PVA Resist Finish, or "Do You Think We Can Tell the Homeowner Batik Is Coming Back?"

I found this photo a few moments ago in a folder of files from the first digital camera I owned, about 12 years ago. I'm glad I found it, as it's an excellent illustration of something I tell my students all the time:

Fortified Paint: Looks Like Sprayed Lacquer, Goes on with a Brush

Here's a wood finish that looks like a million bucks, and you can apply it with minimal equipment and materials.

Cabinet Installation

When woodworkers take my basic cabinet class, we don't have a chance to install cabinets during the class, so we take some time to discuss installation on the last night of class. Here's a short version of what I say in class, and what Mark Duginske and I will cover in the Installation chapter of our cabinetmaking book:

Flattening Glued-up Panels

Sorry it's been a while since the last entry! Things have been crazy at work, but I'm still working wood and I still have plenty more to share with you guys, so please bear with me. I've been tracing the process of making a countertop. That has actually been done for a month or so, and I installed it on top of a run of cabinets in my shop. So today I'll backtrack a bit to cover flattening a big panel.

What is the Thousand-Dollar Shop?

This question came up recently when a friend of mine discovered my blog. It’s a natural question, and the answer has to do with why I started blogging here. I’ve been putting this entry off, because it’s a lot of words with no good pictures, and every time I’ve tried to write it, it's felt too long and too negative. But we need to do this, so let’s go.

It starts with another friend of mine, Kevin, and his experience when he got serious about woodworking.

Jointing with the Router

Happy New Year! I hope 2013 is kind to all of us. The last project I took on at home in 2012 was gluing up a birch countertop for my shop cabinets. In the last post, I showed how I got the big planks ready to run through the planer. In this post, which will be shorter and easier to understand, I'll show you how to get a good, straight edge on a workpiece if you don't own a jointer, or I should say, a big enough jointer.

Surfacing Big Boards without a Big Jointer

How do I surface a big board if I don't have a jointer? In this post, I'm going to show you one way to do it. There are many ways to skin this particular cat, but this way works, and the basic principles apply in lots of situations.

Getting some big boards surfaced is the first step in a project that will stretch out across several blog posts: