Finding and restoring vintage shop machinery. Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the October 2016 issue of Popular Woodworking You pick up an old handplane at the local flea [...]
Did you know that feeler fauges are not just for machinists or for checking and adjusting our steel and cast iron woodworking equipment? How do I know this? Because I recently found out that a [...]
While making Shaker boxes, I built a jig to accurately rip 1/16″ thick strips without getting my hands too close to the blade. In fact, I can leave the guard on the saw. The jig has two [...]
Select a reliable tool with these simple tests. I can’t think of one project I’ve made that hasn’t involved using one or more of my combination squares. I use these to lay out joints and cuts, [...]
Here’s a hi-tech way to set your tablesaw’s miter gauge to within 1/10 of 1° of any angle. It really works well for cutting picture-frame miters. The key is to use a digital angle gauge. I bought [...]
Setting the depth-of-cut on my circular saw was awkward at best before I made this handy gauge. It’s just a thick block of wood with 1/4″ wide slots cut at precise, incremental depths. I [...]
I like to use purpleheart pen blanks because they’re less expensive than other exotic hardwoods. Recently, I stumbled on a cool trick. I discovered that I could cause the wood to overheat and [...]
Methods that allow wood to move with the seasons. About a decade ago, I made a drop-leaf table for a book of projects. When it came time to mount the top, I just drilled pilot holes and drove cut [...]
Christopher Schwarz once demonstrated a time-honored trick for hand-cutting tenon shoulders. After laying out the joint, he chiseled directly downward onto the shoulder cutline, then made a [...]
Over the years, I’ve shortened a fair number of long bolts to some desired size rather than traipsing to the hardware store for just a few of the proper length. Unfortunately, I always [...]
One of the most accurate approaches for checking a case or other assembly for square is to compare the inside diagonal measurements for equidistance. The easiest way to do this is using pinch [...]
