Woodworking Posts

The September/October 2017 issue mailed today (digital subscribers, please check your email; the print version should be arriving in mailboxes shortly); you’ll find all the online extras at popularwoodwkring.com/oct17. Here’s look at the table of contents (yes, I could tell you what’s inside…but why write it twice?!): And, this issue is now available in our store for single-issue sales (but if you don’t already, please consider subscribing!). — Megan Fitzpatrick

The post Popular Woodworking Magazine – Sept./Oct. ’17 Issue Now Available appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

In my previous post about making the BARN workbench vise chop, I shared the basic CAD design work for the project. In Rhino3D, I created the curved 2D design – the chop and a simple box representing the blank stock it’s milled from. The chop profile is a simple curved shape. But, when it comes to design, don’t take “simple” for granted. Managing simplicity is a key skill for good design. That curve is […]

The post CAD to CAM to CNC: Part Two. A Dedicated Jig for Two-Sided CNC Work appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

We released a video on YouTube yesterday all about nails. Christopher Schwarz presented a short lesson on the various types of nails available and why we might use them in different applications. To continue the conversation, I thought I’d pull together some of Chris’s posts on nails from his years of blogging on the subject. Check out what I found and leave a comment about your experience with nails in […]

The post 8 Articles on Nails: You Might Consider Using Nails in Your Next Project appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

I do only a little production work in my shop, so I don’t have a lot of jigs and fixtures. In fact, I think I can count them on one hand: a sliding table for my table saw, a shooting board/bench hook, my doe’s feet for my workbench and a V-block for planing objects to octagons. But when I build a jig, I want it to last. This week I […]

The post Notes on a Steam-bending Jig appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Woodworkers drill holes. We drill lots of holes. Small ones especially. And we spend lots of money on methods of drilling holes. In the modern era, we’ve progressed from eggbeater drills through the tailed revolution and are now obsessed with compact and powerful battery-juiced motors. Yet these designs pale in comparison to ones perfected in the 1800s and mass produced up until a half century ago. Imagine a drilling tool […]

The post Push Drills: Good Design, Timeless and Forgotten appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Why does so much factory furniture, made with dowel joinery in the last forty or fifty years, often not hold up well? I have two explanations, both of which are shown in these pictures of chair arms. The first is that the dowels aren’t coated well with glue. The way gluing on a production line so often works is that a little glue is dropped into the dowel hole as […]

The post Gluing Dowel Joints: Why Factory Furniture Dowel Joints Loose so Quickly appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.