#257–Nov/Dec 2016

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Build a Standing Desk

Shaker-inspired design is comfortable and practical.

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Attaching Solid-Wood Tabletops

Five ways to keep your top tight and flat through the seasons.
5 Takes on the Tea Box

We asked a few of our best makers to design and build a box to hold tea. Check out what they made.
Build a Standing Desk

Shaker-inspired design is comfortable and practical.
Essential Clamp Kit

What clamps to have and why you should have them
Build a Tablesaw Sled for Miters

This precision jig eliminates gaps and headaches.
How Pros Look at Lumber

There’s more to selecting boards than counting board feet
Hand-Built Home for Hand Tools

Cut nails and a clever lid clinch a traditional Japanese toolbox.
Strategies for Squeeze-out

Expert tips and tricks for cleaning up glue
Learn to Love the Skew Chisel

When you get the hang of it, your skew will leave a surface so nice and slick that 600-grit sandpaper would mess it up.
Cutting the bridle joint

Synopsis: A strong joint that’s widely used in door and face frames, the bridle joint is simple in its anatomy and execution. A tenon on the rail fits an open-ended…
Fabricating frost

Synopsis: David Lamb produces marquetry patterned after a winter frost. See how he chooses the wood, cuts it into billets, and then slices it into veneer. Then he uses a…
Black Ice

Built to honor the 100th anniversary of Maine’s Acadia National Park, David Lamb’s cabinet combines frost-patterned marquetry on the exterior with carved scenes of the park on the interior door.

Plane shopsawn veneers perfectly smooth

Bandsawing your own veneers allows you to spread a beautiful board over an entire piece of furniture. You joint one face of the board before each bandsaw cut, but the…
Plywood squares are a third hand for cabinetmakers

Clamping squares aren’t a new idea, but this is my favorite design for them. When I’m assembling a cabinet, I use these simple plywood braces and spring clamps to ensure…
Spring clamp helps with bandsaw blade changes

I really like my 75-year-old bandsaw, but changing the blade is another matter. I used to hang it on the top wheel only to have it fall off every time…
Epoxy makes tearout disappear

When applying finish to a tabletop recently, I discovered a couple of areas of severe tearout I had missed. To remove it with a card scraper or sandpaper would have…
Scribe your tablesaw’s throat plate for quicker crosscuts

When crosscutting with the miter gauge, you have to turn off the saw and let the blade come to a full stop in order to accurately align it with a…
Invisible repair for splintered corner

When a splintered edge grows to a dagger, well beyond what can be easily rounded over, it can be hard to glue back down, mainly because it’s hard to get…

Laguna 14BX - 14-in bandsaw

A bandsaw that does everything right
Grex GC1850 cordless 18-gauge nailer

Nailer lets you lose the compressor
Bow - FeatherPro

I’ve used a lot of featherboards, both shopmade and manufactured, and Bow’s FeatherPro stands out from them because of its high-density foam fingers. The foam is dense but with enough…

Lumber run!

Go on a lumber run with Matt Kenney and he'll show you how he reads a stack of lumber to help him find the perfect board
Featherboard Fundamentals

Why you should use a featherboard, what to look for when buying one, and how to make one.
Turning a bead with the skew chisel

Curtis Buchanan shows you how he uses the skew chisel to turn a bead on the legs used in a variety of Windsor chairs.
Clamp Straight and True

It doesn't take expensive clamps and lots of cauls to make sure you have flat panels. Ben Strano show you how easy it is to control your glue-ups with basic…