Shop Tips
Two habits that keep the shop usable for everyone: check the monitor by the door on your way in, and handle your sawdust properly before you leave.
-
Video -
Podcast Joiner’s Bench S1E13
Steven and Alex swap stories about the mistakes that pile up on the bench, from box joints that came out just a hair off to a cherry tabletop that fought back at every step. They dig into why square wood is so hard to get, how a table saw set past zero can wreck a…
-
Article Declare the Joint
The top and its two breadboard ends sat on the assembly table for a week. Not a long time. I want to be honest about that, because in my head it had become this looming thing I was dodging, and it was seven days. But I knew, the whole seven days, that I wasn’t going…
-
Video Keep it Straight
I found the table saw sitting a degree off zero — after I had already cut the parts for a tabletop. Check your blade angle with a square before you cut, and reset the tool to zero when you are done.
-
Article One Degree
The clamps were on and the glue was already spread when I figured out something was wrong. Seven boards of cherry, a little over an inch and a half thick, six feet long, forty five inches across when they were all together. This is the dining room table, the one I’ve mentioned here a few…
-
Article I Used to Not Have a Choice
Not much woodworking in this one. Fair warning. It’s the one I needed to write this week. Normal service resumes shortly. Most afternoons around two o’clock I make a decision, and I make it so fast it doesn’t feel like one. There’s paperwork on my desk. There’s a gym I pay for. I stay at…
-
Article Five Stadiums in Five Nights
I’m a lazy woodworker. I say that out loud in the shop and people usually laugh, because they think I’m being modest. I’m not. I mean it as a description of how I work and, most days, as a compliment. In 1992 I was out with Genesis on a stadium tour, running lights and calling…
-
Podcast The Joiner’s Bench – S1E12 So Many Ways
Steven and Alex map out the many paths a new woodworker can take, from rough carpentry and joinery to cabinet making, turning, marquetry, and even building a guitar. They talk through where to actually begin, the resources worth leaning on like Lumberjocks, Fine Woodworking, and Lost Art Press, and why finding a community or makerspace…
-
Article Ninety Dovetails
A few years ago I cut one dovetail joint a day for ninety days. Pine, because it’s cheap and it cuts easy. The first ones took me an hour. By the end I was down to fifteen or twenty minutes, laying one out and cutting it without thinking much about it. I stacked them on…
