Table of contents for Issue 142 in ShopNotes Magazine

The park at the end of my street I grew up on held a car show every summer. My dad and I walked the rows of cars and he’d tell all about the different models and features. One of my favorite parts is reading about or hearing the stories of how some rundown jalopy was turned into a show-stopping hot rod. The pride and accomplishment of the owner was plain to see. A lot of woodworkers feel the same way about rescuing and restoring an old tool. Just ask Logan sometime about his jointer … or 36" band saw … or one of his lathes. Personally, I don’t feel like I truly own a tool unless I’ve modified, upgraded, or restored it in some way. The process helps me understand…

For some woodworkers, a CNC can add a lot to a shop. Modern technology has expanded what many woodworkers can do, from milling a large number of small parts with exact precision to creating beautiful (and replicable) relief carvings on drawer fronts, door panels, and trim. That and more can be done easily on a CNC with just a bit of know-how. Of course, there are limitations with every tool, and when it comes to a CNC, cost and shop space are two big ones. An easy answer is to get a tabletop machine like the one above. While they may be more limited in what tasks they can take on, they’re certainly more moderate both financially and size-wise. Not only that, but you may be surprised at what can…

The main part of the project is a plywood case. It houses the trays and stands atop the cutting board. It’s made from five pieces of ¾" plywood. For most shop projects, I prefer Baltic birch plywood due to its flat, stable nature. It’s what we used here. I get it; Baltic birch can be tough to find and expensive. However the small size of the pieces needed for this project means that you can use any sheet material. In fact, you may be able to scrounge up enough parts from your cutoff bins. It still pays to find the flattest pieces possible. SIDES COME FIRST. We’ll kick things off with making the sides, as shown in Figure 1. These have a series of dadoes cut on the inside faces. The…

The base of the tool cabinet provides storage for the larger tools in your arsenal. As you see in the Figure 1 above there’s a large opening where an adjustable shelf will reside behind a set of doors you’ll make in a little while. The cavity above that space will hold the tool cabinet’s largest drawer. The building process starts at the table saw. The bones of the base cabinet are all plywood parts. After you’ve wrestled the big sheets into the more manageable sizes of the sides and dividers, it’s time to change out the blade for a dado set. DADOES. The sides of the base have three dadoes. The lowest dado (detail ‘a’) holds the divider that is the bottom of base. The upper two that you see…

To complete this fine project it’s déjà vu all over again. You’ve got doors, drawers, and a top to contend with. The top this time is plywood wrapped with two moldings to give the case a counterpoint to the arc in the bottom of the base. The top is the last bit of work glued to the case: I chose to start there. THE TOP. After spending a few moments at the table saw you’ll have the plywood blank needed for the top. The top is wrapped with a piece of molding you can make with a½" roundover bit (Figure 8a). It’s easily made on a length of hardwood at the router table, then mitered and glued to the plywood blank. Underneath the top we’ve added a simple cove molding…

The inner workings of this vise remind me of a skeleton watch — one where the movement is visible through the back. As fascinating as it is to observe, it works just as well. Looking at Figure 3 above, you can see that there are a few things to contend with. Let’s start with the gears. PLYWOOD GEARS. The five gears can be broken into two groups — drive and idler gears. The drive gears are attached to the hubs that are connected to the Acme threads (more on those in a bit). The idler gears pivot on the fixed axles you glued in the front jaw. The teeth configuration on all of the gears are the same — the center hole is the only difference. The center hole of the…

Think about a time you gave (or got) directions to get across town — back in the days before a maps app. The kind of instruction you give depends on the mode of travel: bike, bus, car, or walking. You may want to point out landmarks to see and hazards to avoid. Each decision influences the following options. Learning about, and teaching, woodworking is the same. There are a lot of paths to consider in terms of tools, techniques, materials, and more. The possibilities can feel exciting and bewildering all at once. This is the reason “setting up shop” articles and videos are so interesting, even for those with a well-equipped workshop. Curious folk want to see how other woodworkers practice the craft. Others want to nod in agreement with…

This CNC upgrade begins at the very bottom. As you can see in Figure 1 above, I started off by putting together the frame of the base. While this portion of the project is simple, there’s no need to rush here — a well-made foundation is key to any build. BASE BOTTOM. The bottom piece of the base comes first, and there’s a bit of work to be done. I began by laying out the locations of the screws that would hold the sides and end to the base. Figures 1, 1a, and 1b provide the measurements you need to make the layout and drill the countersunk pilot holes. You’ll notice a set of four through holes also need to be drilled into the bottom. These provide clearance to drive…

I promised this would be an easy project and I wasn’t kidding — you should be able to build this system in a day. STILES & RAILS. A stile normally refers to the vertical piece of a frame and panel door, and if you take a look at the side of the shelves, that’s almost what we’ve made. It’s a snap to rip the boards to the correct width on the table saw, then cut them to length on the miter saw. The chamfer on the top and bottom of the front stile isn’t necessary, but it does look nice. You can cut it on a table saw with a sled or with your miter saw. The rails are next. Start with an overlong board — about 9’ this time,…

Sheets of sandpaper are rectangles of potential. Making full use of that potential requires cutting the sheet into an appropriate size. Scissors don’t work (for long). Too often I just fold and tear the sheet. Rarely does it cut cleanly, or even along the line I folded. The next part of the project is a convenient solution — a cutting board. It uses a hack saw blade as a durable cutter. All you need to do is slide the sandpaper sheet underneath and line up where you want the cut. Press down on the blade and tear away the sheet, ta-da! CUTTING BOARD CONSTRUCTION. In the kitchen, you don’t want a cutting board sliding around during use. The same holds true here. One way to keep it steady is solid construction.…

Now it’s time to sub-divide and tidy up the big space that’s the base cabinet. As you see in the figures on these two pages, this is all about adding a pair of doors, a big drawer, and a thicker than normal top that’s an appropriate crown for the base. Let’s kick off by making the shelf that lives inside the base. The front is edged with the same edging material that you used on the base front. That was easy, now let’s move on to the doors. FRAME & PANEL DOORS. If you take a gander at all the visual info above in Figure 3d, you’ll see the joinery details for the two doors. The joinery of doors, (like the back panels on the base) make for a strong,…

If your workbench is the most-used tool in the shop, the bench vise may be the second most used. Having a vise that you can adjust quickly and offers ample holding power is worth its weight in gold. And, if you made the vise in your shop? Well, that is where we award extra credit. The vise you see above is of a twin-screw design. Turning one handle causes both to rotate, moving the vise jaw in or out equally on both sides. That’s due to the series of gears visible through the “skeleton” (clear) front. The wood gears connect the handles and give a great, tactile feel as you adjust the jaw. Now, don’t let the look of this vise scare you. While it may look like a Swiss-made…

As beautiful and fun to work with as solid wood is, it’s far from the only material a woodworker has at their disposal. Besides hardwood and softwood, there’s a multitude of sheet goods — materials made from wood in different ways — that have a variety of uses in the shop. Chances are you’re familiar with a few of these options, if not all, but occasionally it can be helpful to dive into the specifics of something familiar. Sheet goods come in a wide range of types, but the ones we commonly use in woodworking can be split into two catagories: plywood and engineered wood (such as MDF and hardboard). As the name implies, plywood is constructed from thin layers (called plies or veneers) of wood. In contrast, engineered woods…

A simple drawer adds a lot to a project like this. It allows you to keep wrenches, bits, hold-downs, and other tools for your CNC close at hand and easy to find. This is a fairly by-the-book drawer, with full-extension slides to take advantage of its length and a no-nonsense plastic pull. DRAWER JOINERY. After cutting the pieces to size, the joinery is the next thing to look at on this drawer. There are three elements to the joinery here: dadoes in the side pieces, rabbets in the front and back, and a groove at the bottom of each. First, came the dadoes. You can see these in Figures 3a and 3b above. Then I cut the rabbets in the front and back to create the matching tongues. I prefer…

You can tell how important tools are to a woodworker by how well they’re organized. It’s somewhat of an open secret that we workers of wood dislike the sanding process. As a result, sanding gear often lies jumbled in a dusty bin. I wager that mindset carries into the actual sanding as well. My own experience proves that when I put care into a set of tools, my use of them improves. Design editor Dillon Baker and I talked about this idea and he came up with this compact tote. Shallow trays store and organize sheets of sandpaper. Underneath you’ll find a stowaway cutting platform for making clean, straight cuts — no more tearing a sheet along the edge of your table saw. Handles let you move it around as…

While the base cabinet is cooling off in the corner, you can turn your attention to what’s going to live on top — the upper case that you see flowing across these pages. It starts out fairly similar to its older, larger sibling with the plywood construction you see above. But to provide storage for the variety of smaller tools you’ve gathered over time, the infrastructure is quite different. You see at the bottom center of the case there’s an opening for a pair of drawers that are slightly smaller than the one in the base. This is a perfect space for your mid-sized gadgets. Just above these two are five trays that will let you dial in your access to your fine hand-tool cache. Above the trays you’ll have…

The vise starts with a set of jaws. If you’re mounting the vise to a newly constructed bench, the rear jaw can be skipped in favor of recessing the nuts into the apron of your bench. For this project however, we’ll build the vise as an auxiliary vise — one that you can bolt on to an existing bench. To simplify the construction, the rear jaw is built from multiple layers. For the faces of the vise, any hardwood would work. For ours, we used beech as it’s a stable wood and machines nicely. As you can see in Figures 1 and 1a, there are two layers to the vise jaw. After the vise is mounted, a support block is added under the top of the bench to add extra…

Driving through the countryside or stopping at flea markets, you’re bound to come across large white sharpening wheels. You know, the big ones that you imagine a cartoon character sitting at, sharpening an axe. In reality, there’s a reason that these water-trough stones are so common — they simply work. That’s as true today as it was a hundred years ago. A water sharpening system, like the Tormek shown here, is still a great way to get a razor sharp edge on a variety of tools. In this article, I’ll give you the basics of a water sharpening system, and some of the jigs and attachments that I find useful. The system I’m using here is one made by Tormek, a Swedish company that’s known for making some of the…