Fine Woodworking Magazine

Online extras Visit finewoodworking.com/316 VIDEO Carved coffer Chris Schwarz demonstrates how he carves his coffers using an inexpensive vinyl flooring cutter in a knife handle. VIDEO Machine made Anissa Kapsales, who doesn’t own a grooving plane, makes one of Chris Schwarz’s coffers, cutting the joinery on the table saw. Book excerpt This section of Andrew D. Glenn’s book Backwoods Chairmakers: In Search of the Appalachian Chairmaker gives a glimpse into the life and work of Randy Ogle, a third-generation woodworker in Gatlinburg, Tenn. VIDEO Add flair with air Aspen Golann goes through her process for airbrushing fine details on furniture. VIDEO Making a scratch stock Garrett Hack shows how to transform a small piece of scrap steel into a custom cutter for creating unique beads and other profiles. VIDEO WORKSHOP Enfield…

Andrew D. Glenn (Faces of the Craft) grew up on a farm in Richland County, Ohio, where he helped both of his grandfathers in their woodworking shops. By the time he was a teen, working summers on a carpentry crew, he was well on his way to a life of woodworking. However, after college he took a detour as business director at a Christian high school near Boston, which led him back to woodworking via two years at North Bennet Street School. After graduating from NBSS, Andy briefly worked at Phil Lowe’s school, the Furniture Institute of Massachusetts, then as a live-in caretaker at NBSS. Two children later, the family moved to Maine, where he worked at a shipyard (grinding fiberglass, not making shavings), then to Kentucky, where Andy worked…

Spotlight What is the future of woodworking? Imagine this: You’re lying in bed, thinking about a beautiful new end table you would like to build, with maple for the casework and walnut for the framing. You mentally run through a list of furniture styles and settle on Krenov. You know this is a complex style, but you are sure you have the skill and ability to create a professional piece. You connect to your neural link, mentally call up the appropriate file, and think: EXECUTE. You hear the machinery in your shop begin the process of wood selection as you drift off to sleep. The next morning you walk out to the finishing enclosure. It has automatically vented, and the UV finish that was applied is hard as a rock.…

Easier way to hand-cut mortises When chopping mortises by hand, beginners often find it difficult to maintain precise control of the chisel. The result is a mortise that is incorrectly sized, with walls that are out of square. To help them correct this, I teach the following method. It starts in the usual way, with sharply scored lines made with a marking knife and marking gauge. But then you define those lines further by chiseling shallow ramps leading up to each line. The next step is to clean out the space between the lines with a small router plane set for a 1⁄16-in.-deep cut. This leaves short mortise walls. Use those as a guide for the rest of the process, resting your chisel against them as you chop out the…

JIGS Mortising jig offers easy clamping and quick setup WITH THE HELP OF YOUR OWN PLUNGE ROUTER and router bits, this cleverly engineered jig from Woodpeckers will cut beautiful mortises up to ½ in. thick and 3½ in. wide. The router is guided by a bushing that is supplied with the kit. Setup is very easy. The vertical clamping face has a grid of dovetail-shaped grooves for use with Match-Fit-style F-clamps (sold separately). Woodpeckers also sells little clamp handles for making your own fences for repeat positioning. The system works great. Once the workpiece is clamped in place, setting up the jig for a specific mortise is just as easy. You slide the top of the jig fore and aft to position the mortise on the thickness of the part,…

While working at Berea College I became fascinated by the prevalence of handmade ladderback chairs in the area. I began taking trips into the eastern Kentucky foothills to seek out more chairs and their makers. That led to my love of the chairs, their history, the people keeping the tradition alive, and to writing Backwoods Chairmakers: In Search of the Appalachian Ladderback Chairmaker. Ladderback chairs, using the most basic definition, have horizontal slats across the back that loosely resemble a ladder. They are often post-and-rung construction. The form can be traced back to Europe, with paintings depicting versions of the chair beginning during the Dark Ages. A variety of American ladderback When I think of the ladderback, three American chair forms come to mind: early New England ladderbacks, the Shaker…