A very good friend and mentor once told me it’s a mistake to play cribbage with your significant other – unless you really relish conflict in your relationship. Hey, I just make cribbage boards. Well, I do play a little cribbage. Cribbage Board Template Material Choices Any shop accumulates scrap materials. My wife accuses me
I love the name…It describes this clamp pad perfectly! I use shop-made 1/4″ thick mdf clamp pads to protect my work when I’m clamping. My clamp pads are easy to position on clamps across short distances, but impossible to set across distances that are greater than my reach. My solution was to embed a small
This is the second part of a three-part story, each showing a different way of applying veneer to a substrate (Click here to read part one). This story focuses on using clamps, cauls and wood glue to do the work. The same essentials are true using this technique for veneering. Veneer always needs to be
This trick is also great for clamping together all kinds of odd shaped hard-to-clamp joints, and useful a when you need a longer clamp than you have. The Problem. Every so often we are all faced with a “how the heck do I clamp this” situation. I was recently building a very large boat shaped
In the US alone we consume over 400 million cups of coffee every day. Over half of the US population drinks coffee regularly. So, chances are you know someone that drinks coffee; it might even be you. A re-usable travel wooden mug makes a nice personal gift for the coffee drinkers in your life. The
I made a picnic basket recently, and while doing so, I exposed a serious weakness in my arsenal of spring clamps. My “regular old” spring clamps that had served me well for all these years weren’t up to the task of basket making. They applied too much pressure, and dented the soft wood I used
I think it’s brilliant! If a clamp works well securing material on a dovetail jig, why not use it at the bench? That’s what Leigh did by converting the material clamps from their dovetail and FMT jigs into bench hold down clamps. Leigh’s Hold-Down Clamps, $49.95, can be mounted to any surface because they’re available
Dress for Success – Preventing Clamp Scars. I’m often asked to repair furniture for friends and family. I guess they figure if I can build a chair, I ought to be able to repair one as well. Handscrews are my clamp of choice when it comes to fixing a split spindle or leg. Because I’m
Did you use too long a screw, and now it’s poking through the tabletop? Here’s a ‘swell’ repair solution.Sending a screw up through a tabletop while attaching it to the apron is a disaster, there’s no question about it. I managed to do this four times when I grabbed the wrong length screws from a
I came up with this nifty tool out of necessity while doing a custom cabinet installation. I had to fabricate some pieces on the job and noticed that there were milling chatter marks and tool burns on some boards that I had to finish and get installed that day. I didn’t have a cabinet scraper
