I decided to make an assortment of “gravity defying” wine bottle holders as Christmas gifts last year. The basic idea is an angled piece of wood with a hole in it to hold a bottle of wine in a position that seemingly defies the known laws of physics. One would think the contraption would topple forward but the weight of the bottle counter-balances the forward slant of the wooden holder, creating a harmonious floating co-existence of wine and wood. Or something like that… […]

This simple jig makes quick work out of drilling angled counterbores Drilling a large diameter counterbore at an angle “freehand” is difficult because the bit will only be in partial contact with the wood when starting to drill and it will have a tendency to skip across the surface. This was the situation I found myself in when I was volunteered to add diagonal braces to my daughter’s two-story high wooden deck. Each 40″ long brace required holes drilled at a 45 degree […]

The hand cranks for raising and tilting the blade on my General cabinet table saw were getting progressively harder to turn so I decided it was time for a little maintenance. The blade tilt mechanism was particularly in dire need: not only was it difficult to turn the crank but it produced a horrible screeching sound that put the house cats on high alert. My 1980s era General cabinet saw is still going strong but was overdue for a good cleaning and lube job. The saw is 30+ years old and […]

This compass cutter cuts circles ranging from 3″ to 15″ in diameter. While building several sets of cornhole boards, I needed a way to create an evenly-spaced painted ring around the hole. That’s when I decided to build this “compass cutter”, which is essentially an over-sized compass with a blade in place of a pencil. It’s used like a normal compass but instead of drawing a line, it’s used to create a circular cut-out. For my cornhole boards, the […]

I wish I had made this plywood cutting table a long time ago. It makes quick work of breaking down a piece of plywood into more manageable sizes, especially if using a track saw. Perhaps the best feature of the table is that it is portable, allowing it to be assembled in an area with lots of elbow room (such as a driveway) and then stored as a compact bundle in the woodshop when not in use. Most woodworkers that I know – myself included – lack sufficient shop space to have a […]

The Dewalt Track Saw has a unique advantage over other track saws: a double-sided rail – a rubber edge strip on both sides –  which allows cutting along both sides of the rail. This means there’s no need to flip the track around to cut from the opposite direction and the overall life of the rubber strips is extended because there’s two of them. All other track saws (so far), come with single-sided rails. Unfortunately, a drawback of Dewalt’s double-sided rail is […]

I recently purchased a Makita track saw to help cut some panels for cabinets that I was planning to build. Before buying the saw, I read a number of online reviews and concluded that this product offered the best bang for the buck, especially if one is not a full-time carpenter/woodworker. In terms of cutting performance and features, it compared favorably to the Festool and Dewalt track saws and seemed like a relative bargain at $400 for the saw plus a 55″ guide rail. The same package […]

This simple router circle cutting jig was made from a piece of left-over 7/16″ PVC board that I found in the scrap bin.  My impetus for building it was that I needed to cut 6″ wide holes for several corn hole game sets and I decided that the manual scroll saw approach with resultant wavy edges just wasn’t going to cut it (no pun intended). Furthermore, I wanted a quick and easily repeatable system because there were a total of six holes to cut. I considered buying a jig but […]

The requirements for this wishing well were rather simple: it had to be relatively compact but large enough to cover an unsightly well pipe, but also inexpensive and easy to make. Of course, I also wanted it to look half-decent. I think I succeeded on all counts. The well was built over the course of a few evenings for a total cost of about $40. Most of the material came from a left-over section of rough cut treated pine fencing (advertised as cedar). In addition, I picked up a few pieces of 1 […]

Here is a nifty calculator for making items via splayed joinery that was graciously provided by Gerald R. What exactly is “splayed joinery” you say? Well imagine a tube made from multiple pieces of wood (staves) in which one end of the tube is larger in diameter than the other. An example is a tapered round waste basket. To construct the tube, each stave must be cut at the appropriate compound angle. That’s where the Stave Calculator (Stavulator?) comes in. You enter in […]