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“Cruiser” was a logger’s dog, and a tough-looking Bulldog at that. In the forests along Hood Canal where he died 75 years ago, he could have been little else, as a timber cruiser is the woodsman who ranges out ahead of a logging crew to select and mark the trees to be harvested. His grave...

Grow, mill and airdry enough lumber, plus restore several old boats and you eventually get to see it all, so I’ve saved some examples of pest damage to show you what’s what, what’s bad, what’s not, what you can do about it, and some why’s and wherefores. I’ll start with the worst. Brown Rot...

Jorgenson, the heavy-duty cast iron and steel American clamp popular with boatbuilders.

Ever have to scribe fit a kitchen cabinet to fit a wavy and out-of-plumb wall? How about fitting a bulkhead or partition-wall panel into the inside hull of a yacht or ship? Can you scribe fit a curve as high as 7 feet and as deep as 3 feet? And in a space where nothing is square, little is...

The first storm of the year with 4 inches of rain gave me an excuse to get under cover for a day and make a taller horse for saw filing. Either I’m getting taller or my eyes are getting worse, and the horse I copied from one of my uncle’s and have been using for almost 40 years now is a bit too...

A 6-dollar flea market beater? Yes, but this one is a Disston Acme 120, originally a cabinetmaker’s finish saw tapered and hardened to run without set, and one of Disston’s finest. You can’t buy a new Western hand saw of this quality today at any price. So let’s see if it can be given another...

From retired shipwright Dave Fleming: "Twas only a kit of carpenter's tools We were chancing off that night. The man who owned the tools was there A carpenter whose hair was white. To draw the stubs until the winning share Would place the tools within another's care. Aye! Only a kit of...

The best Western and Japanese handsaws are quite thin yet in competent hands won’t kink in a cut, and the spring steel they are made from is tempered to allow sharpening with files. They are usually taper ground in two dimensions, so the blade’s cutting edge is thicker than the back, and both...

I gave my heirloom Stanley #60 ½ away to the oldest boy awhile back thinking my larger Stanley #65 alone would suffice, and miss not having a small plane for the apron pocket. So for 60 bucks at auction I bought some antique tool dealer’s collection of rejects… lesser planes, a minor chip...