In “Shaker Blanket Chest,” the cover story for the October 2013 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine, Megan Fitzpatrick builds a near-reproduction of an unusual blanket chest made at Union Village, now housed at White Water Shaker Village in southern Ohio. It uses half-blind dovetails on all corners, and has more in common with a typical sugar chest than most Shaker blanket chests. Andrew Lunn helps you discover what really matters when choosing a handsaw in “Hang with a Saw Maker.” Learn how simple carvings can transform scraps into a 17th-century work of art in “Joined (& Adorned) Bookstand” by Peter Follansbee. In “Dutch Tool Chest,” Christopher Schwarz brings you a traditional traveling chest that is faster and easier to build than a floor chest. Toshio Odate journies to his own past as well as the history of his native Japan to produce a k?shi-do – sliding latticed doors traditionally used in temples – that he first built as an apprentice in 1950s.
In this month’s Tool Test, we review revived joinery tools from France in “Liogier Floats,” as well as the “Milwaukee ‘101N1’ Ratchet Multi-bit Driver” and the "JET 719200 Variable-spped Wood Lathe.”
In this month’s Design Matters, learn woodworking “Sketching Strategies” from George R. Walker. Robert W. Lang shows you how “The Mighty Compass” is the solution to many layout and construction problems in Woodworking Essentials. In Arts & Mysteries, Adam Cherubini writes thattoday’s drilling bits have nothing on historical practice in “Boring in the 18th Century.” Bob Flexner delivers a “Brief History of HVLP,” which was influenced by vacuum cleaners, in Flexner on Finishing. Finally in End Grain, Glen Hart draws from his career as a piano tuner and repairer to argue against hyper-detailed cutlists in “In Tune with Woodworking.”