Dovetail joints are probably the strongest of woodworking joints, and with the right equipment they are suprisingly easy to make.The first photo shows the reversed V shaped bit in a router cutting both the tails and the slotsl at the same time.The second photo shows the results of this cut, stil...
We visited with Peter Coulter at Harvest House Furniture in Toronto, Ontario and he walked us through what to look for in a quality piece of furniture, citing the examples on hand at Harvest House.Aside from the wood and the look of the finish, check out the overall fit of drawers and doors. Is ...
One of our viewers wanted to know what is the best way to glue boards together for a table top.Well, there are lots of good ways to do that.Most old furniture was simply glued, square edge to square edge.If you want to increase the strength of that you could use dowels, and we showed a doweling ...
There is often a need to fill holes in wood before staining. One of our viewers asked, how do you get the filler to take the stain evenly with the wood alongside it?The old trick of glue and sawdust is a sure stain problem, the glue will not take stain at all. Plastic wood is also a very poo...
Belt sanders remove a lot of wood fast. They remove even more if you go across the grain. Orbital finishing sanders move in a circle, so how you move on the board has no importance at all, you can't go in the wrong direction (with or against the grain) because it is orbiting around all the time...
Have you ever wondered what the end product difference is when you use one or another of the blades for making dado cuts?The perfectly square cut comes from using a straight router bit, or a specific single size square tooth dado saw blade. Don?t try that dado blade in a cross cut as the top s...
With the advent of biscuit joinery we may do less dowel work that we once did, but there is still the need to get that round stick of wood into a hole. When drilling the holes, use a brad tip bit, it will cut the grain cleaner on the walls of the hole and allow for a better fit with the dowel. ...
Harry and his wife from Saanichton, B.C. write:The pivot points on this sewing box are just screws into the wood. As the boxes pivot in and out, the screws unscrew and fall out. What to do?-------- Response:I love little challenges like this, and your drawing was great.What we need to do is e...
Fernanda Faria from Akau Framing in Toronto takes us on a little visit of her framing shop. What was once a hobby has become a profession and, as she says, really just an excuse to get to see a lot of quality art work.She says that the most important tool is a square vice to put the corners tog...
Todd is collecting a lot of fine sawdust from renovation work and doesn't want to throw it away. What do to with it?First on the safety side of the question. Fine sawdust in the air is explosive! Keep it in closed containers. Sawdust with any volitle solvents in it is like cleaning rags, it...
