Archives

When you know what you’re doing, chisels can be wonderfully helpful tools. If all you want to do with your chisels is adjust machine-cut joints or slice glue drips, any technique or tool will [...]

Discover a nearly extinct tool that can help you work faster and more accurately. As preposterous as the notion seems, the historical record suggests cabinetmakers working in dim shops with hand [...]

An experiment uncovers cutting edges of the past. “How did they sharpen their tools back then?” I’ve asked this question myself and I have been asked the question, and I’ve never felt comfortable [...]

With sweat equity and a few simple tools, you can split strong, stable stock. Though sawn lumber was available to 17th- and 18th-century European woodworkers in Colonial America, many American [...]

Today’s array of bits has nothing on historical practice. In my attempts to recreate period work, I’ve many times come across the need to make holes that no modern tool can practically create. My [...]

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 [...]

If I could teach a class on period woodworking and really control the syllabus, I would start in the woods and teach beginning woodworking. And while I doubt I could fill woodworking classes like [...]

We all have junk in our shops that we don’t use or no longer need.  My junk is sometimes a bit unique, but it’s junk none-the-less.  I’m cleaning out my shop, making room for more junk and I’ll [...]

I hope you are enjoying my latest series on my new tool chest. The project was born this time last year during the FWW presentations at Colonial Williamsburg’s “Working Wood in the [...]

  I built my Roubo clone frame saw many years ago after seeing a similar one in Colonial Williamsburg’s Hay shop.  With my version, which is a closer approximation of the Roubo saw in [...]

The basic principle of woodworking is painfully easy: Mark your project carefully, then remove the wood that isn’t part of your project.  Over Christmas break, I built my wife a coffee [...]

I’m busy dovetailing the 13 tiny drawers for the tool chest I’m making. I’m using two marking gauges to mark out the drawer fronts, but I was having some problems with the [...]