Author name: Enthusiast

It usually takes a year for a new workbench to settle down, and for me to put enough hours at it to form a half-decent opinion. Every bench has plusses and minuses. I’ve never encountered a bench that was 100-percent perfect. And I’ve never encountered a bench that was 100-percent crap. (OK, that last part is a lie. Writers have to say things like that to appear even-handed. A lot […]

The post Happy Birthday, You Big French Baby appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

I am sad to report that Jay Gaynor, director of Historic Trades at Colonial Williamsburg since 2001, died today. Jay was formerly the curator of Mechanical Arts at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which he joined in 1981. Prior to that, he was co-owner of Jamestown Tool Co., makers of reproduction 19th-century English metal handplanes, director of the High Point Museum in High Point, N.C., and associate curator of history at […]

The post Jay Gaynor: A Brief Remembrance appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

If you’ve been around Popular Woodworking Magazine recently, you know Wilbur Pan. You also may not think that he is new on the lectern at Woodworking in America (WIA) because he’s been to most of the conferences, but this is the first year he’s been asked to present. In the pages of PWM, Wilbur has contributed in many different columns and had a couple of features, too. In fact, he’s […]

The post Woodworking in America Speakers – Wilbur Pan appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

I pretty much eat coping saw blades for breakfast. Just about every piece of casework I do involves dovetails (sometimes more than 100 in a single piece such as a tool chest), so a coping saw is almost always on the bench to remove waste. For years I have used the Olson coping saw blades and been quite happy with them, especially compared to the home-center dreck. My only complaint […]

The post Coping Saw Blades from Pegas appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

As we were working on the October 2014 issue (#213) of Popular Woodworking Magazine (which mails to subscribers in early August), Design Matters columnist George R. Walker stopped in the offices and shot a quick video that demonstrates the technique of drawing a volute freehand. Watch as George steps through the process to draw a classical form that can unlock your inner eye, and read more about it in our […]

The post Sketch a Volute Freehand with George R. Walker appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

In the October 2014 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine (which mails to subscribers in about a week), Bill Anderson has an article on common fixes for vintage wooden planes – in other words, we want to encourage you to get those wooden planes off the shelf, fix them up as needed and start using them! The article shows the five most commonly needed repairs, but here’s a sixth from Bill […]

The post Strike-button Repair for Woodies appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.