Author name: Enthusiast

I am eagerly awaiting 6:45 p.m. today, March 20. Yes, because it’s a Friday, but for a more important reason: at that moment, spring officially arrives in the northern hemisphere. Right now my backyard is a soggy, muddy mess, with everything that was hidden under the snow finally revealed. There are sticks and branches, part of a tarp that blew off a stack of yard chairs, chewed up dog toys, […]

The post It’s Spring! Time to Make Outdoor Furniture! appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

In the early 1990s, Nick Engler and a team of woodworkers and designers took on an incredibly ambitious task: Create a series of how-to books that encompass all of woodworking, from the router to the router plane, table saw to scroll saw. Called the “Workshop Companion” series and first published by Rodale Press, the 21 volumes were a huge hit with woodworkers. The books were, clear, concise, easy to read […]

The post ‘Workshop Companion’ Series Available Again appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

I never thought a float would provoke the level of interest it did when I mentioned in my last post that I would need to sharpen it. I was interested to note how different people had contrasting opinions on how they would expect it to arrive. So here’s what you can expect: “Additional sharpening will improve performance” (so says the manufacturer). This is a bed float so it needs to […]

The post Float Expectations appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Now available: All 21 books of Nick Engler’s best-selling “The Workshop Companion” series on one searchable DVD, in PDF format. If you had a father or grandfather – or mother or grandmother – who did woodworking, chances are  one of more of Nick Engler’s “Workshop Companion”)books was a go-to resource for woodworking information. (I remember several dog-eared selections sitting on the metal shelving in the back of my grandpa’s shop […]

The post Nick Engler’s Workshop Companion Series (& Free Finger Joint Jig Plan) appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Woodworking opinion swings with the generations when it comes to picking tools, woods and techniques. Lately I’ve seen a lot of writing about gluing up panels that goes something like this: Because the glue bond in an edge joint is stronger than the wood itself, it’s unnecessary to use splines, biscuits or a tongue-and-groove in the joint. In fact, you could actually weaken the joint with these methods. So just […]

The post In Defense of Splines, Grooves, Biscuits & Dominos appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

When we compiled the 1985-2014 American Woodworker dvd, we didn’t realize that one issue – December 1985 – was missing from the inherited electronic files. This was brought to our attention by an eagle-eyed reader (thank you eagle-eyed reader), so we tracked down a copy and are offering that entire issue, free. (And we will, of course, add it to the dvd the next time we press more copies.) Inside, […]

The post ‘The American Woodworker,’ Vol. 1, No. 4 appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.