Shop Tips - Page 145 of 164

I have been involved in making professional sound equipment and speaker enclosures for a number of years. The usual construction routine requires me to cut holes up to 18 in.…

Lacking a jointer, I devised this improvised radial-arm-saw setup to joint the thick oak boards I used in two butcher-block tabletops. First rip a thin board the exact thickness of…

Here's a way to joint those monster wide planks that are impossible to true on a jointer, no matter how strong you are. Clamp your raggedy-edged board over a long,…

Here's how I use my lathe and a sanding disc to produce a perfectly round tabletop. First locate the center of the tabletop blank and cut it roughly to shape.…

Before I built this roller hold-in, I found myself using one hand to hold the work against the bandsaw fence and the other to steer and feed the stock. I…

When you're jointing wavy-grained, contrary woods like curly maple, a skewed cutting angle will often produce smoother results with less tear-out than a straight-on cutting angle. To take advantage of…

This flexible wooden blanket puts to bed the problem of form squeeze-marks on curved laminated panels. Used in pairs (one above, one below) the blankets evenly distribute the pressure between…

The belt sander can be a valuable tool in the production-shop world of tight schedules and competitive prices. But most belt sanders are designed with a flaw that renders them…

I have found that the following procedure for preparing small pieces of veneer works well. Bandsaw a 1/8-in. thick slice from the desired veneer stock which has already been planed.…

The sketch shows an old patternmaker's trick to reduce the diameter of a dowel. Simply chuck a router bit in a drill press and clamp down a couple of scrap…