Below you’ll find smart woodworking techniques including quick tips, advice for beginners and more advanced methods to improve your skills and allow you to get the most out of your workshop and tools. Whether you’re looking for traditional woodworking techniques using hand tools or power tools, finishing or sharpening advice, or just want to hone your woodworking basics, the advice below is from seasoned and trusted woodworkers and furniture makers working at the top of their field.
You can tune up your band saw to resaw veneer without expensive fences or blades. The subject most often written about in woodworking magazines is probably cutting dovetails. In second place – [...]
There are many things we do wrong but we don’t know they’re wrong. In woodworking there are two kinds of mistakes: There’s the garden-variety gaffe where we simply cut a board too short or botch [...]
Cooking wood in your kitchen can produce results that rival specialty kilns. Luthiers have long used roasted or tempered wood in stringed instruments because the roasting process pre-stresses the [...]
Since I received my Benchcrafted Roubo workbench a year ago, my woodworking life has tremendously improved. My new and heavy bench (I wrote about it here and here) has 1” holdfast holes that can [...]
Bringing an old hand plane back to life is simple to do, and will yield a top-not tool. When I build a project, I use a variety of “fancy” tools (readers’ words, not mine). Lie-Nielsen, [...]
Knowing the techniques will help you, even if you aren’t doing the sewing yourself. For a woodworker, upholstery can be intimidating. It’s hard to know what you want, until you can clearly [...]
This millwork technique can be used to make curved parts with accuracy and ease. Much of my recent work has been making period-appropriate arch-top sash windows for an historic building. They are [...]
Learn how computers, software and CNCs can contribute in your shop. There are a lot of ways to do woodworking. For example, there’s more than a dozen ways to make mortises and tenons. The same is [...]
A furniture maker visits the Pleasant Hill, Ky., community and unearths a fair number of surprises (nails!) about Shaker joinery. Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the [...]
Learn a straightforward approach to creating stunning details. I come to the field of woodworking with an unfair advantage. I grew up in a family jewelry business and did a lot of detail work [...]
Create artistic signs the old-fashioned way. You can churn out lettered signs by the dozens with a router and a set of letter templates or produce them by the hundreds with a CNC machine. So why [...]
Quicker than starting from scratch, and you don’t waste any material. Editor’s note: Nancy Hiller passed away on August 29th, 2022 after a long battle with cancer. In honor of her [...]