Author name: Enthusiast

Since I started at Popular Woodworking Magazine (PWM), I’ve gotten e-mails on a weekly basis asking about the status of my school and/or if I will be teaching anywhere in the near future. Well, to answer those questions in reverse order, I am scheduled to teach two classes (so far this year) at Ron Herman’s place in Columbus, Ohio, and my school is on hiatus. Having only completed the physical move in mid-November, most everything […]

The post Chuck’s Upcoming Classes appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

  When beginning woodworkers rank the difficulty of the different dovetail joints, they usually think of the through-dovetail as the “bunny slope.” The half-blind dovetail is the “expert slope” – perhaps a blue or a black trail if you are a snow skier. So what’s the full-blind dovetail? Or the secret-mitered dovetail? Throwing yourself off a cliff without a parachute? In my view, the through-dovetail is actually the most difficult […]

The post If You Haven’t Tried Full-blind Dovetails, It’s Time appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

I’ve studied furniture from the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries for decades and done my fair share of inlay (the table leg to the left is an example). When the talk around the office this week turned to Rob Millard’s much-anticipated DVD, “Marquetry, Veneer & Inlay for Furniture Makers” (buy your copy here), it brought up memories for me of Woodworking in America conferences past (learn more about WIA here…OK, […]

The post Inlay & Marquetry & Bandings, Oh My appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

If you’re about to embark on building your first workbench, you might want to read this blog entry. I expect you to discard every piece of advice in it (most bench-builders do) and build the crazy contraption you’ve planned out in your head. Here, in my opinion, are the most common missteps woodworkers make when they build their first workbench. 1. Too many workholding devices I’ve built workbenches with more […]

The post The Mistakes of First-time Bench-builders appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

The topic of nails comes up quite often here in the Popular Woodworking Magazine (PWM) office and on the blogs. This morning I arrived in the office to find an e-mail from a reader that included a link to a short film. With the Academy Awards occurring last night, and this film having been nominated for one back in 1980, I thought it an appropriate time to bring up the subject […]

The post Nailing It appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Plans are underway in the U.K. for the third Spoonfest 2014 – The International Celebration of the Carved Wooden Spoon (Aug. 1-3, in Edale, in the stunning Lake District). It sounds amazing – kind of like a Grateful Dead concert crossed with a wood-carving festival. I want to go, but alas, my caravan won’t make it across the pond this year. “The Spoon, the Bowl and the Knife,” a documentary […]

The post Spoon Carving – The Next ‘Hot’ Thing? appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.