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The first time I build any project, there are always surprises , even when things are going well. For this Creole Table, it was a fortunately/unfortunately thing all week. Fortunately, the [...]

I quite enjoy looking at other woodworkers’ work, but nothing makes me spit out my coffee faster than reading that a certain project took 300, 600 or even 900 hours of work. It makes me [...]

The Shinto “Saw-Rasp” has always been a curious thing to me. I first spotted it years ago hanging on the wall of our local Rockler store in the sandpaper section. It looks like (and [...]

One of the big challenges in building a project for publication is to come up with techniques that use common tools and skills to produce results that others can replicate using the same tools [...]

I like working with walnut, but I hate marking it. Its dark color makes pencil lines disappear. And its open grain hide knife lines as well. Dovetailing is a particular problem for me. Part of [...]

There is a downside to buying lumber from a guy’s garage.Ã?  Retail, the 12/4 walnut and 8/4 walnut I scored from the garage would have cost me more than $400. I paid $90. But there was [...]

Our magazine’s workshop is an odd duck. In some ways it’s equipped better than some commercial shops (with our eleventy-billion new routers) I’ve been in, but it lacks sorely in [...]

One common question we get from readers is what happens to the tools we test and the projects we build. The assumption, I think, is that we live a life of free wood, free tools and the free time [...]

I always enjoy tours of tool factories to see people (or robots) make things that are useful to my work. How a company can harness hundreds of minds and hands and mechanical pincers to produce [...]

After finishing college, two of my closest friends joined the Peace Corps and were posted to rural Morocco. But within a year they were back in the United States: 20 pounds lighter, two shades [...]