Woodworking Posts

Any experience making or repairing chairs gives you a little bit of insight into how important the joinery is in chairs. And chair makers have long used socket joints – joints made with a round hole and a round tenon – because they can be made quickly and easily. One problem: these are a rather weak type of joint. That explains why with so many chairs when the glue fails, the […]

The post Learning from Windsor Chair Joints appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Last weekend, I finally got started on…and almost finished… the table build for the curved corner of my kitchen. The base is 34-1/2″ high and will get a top of butcher block that will be curved at the back to match the wall (which reminds me…I need to pick up a new band saw blade). The “ankles” – now “cankles” – are a little thicker than I’d originally intended…for reasons […]

The post Jointer Makes Quick Work of ‘Cankle Table’ Tapered Legs appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

At this stage in my life, I cannot take woodworking classes. I have the will and the money, but I also have kids, a wife with a crazy job and my own endeavors – a publishing company, a custom furniture business and (oddly enough) a teaching schedule. So until I can make our home life look like Lake Placid, I am always looking for other ways to improve my work. […]

The post Outside Your League appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

More to come of course (bios, class descriptions, etc.), but because we’re on deadline for the June issue this week (and I’m dealing with roof problems), for the nonce I’m posting the list of expert woodworkers (four of whom are SAPFM Cartouche winners) we’ve lined up to present sessions at for Woodworking in America 2015, Sept. 25-27, in Kansas City, Mo. (I’ll be there, too…and I can tell a hawk […]

The post Woodworking in America 2015: The Talent is Legion appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Kyoto’s Kinkakuji sits on the edge of an ornamental pond, its gold leaf catching the light and turning it to an aureate glow, the whole gleaming apparition reflected in the pond. And yet when I visited Kinkakuji, I was almost as taken with a roofing display as I was with the newly gold-leafed temple, for the roof itself is a marvel as the display showed. 40 layers of wooden shingles […]

The post From Temple Roofs to Tansu: In Search of a Bamboo Nail appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

As February winds down, it’s still possible to see the occasional remnant of the holidays hanging around. A porch here and there still lit up by a strand of lights, a wreath on a door or fence (OK, maybe that’s just my house) and a woodworking magazine’s lagging announcement of a winner of a contest launched in December. In December, I announced a contest seeking contributions to our “End Grain” column – short articles that […]

The post And the Prize Goes To … appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.