Woodworking How-To

Find the tips, tricks, and techniques for your woodworking shop from wood preparation to finished cabinetry with doors and drawers. You’ll also learn about joinery, measuring, and wood finishes.

Prepping Stock with Hand Tools

Even in a shop full of power tools, preparing stock using hand tools proves a valuable skill.

Illustration of top of workbench with a small board, two T-tracks and some bench dogs.

Put a stop to movement with T-track

While using a hand plane to smooth a wide panel, I needed a long bench stop to keep the workpiece from moving.

Cover-up clamp rack for added storage space

I needed a space-efficient storage solution for all my clamps. I found many plans for roll-around carts but couldn’t justify the loss of usable floor space.

Creating a four-corner grain match

I’ve seen mitered boxes where the grain figure wraps around all four corners of the box, but I’ve never understood how this is done.

Illustration of jig for bandsaw. Collects cut offs objects while sawing.

Keep small cutoffs from escaping at the bandsaw

I often cut multiple small parts at the bandsaw and inevitably, some of them end up on the floor. To capture those runaways, I made the tray shown here that bolts onto my bandsaw table.