Popular Woodworking Editors' Blog

This week we enjoyed a visit from Matthew Grisley of Leigh Industries. He came in from Canada to demonstrate the company’s newest jig, the Super FMT (frame-mortise-and-tenon jig).

You remember the original FMT. To try and eliminate any mix-up between the newest FMT and the FMT the company released in the early 1990s, Leigh Industries is calling the original FMT the FMT Pro while the new version is the Super FMT.

Here’s the skinny. The Super FMT does everything the FMT Pro does at less than half the price! The Super FMT retails at $449 and the FMT Pro is sold at $929. And again, the two jigs do identical work, producing mortise-and-tenon joints and more. What’s the more? Why do you need the more?

This jig creates 70 different-size mortises and matching tenons. You can produce a mortise up to 5" in length before you have to get creative and link a couple mortises end to end to for a longer joint. Also, you can cut two or more mortises side by side if need be. And the jig works with some 40+ different routers. (You do not have to dedicate a router to this jig. On most routers, after you run through the setup, you simply pull the guide bars from the jig and your router is ready for other action. To return it to the jig, position the router, slide the guide bars in place then tighten the screws and you’re ready to work.)

If you still need the more, how about this: Leigh Industries has a template that fits both jigs and allows you to make louvered shutters, straight tenons for those who simply use the jig to cut tenons and you can cut mortises and tenons that are set 90º to the normal method that’s shown in the photo.

OK. You know that if the company produces a jig that does the same work, and the price is way less than the original jig, something had to change – but what? For starters, Leigh changed from extruded aluminum, which was completely milled by CNC machines, to steel that is stamped and created by punch presses.

The second area you’ll see changes is in clamps. The FMT Pro has cam-action speed clamps whereas the Super FMT uses an F-style clamp with a twist. The twist is an additional piece of plastic added to the clamp that is equipped with a powerful magnet. The magnet doesn’t provide the clamping power. No, it holds the clamp in position while you slide on the balance of the clamp to lock things tight – it’s a one-hand operation.

Also on the FMT Pro, the jig-body top plate slides along ways that are cam-locked when working. The Super FMT is held firm with twin twist knobs located under the router plate and the two movable plates that are part of the jig are held with rare earth magnets. Let’s tell it like it is; the magnets do not have same holding power as the cam locks, but they do the job in setup mode and you have to tighten the two knobs prior to using the jig anyway.

One other difference is in the alignment portion of the jig. The FMT Pro has a sliding centering device that retracts away from the work area when not in use. The Super FMT has a separate tool that snaps into position to allow you to set up, then it’s removed and is easily stored attached to the jig by way of a magnet (see the photo).

If you’ve been pining for an FMT to produce rock-solid mortise-and-tenon joints, but price was a concern, you have no excuses anymore. The Super FMT is a great jig. It’s easy to set up, easy to adjust, has too many possible joint sizes and can be used for more than regular mortise and tenons.

Watch a short video on the Super FMT below.

— Glen D. Huey

Friday, November 20, 2009 9:47:55 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2] 

We recently launched a new, fast way for you to get the exact project plan or article you’re looking for. It’s called WoodworkingNow – and here’s the skinny.

WoodworkingNow is a huge collection of hand-picked articles from the past decade of Popular Woodworking, and from all issues of Woodworking Magazine. You can browse the collection by sections (e.g. “Sharpening Essentials” or “Shaker Furniture Projects”). Or, you can search the entire site by keyword (be it subject or author). Then, you click the articles you want – they’re $1.99 each – and check out. Your article selections will be delivered instantly to your computer, in high-resolution PDF format – you can read it on screen, print it out to take to the shop, and save the file for future use.

Click here to browse WoodworkingNow and give it a try.

And below, you’ll find my top 6 picks.

— Megan Fitzpatrick

Fitz’s Top 6 Picks

Arts & Crafts Tool Cabinet
By Christopher Schwarz
I seem to have developed a plane problem, so I need this cabinet. There’s cubbies for planes of all sizes, hanging storage for chisels and saws, four small drawers for marking knives, dovetail gauges and the like, and two larger drawers for, well, bigger stuff. But years before I started working for the magazine, I admired this handsome piece. In my former life at our parent company, I wrote marketing materials (you know it as junk mail) for Popular Woodworking and other magazines, and I made sure this cabinet got pictured on almost every mailer. I still love it.

Pennsylvania Spice Box, Part 1 & Pennsylvania Spice Box: Inlay Door with Router (Part 2)
By Glen D. Huey
I’ve always been attracted to boxes, I like the look of 18th-century pieces and the myriad little dovetailed drawers in this piece would be great for storing jewelry (…or flash drives, paper clips and Post-It notes – I don’t have much jewelry). And if you don’t want to deal with inlay work (though the router makes it a lot easier), skip Part 2 and make a simple raised-panel door instead. This is near the top of my list of things to build.

Composing with Wood Grain
By Robert W. Lang
This, for me, is a game-changing story. I know, I know. I have three guys who give me advice on everything I build – from selecting the proper saw blade to the correct dovetail slopes to the finish. But wood selection has been a bit of a blind spot for me, no matter how much advice the guys shout out. Reading this story is what opened my eyes to the importance of choosing the right wood for the right place in a project (which won’t keep them from, uh, sharing their advice, mind you).

Creole Table
By Christopher Schwarz
My mother is an architectural historian, so I got dragged through a lot of historic house museums and antique stores when I was a kid. Yet I’d never heard of “Creole furniture” until Chris built this delicate, sinuous table. I particularly love the look of the scalloped aprons.

Chimney Cupboard
By Megan Fitzpatrick & Glen Huey

Tuesday, November 17, 2009 9:53:17 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0] 

I work among a group of tool addicts, and I fit right in because I am one too. My tool dependency manifests itself in a couple of ways; I hoard the wrenches for routers, but the real monkey on my back is layout tools. My grandfather was a tool and die maker and one of my earliest memories of him is being shown how a micrometer worked. When I was six, I really didn't care if one of the hairs on my head was thicker than a piece of paper, but as I grew older I came to appreciate good tools as well as the importance of careful and accurate layout. When it comes to drawing circles, there is no substitute for a good set of trammel points.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009 9:31:19 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1] 

Since our trip to the White Water Shaker Village, I’ve been anticipating the poplar cupboard build. The cupboard, out of the four pieces we studied, has the most need for a furniture detective; A missing crown moulding, and the fact that the cupboard base isn’t raised off the floor, caused raised eyebrows and a good deal of conversation on how the piece may have looked back in the day.

It is clear that, at one time, there was a crown moulding on the front and sides of the cupboard. Long since gone is the moulding, but 2" down the top edge there is a distinct line of demarcation in the surface finishes that shows exactly where the moulding ended. We needed a replacement design.

How do you devise a moulding design that might have been on this cupboard? Find an example on an existing piece of furniture, that’s how. But therein lies the problem. White Water was not a village that made furniture for outsiders. Pieces built in the village were made for community use, and I know of no examples of crown or cove mouldings that were used on White Water furniture. So I had to look elsewhere.

The closest Shaker community to White Water was Union Village, near Lebanon, Ohio. There are many furniture examples from Union Village, but all the pieces of Union Village furniture that I’ve found that have crown mouldings have pieces attached to the top of the case against which the moulding pushes while being nailed along the bottom edge.

There are no indications (nails, screws or otherwise) that any pieces were attached to the top of the White Water cupboard. Therefore we could only conclude that the moulding was nailed in place along its bottom edge, but stood free at the top with the exception of a few blocking pieces for support. The moulding we designed is just a cove with a wide flat area at the top edge on which we plan to scratch a hint of a line to simulate an additional piece set above the cove.

Take a look at the drawing below. You can see the cupboard with the newly designed crown moulding in place. And, you can see that one of the cupboards in the drawing has feet while the second does not. Next time I’ll explain what this is all about and show you why this became another area in need of good detective work.

— Glen D. Huey

Monday, November 16, 2009 8:54:11 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [5] 

I just finished teaching “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to my Shakespeare class, and while I find the various pairs of lovers in the play to be fairly boring, I’m enchanted by the “Rude Mechanicals” – the group of working men who perform “A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus and his love Thisbe, very tragical mirth” at the wedding celebration in Act 5. My favorite “rude mechanic” is Snug the joiner (he plays the lion), but there’s also a carpenter, Peter Quince.

Because Snug was on my mind, I asked in yesterday’s newsletter (Nov. 11, 2009) if anyone could name a literary furniture maker from fiction, poetry or drama who predates Snug (the play was first printed in a quarto edition in 1600). The prize for the earliest is one of my copies of the play (which will take me down to three).

Many of you weighed in for Noah, Joseph, Jesus and other Biblical woodworkers – but that brings up a discussion of whether the Bible is non-fiction or fiction (or poetry – and I suppose it could be argued that much of it is poetic, whether or not one categorizes it as fiction or non-fiction). That, gentle readers, is a fray I don’t want to enter!

Two readers mentioned medieval mystery plays, for those were acted by the various craft guilds (hence Shakespeare’s appropriation of “mechanicals” as his play-within-the-play actors). By the by – the craft guilds are also the origin of the title of Adam Cherubini’s Arts & Mysteries column – the “mysteries” of each guild were jealously guarded by its members.

I received several mentions of Gepetto from the Pinocchio story, Robin Hood and his gang (do bows count as furniture?), the innkeeper in “Moby Dick” (he wields a handplane at one point) and the ship’s carpenter in the same novel (he builds a coffin – which I suppose counts as the final furniture piece for many –  for Queequeg).

But the winner is Bill Seavey, with his vote for Odysseus. In Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey” (which depending on to whom one listens predates the earliest known fragments of Genesis) the title character carves a bed out of a rooted olive tree, which serves as a love test for his long-suffering wife Penelope after Odysseus returns from years of wandering, following the fall of Troy (and years of sleeping around). There was also a vote for Epeus, who builds the Trojan Horse in an earlier book of the same poem – but I don’t think a horse counts as furniture!

And for those of you who are still reading, here are two final Shakespeare-woodworking connections:

At Woodworking in America, Roy Underhill told me that his family tree has been traced back to Stratford-upon-Avon, and at least one of his ancestors was a woodworker. So it’s possible that an Underhill worked on New Place (the house Shakespeare bought in his hometown after his London success). And for the record, Roy can recite from memory far more Shakespeare than can I – and it falls trippingly from his tongue.

James Burbage, the theatre impresario in charge of the company of which Shakespeare was a shareholder (The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later known as The King’s Men), was a joiner. In 1576, he financed and built the first dedicated theatre space in London since Roman times (aptly named “The Theatre”). When he was refused renewal of his lease on the Theatre’s land, he and his crew dismantled the structure under the cover of night, and moved the timbers across the Thames, where they constructed “The Globe.”

Not asleep yet? You can read about “joint stools” and Shakespeare in an earlier post.

— Megan Fitzpatrick

Thursday, November 12, 2009 1:30:15 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [4] 

I seriously wish I could enter this sweepstakes.

If it wasn't for the "employees of F+W Media are not eligible" clause, I'd be entering daily for a chance to win enough woodworking tools and machinery to take over a large basement.

Bessey and JET are the the sponsors behind the Popular Woodworking All-Star Workshop Giveaway, and the prizes furnished are quite unbelievable. The lucky winner will receive enough JET machines to tackle massive projects as well as plenty of Bessey clamps to complete even the toughest assemblies. Click here to view the entire prize list.

Because this sweepstakes is so huge, it will be running through May 31st, 2010 – so there's plenty of time to enter.

Go to popwood.com/winshop to enter. Plus you'll get to see a very young and handsome Steve Shanesy on the homepage – definitely worth the visit in itself.

– Drew DePenning

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 10:59:21 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1] 

Sometimes being the "Back-up" pays dividends. Of the Popular Woodworking staff, I’m the back-up video guy. When it's necessary, I’m called into action.

This past week publisher Steve Shanesy called me to action. Steve picked up an old Delta Unisaw at auction. (You can read an early blog entry about his find and what the saw was used for during the last 50-plus years if you click here.) He plans to refurbish the machine and as he does, I get a good look inside, outside and upside down of the saw and the restoration process.

Along the way, Steve plans to document the work in a series of short videos that explain just what has to be done to bring this bad boy back to life. In the first installment, he does a general assessment of the machine, takes a look at the saw’s top, the fence and the motor; it’s a big honking motor! And the wear found on the wiring will make you run to the shop to check your wires. You have to see it.

To watch the first installment of the series, click here.

— Glen D. Huey

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 9:44:08 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [8] 

A large part of the appeal of Arts and Crafts style furniture is the apparent lack of decoration. The project currently on my bench, a reproduction of a Gustav Stickley No. 70 music cabinet and a detail I've borrowed from similar pieces is the reason for using the word "apparent". I've always liked this little cabinet, it's just under four feet high, and only 20 inches wide. The detail I borrowed, mitered mullions on the door, and the idea of plain, unadorned furniture is hard to reconcile. As I worked on the door last week, I came to realize that there isn't any practical reason to put a glass door on a cabinet to store sheet music, and joining the parts of the door this way is just showing off.

I've always liked this detail where the cross pieces that divide the door join the center stile with what appear to be simple miters, and it was an intriguing challenge to figure out how it was done and then to execute the joinery. I found three variations of joints on the other end, and decided to take a middle of the road approach. Some pieces I've seen are straightforward mortise and tenon joints where the mullions butt against the stiles, others have a reflection of the center stile joints, and some are made as shown above with the miter going back to the edge of the rabbet that holds the glass. I didn't like the way a full miter would encroach on the tenon, and I thought the butted shoulders looked too plain.

In an earlier blog post I wrote about making a practice joint, and I used the strategy I came up with; cutting the miter lines with a backsaw, using a router and jig to create a flat area within the cutout, and finally cleaning up the corners with a chisel. There will be an article detailing all of this in an upcoming issue of Popular Woodworking. The center door stile became more and more valuable as I cut and fit each joint, there are a lot of hours in that skinny piece of wood.


This is one of the joints ready to be glued, it looks a lot simpler when it's together, but the lap joints keep the pieces from sliding around and the shoulders behind make it strong structurally, even though it is end grain butting against long grain. There really isn't room in there for anything else. It took a boatload of clamps to hold it all together, but the glue up wasn't that bad and the completed door is pretty strong. As my boss put it "you'd have to shove somebody's head right into it to bust it."

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 8:59:11 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [3] 

I talked with a friend tonight who's never seen my house – except for the small bits of it in pictures that show up in the magazine. Apparently, he got his December 2009 issue, for which I built a Shaker-inspired bookcase. His question: "Are those really the books that are on it, or was it art-directed?" (He knows I have far too many books to not fully utilize all available shelf space.)

It was art directed. Whenever we shoot on location, we tend to tear a place apart just a wee bit, so that what shows in the magazine looks clean, organized and visually appealing. Here's how we got that opening photograph: After work the night before, I had to move out the ugly bookcase in the little adjacent hallway and pile the books from it on the dining room table. I had to sweep up the dust jackrabbits (these were no mere bunnies) that were hiding behind it. Then I rushed out to buy fresh flowers for staging.

Glen Huey helped me transport and set up the case the next day. Then I rushed around placing suitably attractive tomes just so. (Good thing my mom gave me those Harvard Classics and Masterplots!)

When Linda Watts (the art director) and Al Parrish (the photographer) arrived, they helped move both couches and a heavy coffee table/trunk out of the room. We rolled back the carpet, tried a few different "props," including my fluffy black cat Cleo, then hauled an Edwardian chair down from my third floor (I have a room up there where I stash the stuff I don't want anymore but can't seem to get rid of). That's the chair that ended up in the photo, natch. It took me another two weeks to carry it back upstairs.

Now, the new bookcase is packed full of fiction, the history section is back where it belongs (in the little hallway), and the cats are frolicking in front of the piece (OK - I tossed a handful of cat treats in front of it; even the non-staged picture is, in fact, staged. But I didn't vacuum). I'm fairly certain the only thing that was in the magazine shot that remains on the bookcase is my great-grandfather's "Big Ben" alarm clock. It was in the study, but I kinda like looking at it in the living room.

So to my friend: No, I would never willfully waste such large swathes of bookcase space, nor is my house ever as clean as it appears in photos. There would, however, be fresh flowers right now...but I left them in the refrigerator at work.

And to anyone of whom we ask the favor of shooting openers at your house: My advice is to not answer the phone.

— Megan Fitzpatrick

Monday, November 09, 2009 11:20:38 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [5] 

Editor's note: Normally we don't bombard you with commercials here on the blog, so please forgive us this brief message. We're quite proud of our "Handplane Essentials" book that came out this summer. The whole staff pulled together to put together this volume, which is a compilation of most of the stuff I've written about planes during the last 10 years. We worked nights and weekends editing and designing it. We sweet-talked our bosses into letting us use nice paper, a hardback binding and a dust jacket. We got it printed here in Ohio.

But is the content any good? We think so. We've heard from lots of readers who have been thrilled with the book. And today a reader tried to post the following review on our store's web site. Unfortunately, his review is too long to fit in our store, so I promised I'd post it here.

If you are interested in reading more about "Handplane Essentials" or ordering a copy, click here.

— Christopher Schwarz

"I am a woodworking newbie. As I started to set up my shop I found that there are quite a few critical decisions that I had to make regarding space, quality, and cost. In my case space is fixed and very limited, quality is non-negotiable. And cost, well cost is an important factor – I can’t afford to make mistakes; when I buy something it has to do the job and do it well. So I started to read and talk to people who have the wisdom of their years in the trade or hobby. I got so many contradicting opinions that the more I listened and read the more confused I got. That is when Chris Schwarz and 'Handplane Essentials' came into the picture.

"In the book, Chris helped me understand that I don’t have to be a hand tool purist, I can mix and match power tools with hand tools AND he told me how to do this. The first lessons of the book taught me what handplanes are, what they can do, what the advantages and disadvantages are over other wood smoothing techniques and power tools, what the different types of planes are, when you should use one, and finally, guidance as to which ones I should buy. I found the book to be a tutorial, a reference, and interesting reading. The book contains an unbelievable amount of knowledge written in a format that is easy to read and understand, entertaining and thorough. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn not only hand plane essentials but also wants to learn about the techniques to use to get the highest quality of your woodworking efforts.

"There is one negative. The book does not contain an index. Two months after reading the book, when I am ready to use one of the tips or other knowledge presented in the book I will have to spend hours finding the right page. To solve this problem I created a spreadsheet for those items I thought would be helpful to me. I gave a copy of the spreadsheet to the author. Perhaps he will post it on a website for you."

Larry Ercolino
Phoenixville, Penn.

Editor's note: Me again. Download Larry's spreadsheet using the link below.

Monday, November 09, 2009 12:49:35 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]