The Renaissance Woodworker

This week I address a common problem when hand planing: inadvertantly tapering the board. This was something that Brian Meeks, @extremelyavg on Twitter brought to my attention. First off you should go check out Brian’s site because it is a humorous and refreshing look at our fine craft taken from the eager neophyte’s perspective. Enjoy [...]

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Don’t you love when you are watching a woodworking show and the case comes together perfectly square with no adjusting at all? The host always gives tips for how to make it square but their work just always falls in place perfectly. What world do these people live in? I’m pretty happy with my joinery [...]

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So what good are some pretty French feet without a case to sit upon them? I had already started the casework before the feet but took a detour from it to build the feet because my set up for the sliding dovetail that secures the center shelf was being fussy. Rather than obsess over it, [...]

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Now that I have the grain aligned for the best strength it is time to begin cutting the feet to size and mitering them into the typical bracket foot. I need a 90 degree edge on this parallelogram so I clip off the back edge of the blank using the miter gauge at the table [...]

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I am adding a French foot to the Hepplewhite bookcase that will be placed in my wife’s voice studio. In my last post about this little piece I teased you all with the pattern for the front apron and foot and now I turn my sights to building the feet. The key to making these [...]

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I know you have seen the occasional woodworking plan with a grid overlaid on the curvy parts and the publisher expects you to be able to enlarge that for your own project. There are a lot of ways to do this with the easiest probably being taking a trip to Kinkos to blow up the [...]

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This episode was a trial to make. It was an example of those times in the shop when nothing goes right. However, I managed to turn out 4 legs and learned a lot along the way. What more can you ask for in a project right? Come along and learn about eccentric turning.

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I’m taking a short break from the Queen Anne Table to turn a traditional Shaker knob. One of my fellow Guild members does not have a lathe and I offered to turn a few for him. I figured this would be as good as time as any to shoot a quick video and illustrate the [...]

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Fitting a joint is a magical moment. It doesn’t matter whether it was cut with smashed electrons or burned calories, once you slide those pieces of wood together to form a seamless joint you cannot help but smile. Unless of course that joint won’t close up and leaves a gap. It’s kind of like leaving [...]

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It’s time for another hand tool tip. You have crosscut that board and now you notice it isn’t square or parallel to the opposite end. Yes you can use a shooting board to fix it, but this gets hard with larger boards. A shooting board is really just a jig that makes a fundamental skill [...]

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