Author name: Enthusiast

We recently received some new Freud Diablo blades at the magazine to test (two of which will be featured in an upcoming Tool Test in the magazine). The blade is what Diablo calls its Ultimate Flawless Finish blade. It’s a 12″ diameter blade that is designed to work on fixed and sliding miter saws (the 12″ variety of course). Now, we all know that no one ever replaces their miter […]

The post Devilish Diablo Deftly Dissects appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

I’m currently working on a variation on L & J. G. Stickley’s No. 220 prairie settle. The settle’s three sides consist of frame and panels. Because I’m building a shorter version, I need to shorten the rails and resize the panels. Before SketchUp, I would have subtracted the combined width of the stiles from the rails, divided that number by the number of panels and added twice the overlap of […]

The post Create a Linear Array in SketchUp appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

While doing some research this morning I stumbled upon some detailed photos of the Hannah Darlington chest (the original was built by Moses Pyle), which Glen D. Huey copied for the cover project of Popular Woodworking Magazine’s June 2013 (#204) issue (buy a copy here). I found the photos on Winterthur’s web site. They have, in fact, lots of pieces documented in their online collection. And it’s just not furniture – […]

The post Pyle On appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Anyone who has read this blog for more than a week knows I have a thing for campaign-style furniture and the work of André Roubo, the 18th-century French woodworker and writer. Like many other 18th-century furniture writers, Roubo wrote a bit about campaign-style furniture, including beds, tables and chairs. I hope to build one of his chairs and a table some day, but the Roubo campaign beds look a little […]

The post Building Roubo’s Campaign Bed at Fort Ticonderoga appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Whenever I teach a class that involves turning, I like to show them how well the French “polissoir” can finish off your work on the lathe. A polissoir (say it poly-swaar) is a bundle of broom corn that is used to burnish a wooden surface to produce a tactile, low-lustre finish. While the polissoir has been around for centuries, Don Williams recently rediscovered the tool for modern woodworkers while he […]

The post The Redneck Polissoir appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Learning woodworking isn’t just about “how to” do something. A good example of this comes from my days as an apprentice in a commercial cabinet shop. I entered the experience with a misguided, romantic notion of working beside an experienced craftsman and being tutored in the fine points of cabinetmaking. I figured I would be coached and guided as my skills developed. That type of experience may exist in old […]

The post The Most Important Lessons in Woodworking appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.