One of my favorite magazine articles by Adam Cherubini was titled: “How to Saw Faster than a Table Saw.” His solution was: Don’t saw. Instead of ripping a board to a particular width, try to work with the boards you have on hand and their existing widths. This blog entry is somewhat in that vein….
Read moreNearly all vernacular chairs use straight (not tapered) cylindrical tenons throughout. Before I owned a tapered tenon cutter and reamer, I used a 1”-diameter auger to make the mortise in the seat, and I shaved the tenons on the legs to size with planes. This requires great care. You can greatly speed the process by…
Read moreI haven’t built a four-stick chair for a long time. Not because I don’t like the form, but because I have been focused on chairs from “The Stick Chair Book.” But as I sorted through the load of beautiful bog oak I got from fellow woodworker Andy Brownell, I realized something. I could squeeze two…
Read moreThis cherry six-stick comb-back chair features some new elements that I’ve been experimenting with during the last six months, including hexagonal legs, a mitered arm bow and splayed back sticks. This particular example is set up as a chair for dining or working at a desk, with a fairly upright back at 11° off the…
Read moreOne day in the 1990s, a few of us at Popular Woodworking Magazine were talking to Troy Sexton – one of our contributors – about table saw blades. We asked Troy what blades he liked. “Thin kerf,” he said. “Always thin kerf.” One of the other editors scoffed a bit. “Why would you need a thin-kerf…
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