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My portable planer uses disposable blades. When the first set got dull, I didn’t throw them away–I turned the two blades into very useful drawknives.  I wrapped duct tape around the ends of the [...]

As it often happens with my ideas, the moment I start thinking about some type of innovation or another I gravitate to my sketchbook and try to evolve it on paper until I feel certain it has [...]

As I mentioned last week, a common way to flatten a board that is too wide for your jointer is to build a planing sled and then pass the board & sled through the planer. Via incremental [...]

Tool: 6-Amp Power Planer Shop Now  Manufacturer: Porter-Cable MSRP: $69.98 Say you’ve got a huge, uneven roughsawn board. It would make a fantastic top for a coffee table, but how are you [...]

Jointing with a Planer I across some wonderful oak boards for a small table I wanted to build. The problem was the boards were too wide for my jointer, and I didn’t want to rip them any narrower. [...]

While we lust for a 20″ monster, most woodworkers would be just as well off (or better) with a ‘suitcase planer.’ When I started woodworking in about 1993, I wanted two things: a table saw [...]

Did you know that woodchips can tuck themselves under a planer’s blade? Well, as crazy as it sounds it really happen to me last week.  We have a great thickener planer in our shop. It’s a Ridgid [...]

Tool: Powermatic 15HH Manufacturer: Powermatic MSRP: $3199 A powerful planer gets the job done much faster. Remember the ’65 Ford Thunderbolt? The ’67 Olds Cutlass? The ’69 [...]

These modern machines are for more than just the space-challenged woodworker. I’ve got a nice woodshop, but it wasn’t always that way. I started with a contractor saw in the garage. A [...]

The The BT&C Planing Stop is a small toothed plate, intended to serve as a buffer stop when planing a board on the bench.

This legendary planemaker’s career has been dedicated to innovation. There is no straight path between a childhood spent in a camp for displaced persons in Germany’s Black Forest at the end of [...]

Lightweight but solid, this two-knife model is a decent starter machine. Web site: grizzly.com Blog: See the inside of a straight-knife planer and a helical-head version. Blog: Get the skinny [...]