Archives

On Hannah’s Inlaid Chest from our June 2013 magazine (issue #204), I scratched most of the string inlay by hand using tools from both Lie-Nielsen Toolworks and Lee Valley/Veritas. Of the [...]

I met Evan Court last month at CraftBoston, where he was representing the North Bennet Street School as one of the students in their furniture-making program. Here’s a brief and informal [...]

I’m in Fort Collins, Colo., for an in-house conference where editors and community leaders in all areas of our parent company, F+W Media, are getting together to share ideas, talk about the [...]

I have often found it beneficial to sketch furniture while examining it.  Unlike a photograph, a pencil insists a form be understood to be reproduced. But my sketches don’t always look like [...]

Most woodworkers design and build furniture that is rectilinear and orthogonal. This spares us from having to think too hard and reaching back into our high school geometry lessons. It also [...]

While I like and appreciate strict reproductions, I’ve always preferred to design my own stuff. How do I design a piece? In the only way I know how. It’s not easy. There are no formulas or rules [...]

Q & A: The Right Mortise/Tenon Fit Q: What’s the right fit between a mortise and a tenon? I’m going crazy trying to measure them with a dial caliper! A: You’re not alone. [...]

At my day job as wood-shop manager at Robert Lighton Furniture in New York, I often need to fine-tune furniture parts before I pass them over to our skilled sander, then on to the finishers. We [...]

I probably shouldn’t share these here, because I copied the images from another site: Flavorwire (my daily stop for cool stuff on the Interwebs). But I couldn’t resist, because these [...]

Snap-On Soft Jaws I’ve been using an old metal-working vise in my shop for years. Occasionally I really do need a metal-working vise, but most often I use it to hold drawer sides up high [...]

OK, I know I wrote that I would tell more about the Darlington chest (June 2013 cover project) next week. But I have three big reveals, so I had to share another bit yet this week. And this post [...]

Small Parts Organizer I’ve designed a small-parts chest that’s as useful as it is simple to make. I’ve found those disposable, plastic containers for leftovers are ideal for small parts, such as [...]