Woodworking Posts

Rob Cosman showed me how to lay out dovetails using dividers about 12 or 13 years ago, and I have never looked back. I’ve caught a lot of crap for using the divider method from fellow hand-tool woodworkers who say that laying them out by eye is much faster. I don’t disagree. However, there are some advantages to taking the extra time and use dividers. 1. My work looks more […]

The post Why I Lay Out Dovetails with Dividers appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Part of my job at Popular Woodworking Magazine is to talk with tool manufacturers and get their newest innovations into the PWM shop to test and review. I tend to do things in a big way, which means I have a small mountain of things to review crowding the shop, my cubicle and the storage area in the front of the PWM offices – it’s a big pile. And with […]

The post The Uffy TH-T-1825XP 18 Gauge Brad Nailer appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Among the many great people I’ve met while on staff at Popular Woodworking Magazine (PWM), one of my favorites is Carl Bilderback. Carl is a retired carpenter who has extraordinary skills with both hand and power tools (and he has vast collections of both), and a deep and abiding passion for the craft. He’s an active member of the Mid-West Tool Collectors Assn., and spends a lot of time driving […]

The post Thank You Carl Bilderback appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

I will be teaching a week-long SketchUp class  September 8-12, 2014 at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Rockport, Maine. If you want to get a better understanding of the 3D modeling program we use here at Popular Woodworking Magazine, this is your opportunity. As in all my SketchUp classes, we start with a thorough understanding of the basics of how the program works, and by the end of the […]

The post SketchUp Class With Bob Lang, Sept. 8-12 appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Last week while teaching a class at the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking on building the Connecticut lowboy from the February 2014 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine (#209) to seven excellent woodworkers (read more about the class here), I was asked to take a trip into New York city to the Metropolitan Museum (the Met for short). Of course, it took only minutes for me to say, “Hell yes.” To […]

The post A Great Museum Book for Free appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Very quickly after getting serious about woodworking I realized, if I wanted to make more than simple projects with square or tapered legs, I needed to develop my skills in two major areas beyond joinery. Not that there’s anything wrong with simple forms, but I wanted to push my skills well beyond the boundaries pieces like that could offer. In order to step things up, I had to learn how to turn […]

The post Carve Like a Master appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.