Tabla de contenidos para April 2023 en Woodworker's Journal

Many of us use sheet stock as a part of our regular woodworking routine — if not in the actual projects we build (although that is a common thing), then when we make jigs or fixtures, worksurfaces, storage cabinets and much more. The list of their uses goes on and on. As a woodworker who does a fair amount of veneering, I use MDF panels regularly. If there is a heavier-per-cubic-foot product on the market, I’d like to know what it is. As a younger man, lifting and moving a ¾" full sheet of MDF around, while not easy, was also not a task I would give a second thought to. These days, it might require a second or even third thought. Enter Rockler’s Material Mate. It combines a handy…

Bent Wood Bassinet Using Hand Tools I designed and built this bassinet over several months while my wife was pregnant with our first child. I don’t own a lathe or any power tools, aside from a palm sander, so I had to get creative with the design. The bent maple strips are meant to replace the decorative turned dowels that these designs usually feature. They were steamed using some PVC pipe for a steam chamber, and I broke quite a few of the strips figuring this out. All the pieces are joined with hand-cut mortise-and-tenon joinery; as you can imagine, this turned out to be quite a lot of chiseling! The finish is a 1 lb cut blonde shellac that I applied over all surfaces. Sean Byrne Portsmouth, Ohio What’s…

To watch a video of the building of VIDEO this stool or to download a PDF plan for it, please visit woodworkersjournal.com and click on “More on the Web” under the Magazine tab. Woodworking can seem a bit over-whelming if you have no knowledge of the craft and are simply looking at a final project, like this step stool. But similar to other crafts or hobbies such as sewing or cooking, there are varying levels of competence and complication required. Still, simple projects can be easy to build and satisfying. This project is not only designed to be a sturdy and useful step stool, it’s also an entry point for getting into woodworking. Whether it is used by a parent or grandparent to introduce children into the craft, or as…

The most frequently used shop tool is probably the table saw, but for sheer versatility the router table makes a good case for taking top prize. Routers handle a huge range of shop chores already, but mounting one under a table kicks their usefulness up several notches. Once you’ve become comfortable with the basics of router use, you’ll want to take your skills — and your router’s versatility — to the next level by using it in a table. Here are three router applications that allow you to do exactly that. Template Routing A router table equipped with a fence makes just about any type of shaping cut you’d want, as long as it’s a straight-line cut. But by using a template combined with a bearing-guided bit, you can churn…

For the same reason the enormous lids of grand pianos are supported by a continuous hinge along their lengths, smaller piano hinges for woodworking can help bear the weight of a heavy cabinet door or chest lid with ease and beauty. That’s because instead of just a few screws keeping things connected, these hinges are perforated along their entire lengths with screw holes. It dramatically increases their holding power, even if the hinge leaves are narrow and the screws are short. Piano hinges are easy to find from sources such as Rockler. They’re designated by the overall width of the leaves when the hinge is opened flat. So, a 11/16" piano hinge will have leaves measuring a tad wider than ½" — perfect for attaching to the edges of ¾"…

In this survey, we asked woodworkers about the style of woodworking they prefer and how they choose furniture styles to build. 1. When planning a project, at what point in your decision-making process do you determine the style of the project? a. At the very beginning, even before the design is finalized 27%b. Early on, but only after the functionality of the project is determined 19%c. It primarily depends on the recipient of the project and/or where the project will be used (e.g., kitchen, dining room, etc.) 24%d. I don’t really care about a style; I just build what I like 17%e. I primarily build projects from established plans, so the style is already fixed 12%f. Other 0.7% 2. What is your preferred style of furniture? a. Arts & Crafts…

“From a woodturning standpoint, making wooden baseball bats is actually a pretty basic technique,” says Dan Little. “It goes from billet to bat on the lathe.” His 12- and 14-year-old sons both play youth baseball, and Little keeps busy during practices by whittling in the stands. A couple of years ago, he set himself a challenge of making a “fungo bat” — a long, slender bat that coaches or parents use during practice. “It’s something I’d use with my kids, so I just thought, ‘this is something I want to try,’” Little says. “As soon as I made that bat, the kids were like, ‘well, I want a bat,’ so they each got a bat,” Little says. Then he showed one to a coworker whose son also plays baseball, and…

The router plane is as old as joinery itself. Often called a “witch’s tooth” because of the single cutter projecting down from above, it was easily made from wood by a jointer. Starting in 1884, Stanley offered several very successful metal router planes that all modern router planes are based on or directly copied from. The router plane is the progenitor of the electric router but is limited to leveling surfaces and plowing grooves or dadoes, while the electric router can also employ profiled bits to mold decorative edges. Still, the router plane has some pleasing qualities. No electricity is needed, it is quiet, it raises no dust in the air and a job is often finished while you would still be looking for the collet wrenches and bit for…

Chop, chop, chippity chop, cut off the bottom, cut off the top, what you got left throw into the pot! Chop, chop, chippity chop! My four kids like to say this fun little rhyme when they are chopping vegetables. And that happens a lot, because my family loves to cook. We spend a lot of time together in the kitchen. So when we needed a new cutting board to replace an old one recently, I wanted to make something different from the usual square or rectangular cutting boards you see in stores. I am a woodworker after all, and surely I could try out a few fun ideas I had in mind. However, in our home, making something practical is also very important. I try to live by the motto,…

How Stickley Did It Is it better to fume white oak veneer before or after applying it to a substrate? Floyd Olden Via the Internet Rob Johnstone Responds: The big advantage to fuming veneer before installing it is that you can see the result of the fuming — whether or not the veneer pieces reacted in the same way to the ammonia fumes and darkened similarly. The Stickley factory would machine furniture parts, fume them and then select pieces whose hues matched up well. This is the same idea here. But you could certainly glue the veneer to a substrate before fuming it, too. It’s your choice.…

Getting a Grip There’s a twist to this opener’s gist. More than 150 answers to the purpose of Wes Demmon’s December mystery tool have poured in, with singular consensus. “It’s an adjustable jar opener,” says J. Dana Hubbard of Billerica, Massachusetts. “Works just like a VISE-GRIP,” adds Art Fox. Some tracked down its patent number which, as it turns out, was reported incorrectly as 2000062. “The actual number is 2000962,” clarifies Stanton Adkins. It was filed in 1932 by Franz K. Krag as a “Can or Jar Opener.” “Mr Krag’s invention provided a means to clamp onto opposite sides of the lid, no matter the size, to rotate the lid off the jar,” reports Dean A. Shaw of Wildwood, Missouri. To use it, “place the jar between the slightly rounded…

While Rockler Woodworking and Hardware has always been a place where new woodworking products came to prosper, that tradition became even more significant when Rockler instituted their Product Development Division. Nordy Rockler, the company’s founder, was a product inventor, and his innovations formed a core element of Rockler’s culture. An important acceleration of that innovation came into being when Rockler developed two seminal products: the Bench Cookie and the Clamp-It Assembly Square. “The success of those two products frankly took us by surprise,” says Dan Wenning, senior director of Product Development for Rockler Woodworking and Hardware. “And it taught us something important: Products that solve woodworking problems don’t need to be big and flashy to be useful. We took that to heart.” Since those early days, Rockler has focused on…

Precision measuring and marking tools, such as your trusty squares and various gauges, deserve a protected storage place when not in use. So do your fine-toothed handsaws and French curves or other layout tools to keep their edges and teeth in tiptop shape. That’s why I thought a special wall-mounted, double-door cabinet would be just the right home base for my “fine” tool collection. It has four shallow drawers, three of which are lined with foam organizers for those tools that don’t hang easily. Each door pocket holds larger but lightweight items with rare-earth magnets, so they’re easy to see and simple to access. And while my cabinet has two racks of chisels in the large upper compartment, you could outfit this area however you like. For instance, a till…

Dovetails, rabbets and box joints aren’t the only options for connecting drawer faces or fronts to sides. A drawer lock bit, such as Rockler’s item #22637 shown above, can rout sturdy drawer joinery too, forming a distinctive yin-and-yang shaped connection that will add a touch of subtle distinction to your next drawer project. Drawer lock bits have been around for a long time, but they’re less commonly used than other router bit options. However, they deserve your consideration due to a couple of helpful advantages. For one, similar to a half-blind dovetail or rabbet joint, the bit’s profile enables the face of a drawer to overlap the ends of the drawer sides, hiding their end grain. That way, inset-style drawers — such as those featured in the “Precision Tool Cabinet”…