Author name: Enthusiast

One of the things I enjoy in life is the experience of the under promise and the over delivery. I bought “Is It Genuine” (1971) while searching for good information about 18th-century furniture. I don’t worship what the 18th century has to offer but at its core it represents what I feel is the pinnacle of hand-powered woodworking. It’s a unique period of the pre-Industrial Revolution world that relied on […]

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The shop at Popular Woodworking has been a bit of an embarrassment for the, oh, last year or so. We’ve made a desultory effort now and again to whip things into shape, but ever since our garage door was moved to the far end of the shop (as far away from as possible and around two corners and a fence from the dumpster and recycling bin*), we’ve been less apt […]

The post Spring Cleaning (6 Months Late) appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

If you haven’t figured it out, I’m wary of tool reviews in magazines or online. With rare exception they are uninformed or (worse) misguided. And believe me: I am the first to admit that I was uninformed and misguided when I started writing and editing these reviews in the 1990s. In my experience, Milquetoast reviews are not the result of malice. They are the result of several things. Readers want […]

The post How I Read & Write Tool Reviews, Part 4 appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

How did woodworkers create beautiful, curved table legs without machinery? A technique used building this tea table (pictured left) will show you… Queen Anne-style furniture makers focus on curves and achieving a light, graceful look. Cabriole legs are all about curves, and to give a lighter look to the design, slipper feet were the choice for many tea tables. Forget the lathe. A slipper foot is shaped by hand. To […]

The post Cabriole Legs Without a Lathe appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

I found myself reviewing future projects that I want to do and on so many I’ve found some woodturning is. That’s an issue for me, I don’t own a lathe and I’ve never turned a thing. The most sensible thing to do would be make the project anyway and ask a local tuner to help me when required. That’s what we do at work and it’s always worked well. However, […]

The post I Need a Lathe appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

There are lots of ways to get around not having a sliding deadman – sometimes called a “board jack” – on your workbench. For the last 15 months I have been working on a bench without a deadman or a tail vise, so I am always looking out for novel solutions. This weekend a woodworker named Adrian from Toronto sent me some photos of a clever bench accessory he spotted […]

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