This week I’m headed to Germany to teach a couple classes at Dictum in Bavaria. I don’t teach much anymore, but I make a grand exception for Dictum for several reasons. The biggest reason? The woodworkers overseas are much more hardcore than those in North America. Amateur woodworkers in the European Union (EU) have an uphill battle for the following reasons (and many more): Wood is much more difficult to […]
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The hardware you use can make or break your project. Crappy hinges, lightweight pulls or cheesy locks have no place on a piece that you slaved over. While there are still some great hardware companies out there that sell new hardware (Horton Brasses, Ball & Ball and Whitechapel Ltd. to name a few), their range is obviously limited. That’s why you should never forget eBay.com as a source for hardware. […]
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I recently finished building an Enzo Mari table from the 1970s as part of an article for Popular Woodworking Magazine, and I have only one worry about the project. It looks great. It feels stout. But I’m worried that the joinery might not last forever. The joinery? Lots of properly installed wood screws, with diagonal bracing to reduce or eliminate racking. But screws can come loose and might allow the […]
The post Medieval Method Can Improve a Modern Design appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
Shou sugi ban – the Japanese finishing process that chars the outside of wood – is an ideal surface finish for some furniture pieces. One of the unsung advantages of burning the wood is that you can reduce (or even eliminate) sanding or planing your boards before finishing them. There are limits to this, of course. If your jointer, thickness planer or saw leaves deep marks, this won’t work. But […]
The post Don’t Sand – Burn off your Machine Marks Instead appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
“Mari is right, everyone should have a project: after all it is the best way to avoid being designed yourself.” — G.C. Argan, L’Espresso, 1974 In 1974, Italian designer Enzo Mari published a series of furniture designs that were free to the public. People were encouraged to use his drawings to produce tables, chairs, beds and bookshelves. What’s more, Mari designed the pieces so they could be made from standardized […]
The post An Enzo Mari Table – and a Puzzle appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
Every time I read John Brown’s book “Welsh Stick Chairs,” I latch onto something different. When I read the book for the first time in the mid-1990s, I became obsessed with the Welsh stick chair’s form (and I remain so to this day). After a few more readings, I became obsessed with the history of Windsor chairs and wondered if JB was right that the origin of American and Welsh […]
The post John Brown for the 16th Time appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
The first time I used David Charlesworth’s “ruler trick” on the backside of a plane iron it took an act of sheer will to do it. I had watched David’s groundbreaking 2004 video with Lie-Nielsen Toolworks “Hand Tool Techniques Part 1: Plane Sharpening” and had thought about the ruler trick for a few weeks before I could muster the courage to try it myself. I couldn’t come up with any […]
The post Objections to David Charlesworth’s ‘Ruler Trick’ appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
The June 2018 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine features an article I wrote about making a folding bookstand using scraps and copper rivets. It’s a design based on 18th-century pieces that were popular among British military officers. Several readers have requested a video that shows how the bookstand folds and unfolds. So here you go. Though the mechanism looks complicated, it’s not. If you have a drill press, this project […]
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If you work with curves, you need a marking gauge that can deal with curves. Me, I make chairs. So I need a gauge that can follow the curve of a seat so I can delineate the lines for the scooped-out saddle, the spindles and the “gutter” – a shallow and decorative channel on traditional chairs. I also need a gauge such as this for marking out the armbow and […]
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The tools at the bottom of my chest are the heavy and expensive stuff – the planes and saws that get constantly used. At the back of the chest are my moulding planes. And the front wall of my chest has a tool rack that contains the stuff I need to grab without even looking at it. Let’s start with that rack. The Tool Rack From left to right: My […]
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