Dan Shapiro's Blog

Sorry for the long period without any posts! My non-woodworking real life has been too busy to spend much time in the shop, and I just returned from a long vacation in Vietnam.

Bosch has released a new battery system for their line of cordless tools. These new batteries have a lifetime that is 50% longer than traditional batteries and includes chargers that charge in just 30 minutes. The secret to the two packs is a combination of new heat rods inside the batteries and a microchip to…

It seems that sticking a router under a hole in a table and using it from the top should be a simple bit of engineering, but until recently it eluded most router manufactures. Your two options were to spend a few hundred dollars on a router lift or to bolt your fixed base under the…

Back in ‘the day’, if you wanted a basic overview of a subject like woodworking, you might find yourself looking for a book titled something like this. “Introduction to Woodworking” “Get Started in Woodworking” “Woodworking for Beginners” That was before the ingenious discovery by the book industry that people prefered to buy introductory reading material…

The Good: The best way to join two pieces of wood together, period. The Bad: The price. The Bottom Line: One of those cases where the best really is that good. NSY rating: FIVE THUMBS UP (5/5)

This has absolutely nothing to do with woodworking. I’m terribly sorry. I try to stay on topic, really I do. But sometimes something comes along that’s just so odd, I have to share it with everyone, even though there isn’t even the faintest connection between woodworking and the subject at hand.

What can I say… it’s plans to make baby wipes with your table saw. How cool is that.

I’m a big fan of Woodweb’s forums. Here you can find anything from reclaimed antique pine timbers, 10,000 boardfeet at a time, to a box of snakewood selling for an unbelievable $4/lb (that’s $18/bf).

Today I was working with a walnut burl piece, about 11″x15″x0.355″, give or take 0.0015″. Unfortunately, it had a big old hole in it.

I’ve been making dovetails for the past week, which means I’ve screwed up a lot of dovetails. In no particular order, here are some of the lessons I’ve learned.