Finishing can be such a tricky part of woodworking.  Will the piece be subject to a lot of handling? How easy do you want the clean up? Will the piece be exposed to water? Will it be handled by infants or very young children?

And then there is the application method. For most woodworkers, we got started brushing finishes found in the local home improvement center. But, as our skills evolved, we found so many other ways to apply the different finishes we experienced.

Today, let us know what your favorite method of finish application is – regardless of the finish material being used.

Vintage Saw’s beginner’s saw filing primer

Old hand saws are great tools. They were built to work hard and give years of outstanding service.  Only, of course, when they are properly sharpened.  And, somewhere along the line, woodworkers went from sharpening their own saws to relying on shipping their prized tools out to be sharpened.

To help get sawyers back to sharpening their own saws, the folks at Vintage Saws have prepared this very detailed page about the process. From understanding saw tooth geometry to process of straightening, jointing and filing the teeth, users can go step-by-step from dull and lifeless tools to ‘sticky sharp’ teeth that cut like a dream.

Even if you don’t want to sharpen your own saws, this page will at least give you a good introduction to saws and how they work.

I’m currently in the middle of a project, and I needed to build a set of inset frame and panel doors. Time to break out the cope and stick door frame bits, right?

Not so fast, bub. I thought this project would look better with some mitered door frames instead of the plain old plain old. To make this happen, I reached back for a trick I had used on the first project I built with doors – a mitered door frame.

As you can guess, each of the four sides of the door are joined at the corner with a 45 degree miter joint. A few benefits of building a door this way are that you don’t have to buy specialized router bits to do the joinery – a table saw, miter saw, hand saw and miter box or any other method you use to make crisp, accurate 45 degree cuts will fill the bill. Also, if you want to rout special features into the face of the panels (Maybe a bead on the inside edge and other fancy molding profiles), when you cut the miters, the design will wrap all the way around the frame. Also, if you carefully measure the inside opening, the long side of each mitered piece will be the exact measurement of the opening you are trying to fill. No crazy math with subtracting style width and adding on tenon length.

The downsides? Your miters have got to be very accurate, or you are going to spend a lot of time and use a lot of wood putty to make the piece look good. Also, miter joints are very weak when compared with other traditional joints – and they slip like crazy when you try to glue them up. That’s why some method of reinforcement when building a mitered door frame is a must. And, if you have to fine-tune the door to fit the opening, you have to remove equal amounts from each side to maintain that crisp miter point (you can fudge a little, but not too much).

For my doors, I milled a piece of tiger maple for the door panel and milled up the door frame pieces out of walnut. After plowing a groove in the edge of the frame pieces (using my table saw blade and moving the rip fence to center the groove) and mitering them to size, I laid everything out on my bench. It looked pretty good. After I rounded over the inside edges of the panel, I moved to the next step.

For reinforcement, I went with a pair of dowels in each corner. I could have gone with biscuits, pocket screws, splines or the like, but I have my fancy Joint Genie dowel joint jig, and it took mere minutes to get things lined up.  Notice how I kept the dowel holes away from the outside of the miter, lest I drill all the way through the board. I was going to slather on the glue really well, and I knew the dowels were going to hold really well.

Of course, when you are assembling a frame using dowels, you should join two opposite corners together first, and then bring those two halves together… don’t ask me how I came across this valuable piece of information…

The result? Not too shabby. The door needed some sanding to even things out and get the glue marks off of it, but, all in all, it wasn’t a bad little door to work on.

What is it a door to? Well, you are going to have to stay tuned… I should have the entire project put together this weekend, and you’ll see it this coming Monday…

When I was looking for a car to replace my old minivan last year, someone at my office suggested that I check out Car and Driver magazine to see what they had to say about my choices. After all, it’s a great resource for all things automotive.

Unfortunately, they also have a bunch of articles and reviews about powerful sports cars. Before long, I was drooling over the muscular exotic beauties. Their sleek styling. Their tremendous power to weight ratios. Their ability to sit in the corners and ride them like they are on rails.

When I did purchase my new car, it wasn’t anything like I had fantasized about and my dreams were thwarted again.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t get to handle the corners. In fact, I have a fast, nimble set of tools that allows me to ride right on the edge of my projects and leave me breathless.  They are my Lee Valley cornering tools.

These little babies are very handy.  Before I had them, I used to do a number of different things to round over the edges of my projects. I would sometimes break out the random orbit sander and do the deed that way. The problem with this method was that I could round some areas more than others – it was difficult to control. Or, I could use hand-held sandpaper, which was great. But, it could take some time to get everything rounded over, and I was back to the troubles I had with the random orbit sander – I could have uneven round overs.

When I really wanted to get everything identical, I would break out my router. But, that was a little bit of a pain in the butt to get everything set up, break out all of my safety gear and dust collection. And, if the piece was small, it was tough to balance the router on it, and I might have to shift to the table-based router. This seemed like overkill.

These babies didn’t cost too much (about $25 for the set) and have tools to create a 1/16″ and a 1/8″ round over. The 1/16″ model is great for just breaking the edge of your projects.  If you want to go for the larger radius, the recommendation is to start with the smaller model then move to the larger.

Their unique look may make you wonder how they are used, but they couldn’t be any easier. There is a groove on the bottom of the curve that registers right on the edge of the board.  These tools cut on both the pull and push strokes, but after getting a few sharp splinters shoved into the tips of my fingers while pushing, I’d recommend that you stick to the pull. A few quick strokes and your edge is perfectly rounded over.

These tools not only cut with the grain, but – when kept sharp – can cut across the grain as well.  As with any other work across end grain, it’s best to work from both sides to the middle to prevent any blow-out on the tool’s exit.

You should also work to read the grain direction of the board you are working on. The cuts are silky-smooth when you pull with the grain, but the tool can raise an ugly splinter when pulling against the grain. Always start with the smaller tool and light passes, adjusting your direction based on performance.

Sure, these cornering tools are specialty tools, but after one try with them, your heart will be pounding as you watch them handle the corners.

So, yesterday I got some woodworking done. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the kind of woodworking I could do at the workbench. Instead, it took the shape of helping to install about 150 feet of privacy fence in my yard and my neighbor’s yard.

After about five hours of digging post holes, lifting fence panels and screwing them into place, a neighbor noticed I had left a bit of a gap between panels and asked, “Gosh, Tom, as a woodworker, I expected you would be into absolute precision and making this perfect.”

This week’s question was a natural follow up to that… have you found that your skills and precision in building woodworking projects translating into improving your skills in other DIY applications such as carpentry?

Wood Magazine’s free shop organization plans

Woodworking is an awesome hobby. Until you realize what kind of disorganized mess you can create.  There are chisels and saws to keep from banging together, dulling their cutting edges.  Hardware to keep sorted by purpose and size. Specialty sawblades for your band, table, circular and other saws. Racks to store the lumber you are storing for that special project. Stands to hold the tools you aren’t using. Sandpaper storage. And, what’s up with all of those clamps? It’s enough to drive you crazy… if you don’t have a plan.

That’s exactly what Wood Magazine is offering at their shop organization plans page. Get a whole passel of free storage plans featured over the years in the magazine that can take your shop from a hot mess to a cool place to hang out and get work done. Not only can you safely store all your things, but you can find them easily, maximizing your shop time.

Can you believe it?  Get Woodworking week is now less than one month away!  I’m so excited, I can hardly contain myself…

Well, maybe I need to learn how to contain myself just a little bit. Anyway, I wanted to get you into the mood by listing a few resources you might want to check out for woodworkers just starting out.  At these sites, you will find all sorts of advice, plans, tool reviews and technique articles to get you motivated to get into the shop and try your hand at woodworking.

Wood Magazine’s Basic Built Series: This is is Wood Magazine’s initiative to provide simple, yet high-quality woodworking projects that can be completed with a minimum number of tools and skills. This site covers a wide array of topics – from how to find furniture worthy wood to where to find the best deals on tools. The inexpensive projects offered run the gamut from shop fixtures to tables, seating and casework.

Popular Woodworking’s I Can Do That: In every issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine, the “I Can Do That” column features projects that can be completed by any woodworker with a modest (but decent) kit of tools in less than two days of shop time, and using raw materials that are available at any home center. Be sure to download their .PDF manual first before you get a start on things.

New To Woodworking:  Marc Spagnuolo, the Wood Whisperer, understands that it’s OK to be a Noob. That’s why he put together this impressive site for the up and coming woodworker. He’s sorted through his site and found the best articles on shop set up, technique and projects with build-along videos.

NewWoodworker.com: Tom Hintz is no longer a new woodworker, but, believe me, his site will help steer any new woodworker in the right direction. Before you buy a new tool or select a spot for your shop, be sure to pay this site a visit and soak in the knowledge.

Now, this is by no means a complete list of sites. In fact, if you are aware of any others, be sure to list them in the comments below this article. This way, I can add them to this list to build a resource of sites geared toward the new woodworker.

Also, be sure to check the blogs listed to the right of this post. Each of those are the sites of bloggers I have been in touch with – either in person or online – who do some outstanding work.  I have asked for their help for the week, and most of them have said they are game. As they post articles on their sites, I will also link to them on a dedicated get woodworking page on my site.

The best part about Get Woodworking Week is that we’re going to make an active effort to get folks off the sideline and help them find the sawdust in their veins.  We’ll all be better off with new folks who get out there and show us what they’ve got.