Woodworking Posts

If you get to know some toolmakers as friends, you’re likely to hear all kinds of wild stories about people who return tools for odd or non-existent defects. Think sidewalls of a handplane that are different in thickness by a few thousandths of an inch. Or cutting bevels of a tool that are ground 1° out of square. But sometimes tools do need to go back to the manufacturer. Students […]

The post When to Send a Tool Back appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

While designing a 9th-grade box project, one thing kept bugging me: How should we reinforce the miter joints at the corners of the boxes? After cutting the miters and gluing the box parts together, I knew that we would have to add some strength to the corners – otherwise they would fail at some point, because simple miters are not reliable. So the question was, what kind of reinforcement? First […]

The post Thin, Good Looking & Strong – Micro Plywood Splines, Part 1 appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

While working on a couple of blog posts about a group of CNC machines that are great for small shops, I got distracted by something rather impractical. But I thought because the distraction was about wood, it might be of interest to some of my fellow woodworkers. This is the final week of a solo contemporary art show of my work at Zinc Gallery near Seattle.  All the sculpture created […]

The post Digital Woodworking & Contemporary Art appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Ever tried to create a fumed finish? Fuming with ammonia is a traditional Arts & Crafts finishing technique. When exposed to concentrated ammonia, the tannins in white oak cause the wood to darken, yielding a rich, warm color that penetrates the surface of the wood. Depending on the intended use of the piece, different topcoats can be applied to provide different effects. Boiled linseed oil is easy to apply. Shellac offers additional protection […]

The post Create a Fumed Finish appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Carpenter’s pencils have limited uses in a furniture shop, but when I encountered the “half-pencil” years ago I started hoarding carpenter’s pencils to transform them into half-pencils for my friends. The half-pencil, as its name implies, is a carpenter’s pencil that has been planed down to half its thickness. (Using a carpenter’s pencil makes it easier to plane it down and it gives you more bearing surface in use than […]

The post The Half-pencil: Your Layout Friend appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

In this video, Greene & Greene expert Darrell Peart discusses the square, pillowed ebony pegs often seen on the Greene brothers’ furniture designs (most of them were merely decorative, he tells us, though sometimes they were used to cover up screw heads). Then, he shows us how he makes the pegs, start to finish – including the simple jig he uses at the disc sander to rough-pillow the ends quickly. […]

The post How Darrell Peart Makes Greene & Greene Ebony Pegs appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.