Woodworking

FINDING QUALITY WOOD

If you are looking for furniture-quality wood, your best bet is to avoid buying at hardware stores. Instead, look in your yellow pages under ...

WORKING WITH HAND TOOLS

If you do most of your woodworking with power tools, consider learning to use some hand tools to save a lot of set-up and clean-up time. Planes, ...

PLANING SUGGESTIONS

You will get much better results planing with the grain of a board than against it. To determine which way the grain is running, look at the edge of ...

WORKING WITH SCREWS

When putting screws in wood, always pre-drill a pilot hole first. If you don't, you run the risk of splitting your board. To determine the ...

SAFETY FIRST

When working with power tools, be sure that you have no loose clothing or long hair that can get caught in a machine. Always wear hearing and eye ...

SQUARING BOARDS

Before you can use a board to make furniture, you must "square" it, meaning that you get all six faces to be flat and at 90-degree angles to each ...

WORKING WITH POPLAR

The poplar that is widely available in hardware stores is actually tulip. It has attractive green-and-purple streaks when it is freshly cut, but ...