Tom's Workbench's Blog

No, it doesn’t have the gorgeous grain and strength of premium hardwood.

Nor does it have the beautiful veneers and screw holding capacity of cabinet grade plywood.

It doesn’t even have the smooth, fine texture of MDF that makes painting easy.

Instead, it forms the basis of all uber-cheap, mass produced big box discount store ready to assemble furniture.  It’s frequently covered in a pseudo-wood-looking plastic contact paper like substance and is assembled with cams, dowels and other bizarre hardware that requires an allen wrench.

Attempting to lift a sheet of it by yourself can cause you to make an appointment with your chiropractor.  Shelves made of it bow with the lightest of weight and sides exposed to the smallest quantity of water swell like a sponge.



Yes, it’s particle board, and it’s the most beautiful substance you can have in your shop.

Born of the refuse of lumber mills, the lowly particle board (or chip board) consists of fairly rough sawdust treated with a resins, waxes and other goodies and heat pressed into standard sized sheet goods.

During the construction of a large cabinet project last year, I came to appreciate some of the finer qualities of this oft maligned material. No, the boxes themselves were made out of some high quality 3/4″ plywood – either prefinished birch or A-faced cherry.  The cabinet shelves of the same materials as well. The base the cases are standing on is made from 2×4 fir lumber.

So, where’s the particleboard?

Glad you asked.  A while ago, I had bought a sheet of particleboard to create a bending form for my Mars and Venus Rising table.  I was going to stack and cut pieces and use them to clamp the thinly sliced ash and walnut leg pieces around while the hide glue dried.  However, I was having trouble getting the pieces to work on the press and opted for a different method of bending.

So, I took the sheets of particleboard and hid them behind my clamp rack.  I probably figured I would find them three or four years later and just throw them out.

The fates were on my side when the project started.  Those ugly, edge-abused sheets hidden behind the clamp rack called to me. With my old big ugly bench, I would have just cut the sheets up on the bench top, figuring that any grooves that formed on the bench would have added character.  But, with my current bench, that was out of the question.  No way was I going to slice  up my new bench’s top.

That’s when I fished those sheets of particleboard from behind the clamp rack and set them down on the bench as a sacrificial top. My friend Paul was a little caught off guard by my wanton disregard for the particle board’s safety, but I forged on. In fact, after the cutting, it also served well as a sacrificial base when I predrilled the screw holes to reinforce the dadoes and rabbets, saving my bench tremendous abuse.



Today, the cabinet is built, the particle board pieces are showing the wear and my bench top has never looked so good.

So, today, I ask, dear friends, that each of you reconsider your opinion of the lowly particle board sheet. Truly, it’s not the material of fine woodworking, but I boldly contend that it is one of the substances that makes fine woodworking possible.

This week, I want to focus on a very special woodworker who gave me the inspiration to get involved in woodworking in the first place – my dad.

He is the youngest son in a family of seven children and he grew up in an Italian American neighborhood in Fairview, New Jersey. Taught the value of hard work from a very young age, he worked to help support the family while in school.  And, as soon as he was old enough, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, serving during the presidency of John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.



After his honorable discharge, he married my mom and started work delivering soda – first with Seven Up and later with Coca Cola. Talk about grueling work… dad would deliver hundreds of cases of soda in the rain, snow, heat and cold for more than 40 years.  I never liked helping him deliver soda… the times I did go out, it was back breaking work.  Hauling cases up and down stairs at small convenience stores and eateries.  But, my dad never stopped smiling or engaging folks in conversation.  Even on tough days. Just a genuinely nice guy.


Always industrious, he worked hard to make his home a nicer place to live.  After my parents bought an older home in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey, with the help of several relatives, he renovated the two family structure to get ready to start his family.  Demolition, studding, electric, plumbing, drywall… the guy knew how to do it, or learned quickly.  After the renovations, the house looked pretty darned good.



Years later, we moved further west into New Jersey to a town called Bloomingdale. It was a modestly-sized home that served our family well – when we were just little kids.   But, as my brothers and I got older – and bigger – we needed more room to spread out.  That’s when mom and dad came up with the idea of finishing our home’s basement.

I can still remember the planning phase… wondering why we didn’t just hire a professional to knock the job out and be done with it. That’s where dad’s wisdom and encouragement really shone.  As the materials started arriving at the house for the renovation, he called his sons together and we watched this new show on PBS.  It was called This Old House, and featured two bearded guys with New England accents finishing – of all things – a basement! We watched, while dad kept telling us, “We can do better than these two guys!”

That’s when we hit it.  Sure, the basement renovation took longer than six half-hour shows, but it was far more rewarding than anything else I had done to that point.  My dad likes to take the time to explain stuff to a very fine detail.  In fact, he’s the kind of a guy if you ask him what time it is, he will tell you all about the history of clocks and exactly how to build one.  During the basement build, he showed me how to accurately mark wood for cutting, how to lay out stud spacing, when to nail and when screws are better… all the way to how to properly trim out the paneling to make the final project look sweet.



When faced with a challenging corner in the basement, he designed and built a corner entertainment center… much like the one I had built about eight years ago  in my house.  Just a clever idea to use a corner that would otherwise go to waste.

It’s funny how much what I learned during that basement renovation has helped me.  In college, I was asked to be the guy who built the room divider that allowed us to use the dining room in my apartment as a second bedroom. Other people have asked me to come in and help with other construction projects in their homes and yards.



My dad has since retired from delivering Coca Cola.  But, he’s not the kind of guy who likes to sit around. Today, he works as the maintenance guy at Glen Wild Lake, the gorgeous lake that his new house overlooks.  This can involve negotiating with fish hatcheries to get the lake stocked with bass and trout all the way to coordinating the lowering of the lake level to get extensive dock work done.

The one thing that hasn’t changed is his interest in teaching.  He takes the time to teach my sons and my nephews about everything… history, sports … and woodworking.



Thanks, dad.  I doubt I would have come this far in life without your teaching, inspiration and encouragement.

Happy Father’s Day to you and all of the other dads out there.

Tens of thousands of years ago, the first woodworkers used bone, rock and other raw natural materials to create their works. Since then, metals such as copper, bronze and iron have greatly improved the quality, durability and effectiveness of the tools in the chest.



But, once steel was created, tool making really took off. Durable and resilient saw blades made cutting wood easier and chisels and plane irons could take and hold a sharper edge for longer.


With today’s modern production methods, there is plenty of quality steel out there for the woodworker to choose from. Choose is the operative word here, and many’s the woodworker who has had to decide between different kinds of steel for their new tool. A2. White. O1. High speed…

How is a woodworker supposed to navigate this mess without help?



Fortunately, there are many guides out there to help make sense of the confusion. One of the most knowledgeable is Ron Hock of Hock Tools, but even someone as well-versed as Ron needs help in properly describing the different types of steel out there. “In my recent book The Perfect Edge, I had to enlist a small army of specialists to get to the bottom of the metallurgy behind today’s modern steels.”

First and most importantly, what is steel? “It’s an alloy of iron, carbon and some other elements, depending on what you want the steel to do. Basically, the carbon is necessary for hardening the steel through heat treatment.”

But, doesn’t that make all products made of iron steel? Not really. Cast iron is also iron and carbon, but its carbon content is too great to be considered steel, and the very high carbon content tends to make cast iron brittle. Wrought iron, on the other hand, has too little carbon to be called steel. Its low-to-zero carbon content isn’t enough to add the strength that we want from steel.



Ancient steelmakers used to repeatedly heat iron and hammer out the impurities. It took a lot of heating and a lot of hammering to make steel in this process, but the quality was quite good in the case of Damascus steels.

Today’s modern processes use a powerful electric arc to heat raw iron and recycled steel in a crucible. Pure oxygen is then pumped through the molten mixture to ‘burn’ off impurities. Elements such as additional carbon, tungsten, molybdenum are then added to control the metal’s characteristics.



Some steel is designed to be very flexible – called spring steel. This steel has a moderate to high carbon content. Surprisingly, the composition of spring steel is not that different from harder tool steels. What makes it different is that it receives a special heat treatment to allow it to return to its normal form after significant bending and twisting. It is great for making items such as saw blades. This kind of steel cannot hold a sharp edge for a very long, but is very easy to sharpen.

Other steels have elements added to them so they will be tougher, harder and can hold an edge longer. These are called tool steels, and they come in many varieties. These steels are typically heated, forged to shape, then reheated and cooled rapidly to freeze the crystalline structure of the material. The rapid cooling from high temperature is the essence of hardening by heat treatment.



When looking at a premium tool catalog, you will notice that the steel in chisels, plane irons and other cutting tools is often indicated, and you will have to decide what kind you will want. Some of the more frequently-seen types of steel include O1 and A2. “Both are very high quality steels,” said Ron. “The A2 is air quenched and slightly tougher. It will take a very keen edge and hold it longer, but it does take more time to hone. The O1 steel is oil quenched and just a bit less tough, so it won’t hold the edge quite as long, but can be rehoned easily. It’s a matter of personal preference.”

High speed steels have additional elements such as tungsten and molybdenum added so the steel will keep its strength at high temperatures. “This is very important when using things such as drill bits and power saw blades. That high temperature strength makes the tool much more useful in high temperature applications.”



Of course, a discussion about tool steel wouldn’t be complete without a foray into the world of Japanese steels. During the Woodworking in America conference last October, master woodworker Toshio Odate explained that the composition of steel is indicated by a colored paper band wrapped around bundles of steel used to create tools. Hence, the actual color of the steel is the good old silvery-tone you are accustomed to seeing, regardless of the ‘color’ of the steel used to make tools.


White steel (steel bundled with a white paper band) is the purest variety, nearly free of impurities. This steel takes much more skill to forge, and the masters with the knowledge are becoming harder to find as they age and retire. Blue steel (yes, steel bundled with a blue paper band) has a number of other elements added to make it easier to work with, but these elements change the characteristics of the tool itself. Other varieties, such as yellow steel, are available, but are not typically used to make tools.


While this blog entry isn’t designed to be the be-all and end-all of steel knowledge, hopefully it will spur you to find out more about this revolutionary woodworking material.

There are some really awesome router bits you can use on a router table.  Panel raising bits.  Cope and stick bits.  Lock miter bits.

While these are pretty awesome, some require a risky kind of maneuver in order to use them correctly. Those are the bits that involve pushing the workpiece on edge across the bit.  Vertical panel raisers and lock miter bits come to mind as two types requiring this move.

While some woodworkers may feel comfortable pushing the wood past the bit in this manner, it has always scared me senseless.  I have to coordinate holding the board down to the table and tight to the fence without having it wobble, which would ruin the cut.  Then, how do you prevent massive tear out?

After trying to push a board past a bit like this, I had to make things easier on myself.  I spoke briefly with Jim Heavey at Wood Magazine and, with a little inspiration, came up with this design.



VERY easy to build.  The upright is two pieces of 3/4″ scrap plywood.  One is 8″ tall by 8″ wide, the other one is 8 3/4″ tall by 8″ wide.  When glued and screwed together, I created a rabbet for a piece of 8″ long by 5″ wide that rides flat along the table.  I put a gusset to hold the assembly at 90 degrees and to serve as a handle.



The trailing edge is a piece of maple that was planed down to 1/4″ for another project.  That was screwed to the back edge of the assembly with a 1/4″ overhang to serve as a push cleat. Don’t use glue here… just in case the cleat gets chewed up and needs to be replaced.




I used it by placing my board against the router fence and sliding the push shoe until is captured the board against the fence.  Now, instead of concentrating on three things at once, all I had to do was push the piece through the router bit.  No panic, no fear and because the cleat was supporting the back edge of the piece… no tear out.  Very easy stuff.

By ensuring the cleat was as tall as the top of the push shoe, I could also use it as a horizontal push shoe for the mating piece as well.



Believe me.. anything that makes your work safer and more accurate is something worth looking into.  And, when it is that easy to build… all the better!

Make a list of the things that a woodworker needs to do his or her craft.  What would you put on it?

Tools would be up there. A place to work would be nice. A way to support and secure your work wouldn’t be bad.  Maybe a few measuring devices…

Oh, and you need wood. Depending on the size of the project, sometimes, lots of it.

Maybe hard, durable woods like maple or hickory.  Maybe woods that work well for carving like mahogany or basswood.  Sometimes, you need inexpensive stuff that works well, like southern yellow pine or red oak.  Veneers. Plywood.



Even the ubiquitous 2×4 whitewood stud to make push sticks and other shop jigs.

Wood is used in a wide variety of applications.  There’s furniture making and construction for sure, but it’s also used in papermaking, chemical products – even food production.  But, for many years around the world, trees were cut down with little thought to the impact on the existing forests.

In many western European countries, going at stands of trees with the axe was vital. Countries such as England plowed through their native forests harvesting timber for ship building, dwellings, bridges and other structures. It became an implied duty for the wealthy landowner to sow a handful of acorns on his property to help ensure there would be enough native wood to keep the Royal Navy afloat.

Then, the colonization of the Americas happened. Settlers were stunned by the incredible number of trees to be found everywhere on the continents. It’s been said that a squirrel could cross from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River by hopping from tree branch to tree branch, never having to set foot on the ground. Soon, axes were hard at work, harvesting lumber for domestic – and exported – uses.  Millions of acres were also cleared to make room for the farms to feed the burgeoning population.



Fast forward to the early 20th century.  Many of those lush forests were now nothing but an empty landscape, devoid of anything but the occasional ragged stump left over from the clear cutting operation.

Fortunately before all of the virgin old-growth forests were lost forever, government and industry sought ways to slow or reverse this alarming trend. “Without wood, there’s no woodworking.  Period,” said Eric Poirier of Bell Forest Products. “That’s why it’s extremely important to everyone involved that responsible forestry practices are followed as we keep moving into the 21st Century.”

To that end, responsible lumber merchants are active partners in combating the illegal harvesting of domestic and imported hardwoods. “Wood is one of the most important renewable resources, but only if it’s harvested responsibly.”

How do retailers ensure their supply meets stringent responsible standards? “We only deal with lumber wholesalers and log dealers who actively combat illegal logging.” Eric was very candid about the company’s policies. “We make sure our suppliers have policies in place regarding planned felling, minimum tree diameters and felling rotations to ensure regrowth of the affected area.  When we as retailers – and our customers – demand these practices, the wholesalers and loggers listen.”

How can a woodworker know if their lumber retailer works with responsible loggers?  “Ask lots of questions when you go to your supplier. In today’s world of environmental consciousness, many retailers are touting their practices on their websites or at their stores.  If they don’t – ask.”



One area of specific concern for many woodworkers is the questionable logging practices of developing countries. “Some of the world’s most beautiful wood comes from South America and Africa. Unfortunately, some of those species we love so dearly – ebony and rosewood – were logged extensively and today are very rare.”  To help preserve these important trees, organizations such as the Forest Stewardship Council were created.  This international body’s mission is to slow the overharvesting taking place around the world, with a specific focus on tropical woods.  Founded in 1993, the organization has seen some success in trying to slow the overharvesting.  But, much remains to be done in order to preserve these resources.

After all, it’s not just today’s woodworkers who can be impacted by our actions. “I have two young children.  When they get older – and should they want to woodwork – it’s up to all of us to take our responsibility seriously so they can supply us for generations to come.”

I use a Keller dovetail jig for the majority of my dovetailing on projects. It’s easy to set up and makes cutting very quick.  However, the one knock on a fixed spacing jig like that is that it gives only one look to a project.

Not so.

There is a very easy way to change the spacing that doesn’t take much in the way of fiddling and gives very good results.



First, you have to make sure you have the piece clamped appropriately in a vise.  Determine which pieces will get the tails and which will get the pins.  In this case, you are looking at the outside of the tail board oriented face out  with the top facing left.



Here I am marking in 1/2″ from the edge of the board as a starting point for the guide.



With the jig in place, I use the dovetail bit to cut in every slot, creating an entire run of pins.



From there, I mark out the tails I want to remove. This is where I can set up my spacing and get a good idea of what the joint will look like.



Next, I place the comb of the jig over the tails I want to remove and clamp it in place.  I then use the dovetail bit to remove the xed out tails to open the pattern.

http://tomsworkbench.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/kdk_0303.jpg

The results are pretty sweet… nice, crisp tails ready to scribe onto the pin board.



By carefully marking out which pins need to be routed, you can have them lined up accurately and just cut the pin sockets you need.  Here’s the pin board ready to go.

No doubt you have heard about star athletes who, after tremendous success, suddenly have issues doing some of the more basic tasks.  The golfer who suddenly can’t putt straight.  The basketball player whose free throw percentage drops through the floor.  The baseball pitcher who has trouble finding the strike zone.



When something like that happens, the athlete’s livelihood and career are instantly threatened.  And, given the severity of the downturn, these athletes will try just about anything to get their performance back to the top.  Some will try different equipment.  Some will start carrying a good luck charm.

And, others will seek the help of a sports psychiatrist to get their mojo back.

Maybe I need to see one who can help me with my panel glue ups.

I’m not sure what’s happening lately, but my past two projects that required edge-to-edge panel glue ups have not been very successful. The cradle I donated to charity was the first sign I was having issues.  The project I am currently working on is the latest head scratcher.



My method is pretty simple.  I flatten the face of the boards I’m working on with a jack plane, whacking off the high spots until the board sits on the bench top with no issues.  I then run that face down through the thickness planer to get the boards to an even thickness.

For edge jointing, I’ve been using a Veritas bevel up jointer plane – the same one I’ve been using since 2005.  I sight down the board, level the high spots, continue until I get a continuous shaving and check the side-to-side for square.  90 degrees spot on.

It’s when I glue that things get sideways.  I glue the edge, get everything set on my clamps then tighten them down.  One edge might rise up.  I put a handscrew on that.  Another edge pops up.  A few mallet taps to get it down.  I’m happy with the left side, but then the right is messed up.  Back and forth until I think it’s OK, and then – CRAP! – not another stepped glue ups.

I know I have to improve my technique.  My guess is that I am putting too much pressure on the clamps, or maybe not tightening them in the right order. Or, maybe the clamps aren’t 100% square to the board edge when I tighten them down? Not sure.

I know the glue makes  the boards slippery, so any quirks in the clamping process will totally mess me up in the finished product.

Until I can get this hitch out of my technique, I’m going to start relying on two ‘insurance policies’ to give me an advantage.

First, I’m gonna bust out the biscuit jointer.  No, I know it’s not going to add any strength to the joint, but they will certainly help with alignment.  The other is to cut some 2 x 4′s down to make cauls.  If I can pinch the entire glue-up under the cauls, I’m certain it couldn’t hurt.




How am I fixing the stepped glue up I have now?  Well, I after further review, it wasn’t quite as bad as I had thought.  Maybe 1/16″ of a step.  To remedy, I clamped the panel on my bench and started planing.  I got my bevel up jointer and planed across the grain from side to side.



I know what you are thinking.  “DANGER, TOM!  You’ll tear your boards up doing that!”  That’s what I thought, too.  However, with a freshly-honed iron, a coat of wax on the plane’s sole and a light setting, I could hear the long plane slicing down the high spots as I went back and forth over the board.  Eventually, I started getting full-width shavings.  Snick.  Snick.  Snick.  That side is flat.  I flipped the panel over and did it on the back.  Beauty!

The shavings I am getting kind of look like – well – shavings you would expect from a jointer plane.  Not too thin, but not gouged-out chunks.  Just a good set of shavings.



There were some rough tracks, so I leveled most of those out with a smoothing plane.  It’s a Stanley No. 4 – terrible for final work on highly-figured wood like this curly maple, but enough to take down the plane tracks.  Before I did any tearing-out, I turned to a belt sander to further smooth the surface.

I’ll sand some more to refine the scratch pattern and then do some through dovetails.  Finally, I’ll scrape the final piece down before the finish.

But, that’s a long time off.  I have a lot of shavings to clean up before then.



Maybe all of that cleaning can serve as a good way to meditate and reflect on the errors of my technique…

Video games have been around for quite a while. From the first game of Pong to the latest hack-and-slash Internet capable first person fantasy role playing game, there’s something out there for just about everyone.



One of the traditional genres for video games has been sports simulation games.  Those old football, baseball and basketball games were pretty weak at first, but they have become more sophisticated through the years. Now, you can assume the first person role of New York Yankee Derek Jeter, New Orleans Saints Reggie Bush or Miami Heat LeBron James and actually make game decisions that can affect the final outcome of the game. Sure, the majority of folks playing the games don’t have a shot of making a professional team, these games have been known to encourage a few players to get out and try their hand at picking up a new sport.



While these games are great… and getting more sophisticated every year, the gaming public wanted more. That’s when the Guitar Hero and Rock Band game series were created.  Now, gamers weren’t on a sunny ballfield facing down a determined opponent, they were thrust on stage as part of a rock and roll band, crushing fierce note streams in front of adoring fans.



This was an interesting shift in gaming. A totally new field of games had been opened to people who don’t want to necessarily play shoot ‘em ups or sports.  The games come with guitars, drum kits and microphones, enough to get a group of players to believe they are on world tour.

And, as my sons and I have played Rock Band in our living room, I have warmed to the idea of picking up an instrument for the first time of my life.  The bass guitar.  I’m shopping around now, but hope to have one by Father’s Day.  Gotta save those pennies, ya know!

Now, with music conquered, video game designers have moved to an even more non-traditional game genre – cooking.  I been seeing ads for Cook or be Cooked, the first video game from the Food Network.  In this game, the players can hone their knife skills, expertly season the food they are preparing and bake, saute or stew their creations to a perfect level of doneness. There’s even a  tasting by judges to see if the dish is up to the high culinary standards expected.



I know that the shows on the Food Network have inspired me on several occasions to get into the kitchen to try a new recipe or two. Perhaps players of this game might be inspired to get off their butts, not call for take out and discover that lightly used room in their homes… the kitchen.

Now, I think the next step will be to make a woodworking video game.  No, seriously!  Imagine how it would work… you could have a selection of projects to choose from… a bookcase, a decorative box, a Maloof-inspired rocking chair and some other challenging and interesting ones.

Then, you can choose from a selection of tools… a virtual table saw, tenon saw, chisels, drills… the works.  A little cutting, a little shaping, a little gluing and sanding and you have a project. Then, you bring the final piece before a virtual Marc Spagnuolo or Norm Abram get judged on your work.  If you had some high-end tool manufacturers come on board… hey… we might be on to something here!

Sure, it may sound crazy, but with fewer schools offering shop class… virtual might not hurt to get new woodworkers into the craft…

Woodworking projects can be embellished in so many different ways.

Pick out some sweet boards with impressive figure. Mix contrasting wood species. Lay in an awesome piece of veneer. Choose some outstanding hardware. Even a highly-polished finish can make a piece pop.

But, even the most basic woodworking projects made of the most common species of wood can be jazzed up with molded details. You can add a purchased molding to your work, rout a profile on the edge or, if you really want to get fancy, you can do some fluting.



No, I’m not writing about the tall, narrow glass you drink champagne from, nor the side-blown high-pitched instrument frequently used in marching bands and orchestras. Flutes are the shallow grooves that sometimes ornament the faces of columns and flat vertical moldings called pilasters. In stone and woodwork, they are usually in a parallel, evenly-spaced series vertically to a surface.

The flute is actually the groove itself. The area between the flutes is known as the fillet.



The first flutes  ever observed in architecture were carved into stone columns adorning buildings in ancient Greece and served as a visual design element. They can create dramatic shadow lines, and make the vertical elements of a piece seem taller. Surprisingly, Roman columns were typically smooth and polished unlike their Greek predecessors. And, yes, all of those flutes were painstakingly carved into the stone by hand. Hey, neither Rome – nor ancient Greece, it appears – was built in a day.

Today’s woodworker has more than a few options when it comes to adding flutes to pieces. Many lumber yards and hardwood suppliers have a stash of pre-milled fluted material on hand. While this is an easy way to go, it often limits your options. “Many of these pre-milled fluted moldings come in only a few common species, and you are limited on the size, spacing and number of flutes,” said Tim Walter of Eagle America. “You might be stuck with something that looks out of place – either too large, too small, or the wrong grain pattern going the pre-milled route.”

An option that gives the woodworker more flexibility is to mill your own fluted moldings. One way to do this is to set up a router table with a plunge bit (a core box, v-groove, etc) in your router and a router fence. If you route one flute, then flip the board end-for-end, you can route a groove with identical spacing on the opposite side. From there, you can cut the boards to length and apply them to the piece you are building. “That’s one option, but it might look a little choppy,” said Tim. “After all, you are just cutting the flutes at the end. You’ll have to find a way to cap the ends of the molding, and those flutes will end abruptly, leaving an pretty jarring transition.”

A better way to make the fluted profile look neater would be to create stopped flutes. This can be done by lowering a board onto a spinning router bit, running the board the desired length and then pulling the board up from the bit at the end. “That’s one way to do it, but it can be tricky to get all the grooves to start and end the same distance from the end of the board.”



Another, easier way would be to rout the grooves from the top of the board with a plunge router. “This way, you can plunge the bit into the board right on a pencil mark and run them the length of the board. You can get much better results because you can see where you are routing.”

The challenge with this method, however, is keeping the router on track as you make the grooves. On long pieces, a groove that jogs or slants one way or the other will stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. To ensure the router stays on track, many woodworkers turn to a dedicated edge guide. While that prevents movement in one lateral direction, there is the chance that just the briefest loss of concentration can allow the woodworker to pull the edge guide away from the board’s edge. “That’s one way to create custom, hand-crafted firewood in a hurry.”

To prevent this, many woodworkers rely on a jig that clamps the board between two fences, preventing any lateral movement across the face of the board. Tim showed me the jig they sell at Eagle America. It consists of a 3/8” polycarbonate base that mounts to your router’s sub base. The two edge guides are mounted to the main base plate with bolts and knobs that ride in two slots. “You can get infinite adjustments between the two edges that way, and you can rout pieces from 1” wide to 12” wide… more than adequate for the vast majority of woodworking operations.”


The added benefit of the jig lies in the shape of the edge guides. Not only can they be used on straight moldings, they can also be reversed and the smaller edge with ball bearings can be used against the work. This way, woodworkers can rout flutes into a curved or arched piece. “Imagine if you had to trim out the top of a Palladian window. This guide can allow you to make accurate flutes that match the curved profile of the molding. The results can be stunning.”

Eagle America is also throwing in a free round nose bit for woodworkers who order the jig. “We want to make sure that anyone who orders this jig will be ready to go as soon as it arrives at their shop. We don’t want them to have to wait longer to pick up the right bit to make it work.”

While flutes in your moldings won’t guarantee your work will be around 2,000 years from now like the stonework from ancient Greece, they can make your work a real piece of art.

There’s nothing quite as simple – yet complicated – as an end-grain cutting board.

Sure, it’s just a flat, thick piece of wood you cut food on.  However, if you want it to be really durable, you want it oriented so that you are cutting on the end grain.  That’s the tough stuff..



Fortunately, there are many good plans for end-grain cutting boards out there.  Wood Magazine has a good one, as does the Wood Whisperer. Each of these plans offers step-by-step instructions on how to build them.

The wood for the board came from Bell Forest Products, and included a sweet piece of maple and another of purple heart.

I started by jointing and planing the boards flat and true, then ripping them into strips.  I glued the blank together with alternating strips.

Once dry, I took the boards out of the clamps and planed the assembly dead flat. Then, I crosscut the panel into 1.5″ thick strips, rotated them end for end and then stood them up with the end grain facing upward.  I shifted the pieces into a pleasing pattern and glued them into place.

While my glue up was pretty good, I still had to use a belt sander to get everything into perfect shape on the top.  First, 50 grit was used to get the pieces flush, then 80 and 120 to smooth things out.  Then, I hit it with my random orbit sander with 120 grit and 150 grit.  Since the top was going to see some abuse from knives, I didn’t want to make it too smooth.

I finished it with polyurethane thinned about 50% with mineral spirits, allowing the finish to soak all the way through the board and then wiped off the excess, as per Marc Spagnuolo’s instructions.  That seemed to do the trick.

Now, here comes the hard part.  I had originally built two boards, but I won’t be seeing them in my house.  I already gave one to a really nice couple who has us over their home  for gourmet dinners and really fine wine.  The other one?  Well, when my mom saw it, it became hers.

Oh, well… At least when I go to these homes, I’ll know the meals I’m eating were prepared on them!