Woodworking Posts

After 19 years of building workbenches and testing workholding devices, I am darn picky about what equipment I have on my benches. In truth, I don’t have a lot of vises on my benches because I prefer simple workholding. But when it comes to my leg vise – the most important part of my bench – I am an absolute fool for Benchcrafted’s Crisscross. Paired with the company’s Classic vise […]

The post The Best $139 I’ve Spent on my Bench appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

For Part 1, click here. I crosscut our first batch of Bench Bulls from a 7-1/4″ x 2-1/2″ rough pine beam that we found on the street in front of our school. The beams were discarded by our school’s neighboring townhouse at the end of their home renovation. This is the kind of basic sawn pine beam that is used in construction, and I think might not be that easy […]

The post ‘Bench Bull’ – The Jack of All Bench Jigs, Part 2 appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

The trick to becoming fast at handplaning is to never pause during stock preparation. No matter how you prepare your wood for a project (with machines, handplanes or some combination of the two) the biggest mistake you can make is to stop during the process for even an hour. Once you joint and plane the stock, you should take it as far as you can – even if that means […]

The post How to Avoid Hours of Handplaning appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

No, the photo at left is not from “The Woodwright’s Shop”…but it’s one of my favorite photos of me with Roy Underhill (he won). Why am I sharing it? Well, right now, you can order a passel of Roy’s DVDs for a special price with four new collections: “The Woodwright’s Shop Seasons 1-10,” “The Woodwright’s Shop Seasons 11-20,” “The Woodwright’s Shop Volumes 21-31” …or get the entire set of discs […]

The post Special Roy Underhill Collections (in Limited Quantities) appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

When I made my current workbench, I built it from a pair of robust, traditional-pattern sawhorses (a form you might know as sawbenches). On the bench build I’m about to start, I’ll be using the same setup. The sawhorses I made many years ago are out on jobsites at the moment, so it seemed a good excuse to make a new pair. These are an excellent skill builder because they […]

The post Making Sawhorses appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

I do almost no power sanding. But I do use abrasives in my work. And the only abrasive I use is Abranet. I hesitate to call it “sandpaper” because it is absolutely nothing like sandpaper. There’s no paper – it’s a woven mesh. And the abrasive is nothing like sand. But it lasts forever, doesn’t clog and leaves a nice surface behind. I purchase the 5” discs in #220-grit and […]

The post Anarchist’s 2015 Gift Guide, Day 10: Abranet appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.