Every once in a while I like to get back into the shop and point out some of the basics of one of the tools there. Just about everybody figures they know how to use the simple drill press, but in fact there are a lot of basics that I see missed quite often.First, realise you can shift the table ...
Often we need to mix things around the house and don't always have the best tools for the job. In this TV segment I showed two inexpensive tools that really help in this category.The Odd Job, available at many renovation centres, is a small barrel that was originally made for mixing small batche...
In our studio workshop someone had built a large assembly table, that was missing a lot of little things to make it a good workbench. So I set about making some essential modifications, that could help in your own workshop.First, the sides were vertical 2x6's. This made it almost impossible to ...
Need a third hand to hold the other end of something up in the air, or level with a beam, while you are struggling to get the opposite end hammered in at the correct position.You could just drop a couple of nails into the top of the floating piece and bend them over so that they hang from the oth...
If you have followed me for a few years you know that I hate tape measurers, just because I hate making mistakes. That is why I love jigs.When you want to drill all those evenly spaced holes in the cabinet sides, and all four support pins have to line up with each other or else the shelf will wo...
If you look carefully at the photo above you will see that I am holding a rather strange door latch. This thing is called Door Tite and it solves so many problems with exterior doors such as where you have to pull hard part of the year to be able to close the deadbolt with your key. It has a li...
When you want to put a lighting sconce on a wall, there is always the question of how to get the electrical wires to that location. Often it is possible to carry wires up from an electrical outlet, or down from the attic -- now how to hide them.If you are working on the surface, as you are oblig...
There are times, especially when working with moulding, that you need to divide an angle in half. I learned how to do this with a compass in high school and since then I have fallen in love with the Angle Finder, an impressive little device that uses more geometry than my compass to measure exac...
The mortise & tenon was the basic woodworking joint used before the advent of modern fasteners -- and since. It has been used in everything from barn building to fine furniture. If you have ever tried to make this matched pair by hand you might have been frustrated by simply not having the ...
Drilling into hard materials requires the right drill bits, but also the right technique.On hard wood, the bit tends to drift away from the proper spot. Either centre punch a starting hole, or simply turn the drill on backwards first. Running backwards the bit will not wander. It doesn't dill ...
