Woodworker's Journal February 2019

Want more in-depth details and demonstrations about the projects and skills in this issue? Head over to woodworkersjournal.com, where we bring the articles to life with our More on the Web video features. • Want a closer look at the Router Table Organizer? Chris Marshall walks through all his favorite features. • Intrigued by using your lathe as a drill? Ernie Conover demonstrates many of his lathe drilling techniques. • Interested in upping your miter saw skills? Watch a short video with tips for cutting crown molding. Those are just a few examples of the latest More on the Web videos you’ll find on our site right now. Just pull up the site on your phone, tablet or desktop computer and start watching now.…

Scroll Away Home IT’S TIME TO SAY GOODBYE TO 2018 … With this first issue of the year, we have made a few changes in the magazine, in response to research that we’ve done over the past year. For one thing, when we asked readers about scroll sawing, I confess to being surprised at how highly popular it appears to be. The outcome of that research? We have a new department called, um … Scroll Sawing (I’m clever like that). Check it out, and also go online to find a free scroll saw plan from our archives. Ready, set … SAW! And don’t worry if you’re still easing into the new year: our focus on bread-and-butter woodworking projects and information remains the same. It is our goal to give you high quality woodworking…

Scrap Wood Tool Chest Just wanted to share a tool chest that I recently built with my own design from some scrap pieces in my shop. Doug ChasseKittanning, PA First Try with Live Edge My German grandfather was a cabinetmaker. The genes went to work, and I made my first piece of furniture in eighth grade shop class. For a long time, I thought antique reproductions were the thing to make. Then, about the time “free edge” pieces started showing up, a builder friend gave me a walnut tree from a lot he was clearing. I harvested it, had it slabbed and ended up with some really pretty pieces of wood. The first use of the wood was to make some coffee tables (one for the builder also). I thought you might enjoy the…

Router Guide Bushing Organizer I’ve discovered that an inexpensive plastic cutlery tray is a tidy way to organize my collection of router guide bushings. Strips of 3/4" stock cut to size and counterbored with a 11/4" Forstner bit are perfect holders for all different sizes of guide bushings. The tray’s end compartment is also handy for keeping collets and wrenches. I store the locking rings for the guide bushings on end behind the bushing holders so they’re easy to grab. Serge DuclosDelson, Quebec Ball-and-Dowel Push Stick Sometimes typical push sticks don’t work for certain cuts, particularly when I’m feeding thin workpieces along the router table fence or making narrow rip cuts at my band saw. In these situations, I’ll often reach for a dowel-style push stick instead. Mine are simple to make and comfortable…

Q I have a large piece of live-edge cherry that I want to make into a coffee table. It has been cut and stored for more than 10 years. There are a few cracks opening up on the end, and I was going to use a bow tie/butterfly joint. I am going to ask an Amish friend to run it through his thickness sander because of the hills and valleys from where it was cut on a portable sawmill. It is about 21/2" thick, and it might need an eighth inch or more taken off to get put it through the thickness joint, or do the joint first? Does it matter? Duane BaileyBland, Virginia A Functionally, I don’t think it really matters whether you put the butterfly in before or after surfacing.…

The mystery tool from our October 2018 issue, belonging to Ray Consilvio of Croton-on-Hudson, New York, “looks like a bottle capper or corker,” said Randy Waldrip of Metamora, Illinois. “The bottle capper would be smaller, as the corker would be tall enough to fit a wine bottle under the plunger,” said Bruce Dumelin of Hinesburg, Vermont. Uses? Randall Wood of Cockeysville, Maryland, says, “homemade ketchup.” Victor Frausini of Waterford, Connecticut, guesses, “probably used by moonshiners.” Larry White of Delta, Colorado, remembers that, “We’d make homemade root beer.” And Jim Davis of Charlottesville, Virginia, said, “looks like what my dad used to put the caps on his good ol’ homebrew.” Back to the tool, which is most likely “a vintage French style wine bottle corker,” as identified by Ben Hughes of Red Bluff,…