Author name: Enthusiast

When I teach people to sharpen edge tools, I am very much an “I’m OK, you’re OK” guy about the kinds of systems out there and whether you should use jigs or not. But there is one thing I’m all fire and waterstones about: Stick with one system until you know it – at least 12 months. I call it “sharpening monogamy.” I also practice “saw monogamy” and the regular […]

The post The Monogamy has Ended appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

There are many ways to learn woodworking and I think making a project is way better than getting bogged down in theory, tool collecting or setting up the ultimate shop. A good project offers a challenge and more often than not you can work with the tools and shop you have. One of my all-time favorite projects is the three-legged stool seen here. You don’t need a ton of tools […]

The post Puzzle Stool Video – a Different Project, a Different Kind of Video appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

At the Lie-Nielsen show in our shop in April, 16-year-old Jalen Waggoner (whom you might remember for his Blacker House chair, which was featured in the November 2013 issue as a winner in the PWM Excellence Awards) stopped in, and brought with him his latest project in progress: a Greene & Greene-inspired games table. As you can see above, the work is now complete – and well worth sharing. The […]

The post Greene & Greene-inspired Games Table appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

I have lost track of how many vises I’ve built or installed on workbenches. So my early-morning giddiness about the Benchcrafted Crisscross is worth note. This week I’m putting a leg vise on my Holtzapffel workbench that will have both the new Benchcrafted Classic vise screw and the Crisscross Retro (instead of a parallel guide). I’ve used vises with the Crisscross installed, but this is the first Crisscross I’ve installed […]

The post It Floats. It’s Full of Stars…. appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

The headline is a bit misleading – this really took me only about two hours to build, start to finish, including a break to empty the dust collector. But I’m counting the one-and-a-half hours in between when I dropped off the metal bits to be cut to length and when they were ready to be picked up, plus the 20 minutes I had to wait for my neighbor to finish […]

The post Four-hour Pot Rack appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Last Friday I talked about through mortise-and-tenon joinery in 18th century chairs in my post “Furniture Details: Why Philadelphia is Just Better.” In the post I mentioned through mortises are not the only differences between Philadelphia chairs and chairs from other regions. This week I wanted to discuss another difference – seat construction. I’m not referring to the actual slip seat on which you sit; I’m talking about how the chair […]

The post Furniture Details: Yep, Philly Wins Again appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.