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Open book on stacked snowy books with lights
Alexander Thomson November 2, 2024

Christmas Gift Ideas

This Christmas, gift craftsmanship and creativity with a carefully chosen woodworking book With the festive…

Three wooden lamp bases in different finishes.
Alexander Thomson November 8, 2024

Making a Table Lamp

Andy Coates makes a table lamp from a reclaimed oak post. Every once in a…

Furniture & Cabinetmaking

Man varnishing chair in a workshop.

Windsor Chair Repair

Don’t do a ‘bodged’ chair repair – Ian Whittington shows you the correct way. Chairs are misused and abused by all of us and, as a result, are prone to failure. Unfortunately, unless the chair is one of a special antique set, the cost of repairing a single chair often far out-weighs its value. As a result, most woodworkers have been accosted by friends and family, bearing gifts and broken chairs for repair. Unless you are a skilled restorer, and the chair be an antique of value, I would strongly suggest you decline. A chair structural restoration (rather than simple repair) is fraught with hidden dangers – hence the high prices quoted. In this case, the chair is one of the many thousands of general purpose elm (Ulmus procera) and beech (Fagus sylvatica) hoop-backed utility chairs that were mass-produced in places like High Wycombe. The woodland bodgers made the turned

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Wooden rocking chair with red cushions.

Arts & Craft Rocking Chair

Kevin Ley makes a Morris-style rocking chair. This chair was to be part of a seating set comprising a fireside chair, a sofa and this rocker. The aim was to produce a flexible seating arrangement without resorting to a standard three-piece suite. Some aspects of the project are common to all three pieces and are repeated for convenience. Designed to rock The fundamental change to this version of the chair was to add rockers. Even though the fireside chair had been scaled down from the original American measurements, there was also still scope to reduce the seat size even further. The through-tenons in the arms and legs of the fireside version increased the making time considerably, so we decided to use blind tenons on this version. This allowed the side rails to be brought up, level with the seat rails and the side slats shortened to fit. The side slats

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Woodcarving

Big tree in green farmland under clear blue sky.

Tree for Life – Ash

We look at a tree that is more universally useful than any other tree on the planet – the versatile ash tree. The ash tree is unique like all other species, but it’s uniqueness almost knows no bounds in terms of usability. It can be sawn and riven. It can form massive structures and be steam-bent; it can be safely used for cooking utensils and has a natural beauty both as a standing tree and as a cabinetmaking timber.  European or common ash The common ash – Latin (Fraxinus excelsior) – ‘excelsior’ translates as high, elevated, lofty. This could be said about many mature trees and, although found everywhere, as is the utility of its timber, it seems unkind to call it common but more certainly ‘excelsior’ on account of its importance to the environment and mankind.  It is a large deciduous tree, typically growing up to 18 metres in

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Large tree in a sunny park.

Wild Versus Plantation Timber

As you contemplate your beautiful piece of timber and plan precisely how to cut with the least wastage, do you ever think of where your wood has come from? In what distant land has a potentially 200-year-old giant been felled to provide you with the materials for your hobby or career? Green tons Green tons are the measure of felled timber including its water content. By measuring the percentage of water content, it is thus possible to calculate the dry weight of the wood, otherwise selling on wet weight could be very misleading for end usage. Switching from hardwood to softwood In the UK, obtaining quality local wood is becoming increasingly difficult. Government data on forestry in the UK for the years 1976 to 2014 indicates that hardwoods declined in production from a total of 1,170 green tons in 1976 to only 532 in 2014, while softwood moved from 2,448

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Woodturning

Large tree in a sunny park.

Wild Versus Plantation Timber

As you contemplate your beautiful piece of timber and plan precisely how to cut with the least wastage, do you ever think of where your wood has come from? In what distant land has a potentially 200-year-old giant been felled to provide you with the materials for your hobby or career? Green tons Green tons are the measure of felled timber including its water content. By measuring the percentage of water content, it is thus possible to calculate the dry weight of the wood, otherwise selling on wet weight could be very misleading for end usage. Switching from hardwood to softwood In the UK, obtaining quality local wood is becoming increasingly difficult. Government data on forestry in the UK for the years 1976 to 2014 indicates that hardwoods declined in production from a total of 1,170 green tons in 1976 to only 532 in 2014, while softwood moved from 2,448

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Drill bit cutting into spinning wood on lathe.

10 Tips for Drilling Better Holes. Part 2

Continuing on from 10 Tips for Drilling Better Holes, Part One, Kurtz Hertzog shares his time tested methods to guarantee accuracy and quality when drilling holes. Keep things cool Smoke is never a good thing when drilling wood. You can drill quickly and efficiently without creating a lot of smoke. On occasion, you may get some, particularly from those species that like to burn such as cherry (Prunus spp.), but it should be rarely and only a little bit. If you’ve got smoke erupting from your drilling, regardless of your drilling method you’ve got other problems. Chances are it is one or more of these: when a drill is dull, rather than sharpen it we often just push harder and speed up the rpm. Smoke can often be caused by far too aggressive speeds and feeds. Slow things down and let the tool do the work. Plugged flutes will also

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Woodworking Crafts

Wooden blocks and stack of laminated cards.

Three Bench Vice Stops

Charles Mak shares a few ideas for preventing an angled jaw, which can cause your work to slide or vibrate In almost every furniture project I undertake, my bench vice is used for one reason or another. Like many other vice users, I am concerned about vice racking which could potentially cause damage to the vice. Side-to-side vice racking happens when a workpiece is clamped on only one side of the vice. The work will tend to slip when there is uneven clamping in the vice. The common cure is to place a piece of scrap wood of the same thickness as the work on the opposite side of the vice to balance the clamping pressure. Unfortunately, as Murphy’s Law has it, your scrap wood bin likely does not have the proper size scrap when you need it! Motivated by this frustration, I began to explore and make devices that

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Using Bosch power drill on wood

Screws vs Nails – a Tale of Two Fixings

We always need to hold things together – but should it be screws or nails? There has never been a time when so many different kinds of fixings have been available. It runs into many thousands, but just two dominate our thinking when we are repairing or constructing anything in wood. The good old-fashioned nail pitted against the newer, more sophisticated screw. Is that really correct? What are the advantages and disadvantages?  Nails Nails have been around for many millennia, they are cheap to make and buy, and use a hammer and the kinetic energy from our muscles to bury them in wood. They come in a variety of types from veneer pins, upholstery tacks, oval nails, wire nails and ring nails, right up to long contraction nails. Today, you can buy nails powered by air, gas, explosives or battery. So, do they still have a place in the world?

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