I recently needed to make some wall-shelves. I needed three, they needed to fit on a specific wall, and they had to be made of a light-coloured wood. I didn't have any other criteria or requirements. The piece of wood I chose to use was a yellow birch cant about 4 x 6 x 36 … Continue reading When Curves Are Easier Than Straight Lines
A lack of confidence in your woodworking abilities can have a serious impact on your health, relationships, and success in other areas of life. Stop with the blah! Present your products confidently with help from the latest product from Wong Tool Works - OK PASSED INSPECTION stickers! For a limited time, you can choose from … Continue reading A Quick Way to Boost Your Confidence and the Confidence of Your Customers
How much is enough? What should you keep and what should you just get rid of? Whether tools, scrap wood, or spare parts, every woodworker (human?) can relate. My shop is small, and it sees a wide variety of jobs through it from furniture making and repair to small production runs and custom tools. I … Continue reading Enough
Now that Valentine’s Day has passed, I can share this fun little project. After finding a suitable scrap of hardwood, I printed a template and glued it on with a thin coat of wood glue. I let it dry for about ten minutes, then used a small plunge router with a ball nose bit to … Continue reading Carving A Heart-Shaped Dish for Valentine’s Day
Over the last couple years, I have been developing a product that controls the suction going to two ports. Though the working name has changed over the course of development, I am currently calling it "Suction Controller". Primary Purpose The Suction Controller is designed to be used with a vacuum and two hoses, and its … Continue reading Seeking Testers for Suction Controller Prototype
Things have been busy for me over the last few years and I've been very active in the shop with regular things like organization, maintenance, and tweaks to the shop layout. The focus has also shifted towards product development, although I'm approaching the testing phase (if you're interested in being a tester, subscribe to my … Continue reading A Simple But Practical Storage Project
I built four Krenov-style sawhorses about ten years ago and they have served me well. I made them from softwood lumber (pine, I think) using through mortise and tenon joinery. I wedged the tenons of the stretcher, but elected not to reinforce the leg-to-foot joints. Recently, on a couple of the horses, those leg-to-foot joints … Continue reading We Learn More Through Our Failures Than Our Successes
I have a carefully-chosen group of manual hand tools that lives in a MFT Systainer toolbox that covers my particular needs for the majority of general tasks. It is always with me whether I'm working in the shop, on site, or around the house. Every once in a while, I vacuum out all the wood … Continue reading Hand Tool Systainer 2023
An experiment to see how quickly a wooden cutting board is rendered unusable I made this cutting board and designed it to fail, but it didn't fail as I expected! Here are the "bad decisions" that I made in an attempt to accelerate the failure of the cutting board. Low density wood I used butternut, … Continue reading When Something is Expected to Fail but Doesn’t
Much of my education in woodworking has been from what I describe as the relentless push to fail. That is, coming up with an objective that pushes the limits of what I can do, what I feel is possible, or what is possible. I came up with the objective to tie a knot in a … Continue reading Tying Knots in Wood
