Woodworking Posts

Woodworking author and instructor Tom Fidgen is the mastermind behind the Unplugged Woodshop web site, the online hand tool woodworking school An Unplugged Life, and author of two bestselling books: “Made by Hand” (currently available at ShopWoodworking.com) and “The Unplugged Woodshop” (Taunton). He teaches woodworking with hand tools internationally. This September Fidgen will be teaching at Woodworking In America. His sessions will cover the kerfing plane and resawing by hand and handsaw essentials (both using hand/panel saws […]

The post An Interview with Tom Fidgen appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

In “Gravity by Design” (June 2015, Issue 218), Darrell Peart shares his thought on how the bottom of a piece is the most interesting and telling – how what’s at the ground level (or close to it) has a significant effect on the design as a whole. One of the furniture pieces Darrell employs to illustrate his theory is the Aurora Desk – a pedestal desk of his own design […]

The post Darrell Peart’s ‘Arched Aurora Nightstand’ appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Most repairs to furniture during the construction process are a drag because I am kicking myself for making an error in the first place. Not so when adding wooden keys to a slab tabletop. Big wood tends to split. And left unchecked, the split can continue to open during the seasonal expansion and contraction cycle. The traditional fix is a wooden key that looks like two dovetails kissing. Or a […]

The post Stop Splits with a Wooden Key appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Wood, being a natural product, is not without it’s defects. Many are obvious and some (such as the upset above) can be harder to detect. I’ve always known them to be called an “upset” but “thunder shakes” and “compression failure” are also terms used to describe it. The thing I hate about upsets is how hard they can be to detect, especially when the wood is rough-sawn. Most often I […]

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Last week I wrote about our baby boy’s first workbench, which is more of an amusement park than a real bench. Today I am going to show you his next bench. Soon after baby Asher got his Fisher Price bench, coincidence brought about his first semi-true workbench – a wooden one we found on the street in Brooklyn, N.Y. It was part of a group of items left available for […]

The post Spaghetti, Q-Tip or Toothpick? appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

For Chad Stanton, professional furniture maker and licensed contractor – and the host of the “I Can Do That” (ICDT) series – a chance encounter showed him that he was on the right track with the simple projects and techniques he teaches in these videoa. After returning to his home in Toledo after taping several ICDT episodes, Chad was unloading a project when a neighbor spotted it – and immediately offered to […]

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