Woodworking Posts

I know that some day I’ll perfect building these simple French workbenches, but it won’t be today. After 10 years of making benches by myself and in groups, I’m finding new strategies for making them better. The last time we built these French oak workbenches the wood was wet – sometimes out of the  range of our moisture meters. We used regular yellow glue to put the tops together, and […]

The post Eleventy-hundred Benches Later, a New Glue appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

All stock jointer fences stink. No matter how tightly you crank them down or how gingerly you treat them, they won’t remain square to the tables. Why? Because they can be adjusted off 90°. Anything that can be adjusted will eventually go out of adjustment. So today at the French Oak Roubo Project, we had to glue up 14 benchtops by the end of the day to make sure the […]

The post The Best Jointer Fence I’ve Used appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

This week a team of 25 woodworkers is in Barnesville, Ga., to build 17 massive French workbenches using ancient oak imported from France and every bit of machinery muscle we can get. I love hand tools, but when it comes to moving around 400-pound slabs of oak, I’m happy to see a forklift coming my way. These 17 benches will be the product of the French Oak Roubo Project, an […]

The post Big Workbenches Need Big Machines appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

So what is SketchUp and why should woodworkers use it? Simply put, SketchUp is a 3D sketching, modeling, rendering and design documentation tool. However, SketchUp is much more powerful than this simple description implies. SketchUp derives its name for a task it does quite well, drawing sketches. SketchUp comes in two versions: SketchUp Pro and SketchUp Make. The major difference between the two is in their ability to save/open/export/import files […]

The post Why Woodworkers Should Use SketchUp appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Clearly, Jim Tolpin has let a lot of folks know that he’s writing about his standing desk (perhaps you’ve seen it on his Instagram feed?) for an upcoming issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. I know this, because a lot of folks have emailed to ask when it will appear. The answer is: In the February 2016 issue, and it’s the cover article (as shown in our cover template at left…the […]

The post Standing Desk Build on Deck appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

In today’s woodturning world, the project can be much more than just about wood, and there are three episodes here that go beyond basics to let you customize your pieces.

The post Woodturning with Tim Yoder Season 2, Ep. 7-12 appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.