I like to buy used electric motors for powering various tools around the shop. I also use them to mount grinding wheels, wire brushes and buffing wheels. I typically outfit the motors with toggle switches because they’re light and small. However, as unobtrusive as they are, I would occasionally catch my sleeve on a switch,…

My lathe came with a lamp, but the lathe’s manual has this weird warning: “Position the work lamp so that wood chips do not accumulate inside the lamp shade and pose a fire hazard.” Now, where in the world could the lamp go? When I turn, chips fly everywhere! It occurred to me that metal…

Even though my shop is well-lit, sometimes I need more light right on my work area. Instead of rigging up additional lights, I attach a small clip-on LED light to my cap’s brim. It’s great for working inside cabinets or doing close work of any kind. The light shines right where you’re looking. You can buy…

It is estimated that nearly 80 percent of all woodworking requires some type of sawing. The power, accuracy and control of the table saw has made the process of sawing wood a lot more productive and a lot less physical. It’s arguable as to who first invented the circular saw, but one thing is certain…

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 a dimension, and the kind of mistake that we make over and over again because we don’t even know we…

A 12-step program for regrowing forearm hair. I head through the main doors, down the stairs to the basement, arriving at the third door on the right. Like everyone else, I grab a cup of coffee before finding a seat. By the time the clock gets close to 7 p.m., the entire group is sitting….

Cordless Curler As I leaned over to press down while drilling some holes in a board, my long hair slipped into the drill’s vent slots and got caught in the motor. Before I could release the trigger, my head was pulled down tight against the drill. In shock, I  ran into the house to survey…

Back Leg Boo-Boo My wife asked me to repair a wobbly kitchen chair. All the joints below the seat had failed, so it didn’t take much to knock apart the legs and stretchers. The joints were a bit loose after I removed all the glue, so I planned to wrap a shaving from a hand…

Planer-Puss After my friend Jason and I purchased a truckload of rough lumber, we headed for his garage workshop to plane the boards before divvying them up. All of Jason’s tools are on mobile bases, because he has to share the space with the family cars. So, as he horsed the planer into position, I…

Flying Sawdust Last summer, due to the heat, I covered my portable saw with a canvas tarp and retreated to the cooler air inside my basement shop.  For two months, the saw sat under the shed roof, unattended, until I needed to cut some boards that were too long and unwieldy to maneuver in my…

Egg-oh! My fiancé and I planned an April wedding. To celebrate our marriage, I decided to turn a very special Easter egg. In addition to segmented rings of maple and ebony, this egg would have a laminated band that matched our wedding colors. Tiny bells placed inside the egg’s hollow center would mimic wedding bells…

HOUSE OF DUST To keep airborne dust from getting into the house, I bought a dust collector for my basement workshop. I wanted to start with a clean slate, so I decided to rid the shop of a decade’s worth of dust that had collected on the ductwork, pipes, lights, shelves, and so forth. I…