A Hand Drill Still Beats Cordless for Small Holes
I remember standing in a workshop back in '84, watching a young lad wrestle with a heavy cordless drill, swearing as he blew a hole straight through a piece of seasoned oak. He was fighting the machine, trying to force it to do what it wasn't meant to do, while I stood there with a […]
A Table Saw for a One Car Garage
I remember standing in a cramped workshop back in the eighties, surrounded by more dust than actual timber, trying to make sense of a massive, cast-iron beast that took up every square inch of floor space. I spent more time fighting the machine's footprint than I did actually cutting wood, and it taught me a […]
Getting a Carcass Square and Keeping It
I remember a lad I taught back at the college, a bright enough boy, but he spent three hours fighting a router to get a clean line on a side panel, only to end up with a splintered mess that looked like it’d been chewed by a dog. He thought the more expensive machinery he […]
Mitre Saw Accuracy Out of the Box
Most of the "expert" guides you’ll find online about how to review a mitre saw are a load of rubbish. They’ll spend twenty minutes droning on about Bluetooth connectivity, LED lighting, or how many lumens the workspace gets, as if you’re setting up a film studio instead of a workshop. They treat these machines like […]
Dust Control at Three Budgets
I spent thirty years watching lads plug in massive, expensive extraction units only to find themselves still coughing their lungs out ten minutes later. They think if they buy a machine with enough horsepower, they’ve solved the problem, but they’re just moving the mess around. Most of these modern gadgets are built to be replaced, […]
Testing Whether Your Square Is Square
I remember a lad back in my teaching days, a bright enough boy, but he spent three hours fighting a joint that wouldn't close because he was relying on a cheap, stamped-metal square he'd picked up for a few quid. He kept blaming his saw and his chisel, but the truth was simpler: his reference […]
Whether a Track Saw Replaces a Table Saw
I spent thirty years on site and another ten in the classroom, and if there’s one thing that gets my goat, it’s the way modern tool reviews read like a bloody sales brochure. You’ll see some lad on a screen talking about "cutting-edge ergonomics" or "unmatched precision metrics," but he’s never actually had to fight […]
Why a Knife Line Beats a Pencil Line
I spent thirty years watching apprentices reach for a marking gauge or a mechanical pencil the moment they needed to layout a joint, thinking it would save them time. They’d spend an hour fighting a loose fit or a wandering saw line, all because they were too impatient to learn how to use a marking […]
Hanging a Door With Even Gaps
Most people think hanging a door is just a matter of driving a few screws into a frame and hoping for the best, but they’re usually wrong. I spent forty years on sites watching lads rush the job with heavy power drills, only to end up with a door that sticks, groans, or swings shut […]
Insulating Without Trapping Damp
I spent twenty years thinking a heavy-duty heater was the answer to a freezing morning in the shed, but I was just throwing money into a drafty hole. You can buy the most expensive electric radiator on the market, but if you haven't figured out how to insulate a workshop properly, you're just trying to […]