In restaurant kitchens, you are likely to see plastic cutting boards used. They are color-coded and used for a specific cutting purpose: vegetables on one, raw chicken on another, cooked chicken on a third, then fish, raw meat, cooked meat, …
These are the days of manufactured this and engineered that. We see plant-based burgers and sausages at the market, engineered to look, feel, and taste like meat. It doesn’t stop there, though, as news recently has included stories about manufactured …
We know oak, and we like oak for certain projects. Where I live is not heavily oak country – maples, both swamp and sap maples, rule the area. We like maple, too, but today we’ll discuss oak, and in particular, …
Delving into the realm of the most expensive wood types unveils a world rich with unique characteristics and unmatched beauty. These wood species, prized for their incredibly high wood density and uniquely colored grains, are often used to create some …
Have you ever used a piece of birch wood (solid wood) in a woodworking project? Or are you more familiar with birch plywood, whether all birch or with a birch top veneer? If you have used solid wood in a …
We have mentioned before that we are not wood carvers, but we have friends who are. When we have questions about carving, we turn to them and follow their advice. In order to answer the question of this article, we …
Most of us are familiar with cedar wood and its various uses. Perhaps we use aromatic red cedar to build a clothes closet or put a cedar block or a bag of cedar chips in the closet both for its …
Cedar wood is known for its bug-repelling properties, and several varieties are commonly used in woodworking projects where this benefit is desired. Each of these cedar wood types has unique qualities, but they all share the natural ability to repel …
We’ve written about aspen wood in a past article when we determined whether aspen was a hardwood or a softwood. It was in that article that we first used the word “dendrologist,” which at that time was a new word for …
We recently wrote an article about painting cedar wood white. While we wonder why anyone would want to since cedar is a beautiful wood on its own, we had been asked, and so we answered. Everyone walks their own woodworking …
The white picket fence was always a part of the American home ownership dream. It wasn’t meant to keep pesky animals out, animals that might feast on your flowers or lawn; it was meant to put a finishing touch on …
A while back, we wrote a piece about poplar wood and asked whether poplar is stronger than pine. We will not repeat our answer here, but we did provide some helpful information about poplar in the woodworking shop. That piece …
There has been an unusual trend of late in the food e-zines I subscribe to and read each day, one that does not make a lot of sense to me. Perhaps you have read about or heard of butter boards. …
While we have moved away somewhat from default staining our woodworking projects, turning instead to wood oils or products like Rubio Monocoat, we still will occasionally use a wood stain as part of finishing the project. Stains come in a …
We’re so lucky to have so many different kinds of woods available to us to work within our shop. Supply chains have recovered somewhat from the disarray caused by the COVID pandemic, and lumber yards and specialty wood shops both …
We will admit that we are not wood carvers. We love working with wood, of course, but our woodworking is in the making and building of things – desks and bed frames for the kids, outdoor decks, cutting boards, and …
I know a little bit about maple trees. I live in the mountains of western Massachusetts, the northern Berkshires, and my property is surrounded by a lot of swamp maple, which is a dense wood. One of the trees is …
There have been plenty of movies featuring a dual personality character, and maybe you have seen some of them: “Sybil,” “The Three Faces of Eve,” or even “Psycho.” To our best knowledge, though, there has never been a movie about …