Author name: Enthusiast

The hardest part about teaching a class on building a workbench isn’t the teaching part at all. It’s finding good material that makes the class a pleasure – instead of a battle against the material. This week I’m teaching a class on building a traditional French workbench at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. All 16 students are using ash bench bundles from Horizon Wood Products. This is, without any […]

The post Workbench Day 1: Grab the Ash With Both Hands appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Skinner Auctioneers, in Marlborough, Mass., has an astounding collection of Shaker pieces from the Andrews Shaker Collection up for sale in a June 15 auction. Unfortunately, the pieces to which I am particularly drawn are estimated to go for far more than my car would be worth brand new – bells, whistles, undercoating and extended warranty included. So, I’m looking at the pieces in this auction as a source of […]

The post Some Incredible Shaker Pieces Up for Auction appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

I got a request recently in the comments section of my “Design in Practice:Stylin’ Too” post (read it here) about museums to visit for those interested in period furniture from Boston to Williamsburg. There’s a bunch, but I’ll list some of my favorites. Of course, by limiting my northern exposure to Boston, you’re forcing me to leave out some of the treasures in Vermont (The Shelburne Museum, which not only […]

The post Period Trippin’ appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Tomorrow morning I start a new workbench class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. While I’ve lost count of the number of workbenches I’ve built or midwifed into this world, I never tire of the grueling and exhilarating labor they require. For each class, I design a new workbench from scratch that is suited to the material I have gathered for the class, the needs of the students and […]

The post Workbench Joinery: 10 Years of Tenons appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

My mother, Elizabeth F. (“Penny”) Jones, is an architectural historian and collector of all things historic…and not. When I was a kid, she was one of the driving forces behind the preservation of countless old buildings in Louisville, where I grew up. After moving to the Washington, D.C., area when I was in high school, she joined the National Trust for Historic Preservation as director of Preservation Programs, and was […]

The post Scrap Moulding Construction Contest appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

  When I think of a hobbyist woodworker I tend to think of a middle aged guy with a mix of tools parked in a corner of a basement or garage. That’s the demographic of our readers, more or less. Many of our them are space challenged, sharing their shops with water heaters, automobiles, or any number of household items. We also have a lot of readers that are new […]

The post Makerspaces for Woodworkers appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.