Woodworking Made Simple for Woodworkers

If you read and appreciate books, as I do, then you probably appreciate the functional aspects of a bookcase. If you enjoy beautiful materials and elegant, understated design, as I do, then I hope the design of this piece will appeal to you as well. I built it with a matched set of curly maple boards, which I purchased from Irion Lumber. I paired the maple with sexy, straight-grained bubinga for the base. And I used East Indian rosewood as an accent. There is a lot of exacting joinery in the carcase, which has sliding dovetails joining the shelves to the sides and half-blind dovetails joining the sides to the bottom. That’s all spelled out in the drawing. But for this article I’ve chosen to focus on the base and the top molding. These two components might not be the first things to catch your eye, but they are vital to the look of the piece, and they are both a bit more challenging than they might seem. The feet on this base pack a lot of curves and u...

A must-have tool for the lumberyard by Greg Paolini In addition to my truck and a pile of cash, there’s always one other thing I take to the lumberyard or mill – a lumber rule. Also known as a grading stick, a lumber rule is a simple tool that instantly shows how many board feet are in a piece of rough lumber. This helps me keep track of how much wood I’m buying, and helps to prevent big surprises when the sawyer hands me the bill. Lumber rules are available commercially, costing $50 or more, but by understanding how board feet are calculated you can easily create your own lumber rule, suited to the thickness and length of lumber you most often buy, Best of all, these custom rules are made from shop scraps, so they cost nothing except the few minutes it takes the make them. Understanding Board Feet A lumber rule is nothing more than a stick with a few different scales inscribed on it. Understanding how those scales are derived is paramou...

The Shapeoko XL is desktop-size CNC that might fit a woodworking hobbyists’ needs A Desktop size CNC at an Entry Level Price The question I’m most often asked is “would you do a review of an affordable CNC?”  Up to now, there have been few choices for woodworkers on tight budgets with small home shops. Here’s the thing: as woodworkers, we do pretty heavy duty work and that doesn’t seem to match up with what’s available on a hobbyist budget. So, I looked at a class of CNCs designed for “makers” — hobbyists who build all kinds of things using the latest technology tools. Usually, “maker” CNCs are very light duty and not suited for machining solid wood. Then, I ran across a new entry from Carbide 3D called the Shapeoko XL. It’s unusual in two important ways: It’s light but very stiff and it fits on a desktop. It’s cutting area is 33” x 17”, which is useful. That makes it a...

Make accurate and safe crosscuts with ease – and set the stage for clever accessories by James Hamilton (aka Stumpy Nubs) Most power-tool woodworkers have at least one table saw sled. And while a sled can make your work safer and more accurate, a well-thought-out sled can also do much more. Sometimes I call this one the “MegaSled,” other times the “Super Sled,” because its large size makes it so versatile. In fact, it’s the perfect platform for any number of joinery jig attachments. Since designing the sled I’ve added jigs for cutting miters, splines, tenons, finger joints and dovetails, and I have plans for more jig attachments in the future. It’s all possible because of the sled’s fence design. In fact, you will see several unique and useful features as you build this table saw fixture. In this article, I’ll focus on the sled itself; in the next issue, I’ll cover the jigs. Let’s get started! Most power...

Murphy beds have been around for a long time. If you aren’t familiar with the term, murphy beds are the kind that fold up against the wall. They previously gained popularity in many tiny big city apartments and spare guest bedrooms. They are making a comeback these days as a space-saving, home organization trend. While murphy bed kits are widely available, there is catch—they are not easy to put together. They come with complicated instructions, and unsurprisingly aren’t custom-fit to your home. That is why a Zionsville couple came to Marvelous Woodworking to put together a murphy bed in their guest bedroom. They didn’t have the tools or the experience to construct it, and they also wanted to add built-in cabinetry around the bed frame. Our clients didn’t just want a murphy bed—they wanted a beautiful, functional room that looked like it belonged to the rest of the house. We started with the kit, constructing the frame and base boards. This build-a...

One of the perks of working at Popular Woodworking is the unlimited access to the decades of content in our library. The shear number of books, magazines and videos that I have access to is remarkable. Brendan Gaffney started at the magazine about three months after me and it’s not uncommon to see one of our monitors running a video from videos.popularwoodworking.com in the background while we work. There’s just so much to consume and learn from. In fact, Megan’s classic mantra for new hires like Brendan and myself is, “know our content”, and I have to admit, it is taking a while. With that said, I have become convinced that there are tons of readers out there that either didn’t purchase a DVD when it came out or missed the marketing around a video release. In either case, I  have taken it upon myself to get our content out to you, our readers, in a really special format. Every Wednesday I will host a new episode of Live at Lunch...

There comes a time in every project with doors and drawers called “pull-gatory,” when the struggle of sticking something onto the front of the beautiful piece you’ve just made grinds progress to a halt. I’ve been there a few times, and I’m there now with a little wall cabinet that I’m in the process of finishing. Time to think about drawer pulls. When I get to this point, I try any number of things (brass, square pegs, finger holes), but most often, I go back to the books. Having gone to The Krenov School (formerly College of the Redwoods), the books I most often turn to are those by the old man, James Krenov. Krenov made a lifetime of building cabinets, with all manner of doors and drawers; those books are a good source for pull perusing. So today, I went through the paces of carving a new pair of pulls from some beautiful lilac wood  (Syringa vulgaris) that I picked up from an arborist back in Maine. I hold onto small scraps o...