Author name: Enthusiast

I have several matched hollows & rounds…but I don’t have a full set. Or a half set. Poor me. (That said, I do have the two sets I knew I would use, plus a couple unusable ones inherited from my grandfather.) Anyway…I don’t think a half-set is unreasonable for anyone who pursues hand-tool woodworking. So these aren’t really be an indulgence so much as something you might just have to […]

The post The 2014 Would-be Sybarite’s Gift Guide: Day 2 appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Over on his blog, Christopher Schwarz has been writing the 2014 Anarchist’s Gift Guide since Dec, 1. I’m starting a little late with my 2014 Sybarite’s Gift Guide…because too much self-indulgence leads to blackouts (apparently), and causes one to not realize it’s already a new month. Like Chris’s, the woodworking-related gift ideas I’ll be presenting are 100-percent unsponsored. But unlike Chris’s, these are not items likely to be found in […]

The post The 2014 Would-be Sybarite’s Gift Guide: Day 1 appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Woe is the poor glue scraper. There are no toolmakers crafting these tools with rosewood handles and German silver accents. No annoying forum threads that debate the merits of the different handle angles and blade widths. The glue scraper is the squirrel exhibit at the zoo. Once you get a Benchcrafted Skraper, however, the heavens will open up, you will hear birds singing and true craftsmanship will be revealed through […]

The post The 2014 Anarchist’s Gift Guide: Day 4 appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Just in time for a holiday gift (possibly for yourself), we have available all seven issues of Popular Woodworking Magazine from 2014 on one CD. (I’m told a download version of the whole shebang will be added at the same link shortly.) You can read the back-cover copy on the store site – that text speaks to the wide variety of projects, techniques and instruction presented in 2014. But no […]

The post 2014 Popular Woodworking Compilation CD appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

If you read this blog regularly, you should be sick of this suggestion: Buy Pégas coping saw blades. Hoard them. I do – and I’m not generally a hoarder. I have about 150 stashed away in case Pegas doubles the price or stops making them this well. I don’t have evidence that either event will happen, but I use a coping saw every day that I’m in the shop. So […]

The post The 2014 Anarchist’s Gift Guide: Day 3 appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

It’s easy to be skeptical about the polissoir. Could a bundle of broom corn radically change the way you finish some pieces of work? All of us who worked on the translation of A.-J. Roubo’s “l’Art du Menuisier” were wary when we translated the section on the polissoir – literally “polisher.” So we were shocked to see how well it worked and now I have a beat-up one in my […]

The post The 2014 Anarchist’s Gift Guide: Day 2 appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.