Dan Shapiro's Blog

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.

There’s two things to understand about the Incra system. One is that it is a router fence, not a jig. Two is the near-perfect accuracy of the positioning system.

This guy pulled together literally dozens of different websites from woodworkers who’ve built their own poker tables of all different designs and sizes. Most have instructions; all have pictures.

This is one of the easiest upgrades you can make to any of your belt driven machinery and gets a lot of bang for the buck. The belts are available in a range of standard profiles to fit any machinery you’re likely to run across.