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Let's face it: the jig saw often seems more at home on the job site than in the shop. Sure, it's great for rough cuts in construction-grade lumber and curved cuts in all sorts of materials, but for woodworking, we tend to use a band saw or scroll saw. Despite …
You may have heard it said that the mortise and tenon is the fundamental joint in woodworking. And although you can easily make an argument to back up this statement, it might be a bit simplistic. The mortise and tenon isn't just one joint but a whole family of joints. …
Sharpening is one of the most fundamental skills in woodworking. Unfortunately, it’s one that also seems to give a lot of woodworkers trouble. Which probably explains the popularity of honing guides. You can hardly open a woodworking catalog without finding a new device that promises to make sharpening your hand …
1 Router Mat When it comes to hand-held routing, securing the workpiece can be a challenge. You can clamp it to the workbench, but then you need to remove the clamps and reclamp it to access all the edges. Fortunately, there’s an easier way. A rubber router mat on the …
Mortise and tenon joinery was used long before woodworkers had access to reliable glues. Instead, they had to rely on different methods of locking a tenon tightly into its mortise. One of the most common ways to fix a mortise and tenon joint was to use a wood pin. The …
I often find myself walking back and forth from my tool cabinet to my workbench to fetch a tool. In order to save a few steps, I made a set of these portable tool racks. The racks allow me to bring several of my commonly used hand tools to my …
Logan shares a way to use workbench casters without causing your bench frame to rack or twist.
Nothing is worse than having a woodturning tool roll off your workbench and crash into the shop floor. If you’re lucky, you may only scrape the handle. If not, it may be off to the sharpening station to remove a chip in the cutting edge of the tool. I had …
I tend to do a lot of hand planing in my shop. Using bench dogs is the go-to method I prefer for holding a workpiece to my bench. But recently, I needed to plane a board that was too narrow to span two adjacent bench dogs. So I came up …
The heart of my shop is my workbench. It provides a large worksurface for project assembly. But I took mine a step further and converted it into a multipurpose clamping workstation. You can see here some of the handy accessories I added. I started by embedding two parallel T-tracks the …
Download the free woodworking plans to build this Pocket Hole Jig Workstation, plus all of the other tips from Season 12 of the Woodsmith Shop at WoodsmithPlans.com. Pocket screws are hard to beat when you want a strong, accurate joint, and you want it quickly. Whenever I find myself using …
Lacking a quick and easy way to clamp a workpiece to the top of my workbench, I devised the clamp you see here based on a commercially available clamp design. Its low profile makes it easy to sand or plane the workpiece. The base is made with two dowel pins …
Workbench space is at a premium in my shop. To make the most of the space I do have, I wanted an easy way to use smaller bench-mounted tools (my grinder and machinist’s vise) in the same location. What I came up with is this interchangeable work platform that clamps …
It’s tough to beat a scroll saw for fine detail cuts. Unfortunately, it’s also tough to work on a scroll saw that vibrates around on top of a workbench. I didn’t have room in my shop for a dedicated scroll saw stand, so I came up with the next best …
Cutting long finger joints in the tail vise end block for a Shaker-style Workbench that I built recently is a simple task with a dado blade installed on the table saw. But when it came to cutting the finger joints in the mating side block, I couldn’t use the same …
