishing in Rosemount, Minn. The founder/instructor of that school, Mitch Kohanek, was like a father […]

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“Handplanes” is the third-most common topic of question we get at the magazine. (First is “workbenches”…specifically, “What wood should I use to build one?”* Second is “finishing.”) For those just getting into to handplanes, I usually recommend Christopher Schwarz’s article, “Coarse, Medium & Fine” (which first appeared in Woodworking Magazine, and is included in the book “Handplane Essentials.”) And I send it, free. So here it is for you (click […]

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Among the first woodworking tools that I bought were two marking knives. In this entry I will talk about those first knives and the way I use them. In the coming entries, I will show other knives that I own and demonstrate how even a simple utility knife can do a good marking job, in case you don’t own a dedicated tool. I first learned about marking knives 19 years […]

The post An Intro to Marking Knives: Part One appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

For Kevin Drake, founder of Glen-Drake Toolworks and creator of the Tite-Mark marking gauge, the most important factor for successful woodworking is what happens before the tools touch the wood. Understanding how tools work, and constant practice, is the real secret to becoming a better woodworker – and it took careers unrelated to woodworking for Drake to learn that. “I worked in and out of Los Angeles for 30 years, […]

The post Woodworking in America 2015: Kevin Drake appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

For many woodworkers, mid-century modern furniture seems a mass-manufactured mystery. We remember the excesses of the style – the kidney-shaped everything, the peg legs and the crappy dowels. But like most furniture styles, mid-century modern is far more complex, interesting and tied to the great tradition of well-built beautiful things. Michael Crow has a new book out on the style that is an excellent introduction to mid-century modern that focuses […]

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