Click to play Marquetry Accents Make the Box Seen one hand made box and you've seen them all right?  What better way to personalize it than with a bit of marquetry.  The marquetry photo box was built to commemorate a few great road trips.  The map of the US highlights our visits and the state flags designate which photos go with which trip.  It seemed like a good way to go and would be a lot of fun to make those flags.  I definitely took a bit of artistic license with the Michigan flag so I hope those residents won't be offended by a few missing details.   ..read more

Click to play Improve Hand Sawing by Just Sawing More OK maybe that is oversimplifying a bit too much.  A bit of focused work is a more effective way to improve hand sawing.  Really though the average project doesn't have us sawing continuously for very long.  So many things interrupt the sawing bits that it is hard to build any kind of lasting muscle memory.  Certainly the idea of 10,000 hours to mastery has merit but think about how you have to stop and restart so much in the average project.  Think about how different sawing dovetails is from sawing  a ..read more

Click to play Workbench Vises Get In the Way I built this Nicholson style workbench a few years back as part of a beginning woodworker semester at The Hand Tool School I call Orientation.  This viseless workbench is very simple to make the barrier to entry and time to build very low.  Over the years of working on it having a viseless set up has actually improved my hand planing technique and taught me to pay attention always to the direction of force.  Whether I am planing, sawing, or using a chisel it all comes down to understanding the force and using a passive stop is ..read more

Click to play Tiny Wood Scraps, Big Impact We all have scrap wood piling up in a corner of the workshop somewhere.  Over the years I have found ways to repurpose those into useful items in my own shop.  From marking and measuring tools, to saws and bench hooks.  Certainly these items are a bit more obvious.  But what about drawbore pegs, wedges, drawer pulls, joiner's saddles, and lumber stickers?  Now we are getting into some things that can put even the tiniest wood scrap into use to make a big impact.   Sponsor this Show Questions and Topic ideas ..read more

Click to play Empty the Scrap Wood Box and Make a Gift Box Happy holidays!  Its the woodworker's time to shine and make hand made gifts to wow the whole family.  Usually this means applying quick drying finishes around 11 PM on Christmas Eve.  Well to aid you in your last minute shop madness here is a simple box made from the stuff I found in my scrap wood pile.   A few miters, some veneer splines, and a slab top sitting in rabbets.  What could be simpler than that?  Being woodworkers, I'm sure all of you can find ways to overcomplicate it and add you ..read more

Click to play Have Firewood?  Make a Live Edge Shelf Live edge shelves.  Floating shelves.  Live edge floating shelves!  Jeez you would think I'm just hunting for SEO keywords with this video!  Actually I'm just trying to be a good uncle and make some shelves for my niece's kitchen.  Can I help it that she is very on trend with her decorative style and she requested live edge floating shelves?  (there's that keyword again) This is a simple project in that I split some blanks out of a log, planed 3 faces and I was done.  But the live edge required ..read more

An Aesthetic Twist on the Half Lap Joint The miter half lap might actually be a bit weaker than the standard half lap since we are reducing the glue surface by mitering the lap.  But you do introduce an additional wall for the joint to but against so that could offset the loss in glue surface.  Regardless I don't consider half laps or any joint that won't hold together without clamps to be weak.  These are best reserved for smaller projects that don't undergo a lot of stress and load.  Or you pair the half lap with another joint to bolster the strength.  I did this w ..read more

Grooves & Dados Using Planes and Saws Housed joinery.  That's the general name for the dados, and rabbets, and grooves that we use to put together casework.  They are the under appreciated joints that make the woodworking world go round.  And you can cut them using a huge variety of techniques and tools.  Each one of these joints has a speciality plane named after it.  Rabbet planes, Dado planes, and....well...Plow planes.  I suppose someone somewhere calls it a grooving plane.  These are the obvious choices for cutting these joints but as with all thi ..read more

The Boulle Technique is a Great Entry Point to Marquetry Its been about 3 years since I first started messing around with marquetry and I absolutely love it!  You can take a very basic project and make it extraordinary by adding a bit of marquetry to it.  This standing desk is a perfect example.  After all its just a slab of wood screwed to a metal base.  No joinery at all.  But the finished result really makes a statement.  Moreover I hope to show that marquetry is not nearly as difficult as many believe. The Boulle technique makes assembling your packet of v ..read more

Hide the Glue Line in Plain Sight I love my standing desk.  I just cannot sit all day and being able to raise and lower the desk at the touch of a button is such a nice feature.  But the faux wood laminated top just seems a crime to be a woodworker working at a lumber yard.  This had to change and I happen to have this solid Walnut slab kicking around that was almost perfect for a new top.   Almost perfect.  You see the desk needs to be 26" wide to fit the support on the motorized base but this wood slab is only 22".  I can glue up a wider top but I hate ..read more