Heartwood: Woodworking by Rob Porcaro

A burnisher to sharpen scrapers is widely available from many manufacturers in several variations. What works very well for me is one that I developed. As far as I know, this is unique. The rod was made of carbide in sub-micron grain size at my request by Innovative Carbide Inc. in Pennsylvania. The hardness of […]

The previous series of posts showed and explained four ways to secure wood at the workbench to facilitate work. And there are at least a dozen more ways. It should be convenient to set up, work on, and take down.   This key factor has been important since the first time you ever worked on […]

Continuing from the last two posts, let’s now look at gripping an even longer piece of wood by the front vice and extending it to the right, even fully across the length of the bench. We will use a griper easily installed into the tail vice. The tail vise will hold a T-track set into […]

Let us continue with the previous post. If the wide piece of wood being held in the front vice is also fairly long, we need a second system that grips the right side of it. Otherwise, it will tend to slip down due to weight, especially pressure from planing the edge straight and square with […]

Let’s say you want to hold a wide piece of wood in a classic front vice of the workbench. You probably do not want to grip it in the middle area of the vice because it must be held above the lead screw and guide rod.  You can grip the wood by the part of […]

We often use the outer edges of the top of our workbench to restrict any movement of a piece of wood being worked on. Let’s go through some handy, practical methods to keep the wood in place. These can all be easily made by you with minimal cost. The first one is very simple. Sometimes […]

Only you know, but here are some of my thoughts.  You are taking a break from work, family, wood shop, and the duties of life to spend a few minutes enjoying and adding to your woodworking. Let’s go over what is here. Since 2008 I have published here 264,000 words written originally by me alone. […]

Now things get more tricky. If you have been avoiding angled joints, or maybe you tried and messed up a few (hey, I think that is everyone who has tried them) I want to put them in general categories with different levels of potential difficulty. This is not to show detailed, step-by-step processes. Rather, I […]

Is this a strong joint? No. Useful? Yes. It is helpful where connection is otherwise awkward and high strength is not needed.  It does not make the show for looks either. Yet sometimes that is no factor at all because it lives unseen. A veneer table top is a nice example. Screw the top to […]

The biscuit joiner just slightly makes the list of techniques for edge to side-edge joinery. It is not a strong or deep joint but it is easy to do. It does have a useful role. A machine for this can cost less than a $100 if you dare, $250 for a good DeWalt, or a […]

This is a short post to summarize the glue joint distribution of dowel joinery that was discussed in detail in the last post and with excellent commentary from readers.  Dowel joinery, properly done with good dowel layout and distribution is certainly strong enough. This has been well shown online, notably by DowelMax testing. Some, certainly […]

Consider the strength of the end to side-edge joinery which we have put into three categories: mortise pair and free tenon, Domino, and dowel.  When did you see a properly made joint fall? I never have in my work. The dowel joint gets the most criticism regarding strength. Let’s discuss that. As an example, consider […]

Dowel joinery. It takes little equipment. Even beginners can do it with care. Yet among many woodworkers, it just does not get the states it deserves. Let’s consider. I learned the principle and technique mainly from pages 130 – 140 of The Fine Art of Cabinet Making, by James Krenov, published in 1977 and read […]