There are many tricks for finding the middle of a board without doing any math. The photo shows a centre marking jig, two dowels in a board with a pencil dead centre, rotate the board until the dowels rest on the two sides of the workpiece, then simply slide the jig along and you have a centre l...
Why did I install a small light bulb on the shaft of a very small wood chisel? I use this on the wood lathe when I turn the inside of very small wine glasses. I turn out all the lights in the shop and the light coming through the wood acts as a dynamic thickness gauge as I remove wood. The int...
Stan from Waterloo, Ontario solved the problem of animals in his roadside garbage bin, by building a lighthouse in the middle of a forest. As Stan says, the raised garbage bin on the left was effective, but aesthetically challenged. So they built the garbage bin on the right out of recycled ma...
Resin build-up on saw blades can hamper fine wood working, especially when working a lot with pine.
New Teflon coated blades reduce that build-up, but to get it off my old stand-by is to put the blade in a pizza pie tin, cover it with Ammonia and then cover that with another pie tin so I don't h...
Frank from Chilliwack, BC suggests saving some of the food jars that we normally recycle, screwing the lids to the bottom side of a shelf and then screwing the jar in -- giving you screw and nail storage that is handy and visible. I would just add, use two screws so that the lid will not rotate ...
Trying to get a square cut on the top of a fence post or deck post can be a difficult job. Rick sent us in his jig that does the job nicely. He nails two pieces of plywood together at 90 degrees and then puts small guide rails on the sides. He then takes his circular saw and cuts the jig off, ...
You have to make one important decision before you start buying tools for a woodworking shop: are you going to work with rough lumber and dress it down yourself, or are you going to work with renovation centre dressed lumber. Dressed means that it is already planned smooth on all four sides. D...
When driving screws into wood it is best to drill both a pilot hole and a clearance hole. The clearance hole allows the screw to turn freely without the threads biting into the first piece of wood. The pilot hole is sized to allow the threads to grab to a maximum without forcing the wood sidewi...
I have a copy of your Fine Tuning Your Radial Arm Saw , am interested in the article on page 52 relating to planning the table flat, but I can't seem to find anyone that knows where to obtain the rigid sanding disk that is shown in figure 3-46. I hope you might know where to obtain one. - Willia...
Michelle (10) and Emily (8) Campbell invited me into their father's wood shop where they had prepared a series of demonstrations to illustrate basic safety precautions for kids working with wood.They walked us through the differences in various types of eye protection, insisted on providing heari...
