ShopNotes Magazine

When are you going to bring back ShopNotes?” That’s been the top question I’ve heard for the last six years. The short answer is right now. While woodworkers and woodworking often take many forms and paths, the one thing we all have in common is a workshop. That place we go to be creative, find some escape, or to enjoy time learning new skills. I for one love seeing how other woodworkers have set up, arranged, and outfitted their shop spaces. You can learn a lot about the person who works there just by looking around. I also pick up new ideas for my own shop. That’s what we’re doing with ShopNotes. The projects and articles are designed, photographed, illustrated, and written by woodworkers. By featuring the articles we do, you…

A workbench is the home base of any shop. A bench serves as a platform for all manner of work, and as such it needs to be both sturdy and reliable. While any good bench can take a beating, even the toughest benchtops will eventually begin to come untrue. A wavy or warped top can cause all manor of issues and annoyances, but, luckily, flattening a benchtop is surprisingly simple (if a little time consuming). BENCHTOP DIAGNOSTIC. The first step in flattening a workbench top is to diagnose exactly what’s going on with the bench. The best way to get a sense of a bench’s geography is with a pair of winding sticks, as shown below. Winding sticks are a centuries-old tool of utter simplicity. Basically, they’re a simple pair of long,…

Practice woodworking for any length of time and you’ll develop routines and preferences for a wide variety of tasks. I’ll give you an example from my own shop. Whenever a project plan calls for a mortise and tenon joint, I gravitate toward a variation called a loose tenon. If you’re unfamiliar with this form, it consists of mortises formed in the mating parts. Then a separate piece of wood is glued into the mortises, bridging the parts together. It’s similar to a spline or a biscuit joint. This method offers some advantages that align with the tools I have and the way I prefer to build. JOINERY ADVANTAGES. What I like about this technique is that the joint making process is condensed into a single step: making mortises. (I see that…

My palm router probably has just as many joinery miles on it as it does for profiling and shaping. Fitted with a straight bit, I can make dadoes, rabbets, grooves — and mortises. The sticking point is coming up with an accurate way to control the router. The solution is to make a jig. I’ve made mortising jigs (or templates) that have ranged from quick one-offs to complex adjustable gadgets. They have all worked. What I dislike is the setup. The jig needs to be clamped in the correct location on the workpiece (which is also clamped in place) prior to every cut. All that clamping and releasing adds up. Enter Chris Fitch. The jig you see here tackles the issue by working more like a biscuit joiner, or Festool Domino joiner. The…

The parade of planes available for you to use in preparing wood come in all shapes and sizes — and it’s not about looks, they each shine at performing specific duties. For example the smoothing plane you see above is designed to do just that — smooth. It’s the plane that’s last in line for stock preparation. You might have to do some touch-up with a scraper, or some light sanding, but I’ve seen many times where the board is good to go after being kissed by a well-tuned smoothing plane. GOLDILOCKS. This wood plane lands between two classic plane designs. The simpler version holds the blade and chipbreaker in place with a cross pin and wedge. You adjust the blade by tapping on the body with a hammer. The fancier…

A workbench often is the most used tool in a shop. Not only is it a station for anything from gluing to sanding to hand tool work, but it’s also a platform for planning — for scribing cut lines, laying out joinery, and poring over plans. It’s the center that joins all work across the shop, and the base of operations for any woodworker. As such, it needs to be a strong, stable piece, but also one that you’ll enjoy standing before and looking over. When our designer, Dillon Baker, was conceiving the new nexus for his own workspace in the shop at Woodsmith, the bench you see here was the result. The first thing that catches the eye on this bench is the top, laminated from strips of Baltic birch…