Workshop Projects and Honest Tool Reviews
A Short History of the Bench Vise: From Blacksmith Leg Vise to Machinist Workhorse There’s a twelve-dollar cast-iron vise sitting in my garage right now, painted industrial green, that I pulled from an estate sale years ago. When I brought it home, rust and decades of shop grime covered everything—I couldn’t make out the casting … Read more
Garrett Dunn · July 27, 2026
Most woodworkers treat card scrapers as optional luxury tools, but they’re actually solving a problem sandpaper can’t—and once you understand the difference, you’ll stop wasting time chasing tear-out on figured wood. I spent years convinced sandpaper was the complete answer until a stubborn piece of curly walnut forced me to try something different. A $6 … Read more
Garrett Dunn · July 26, 2026
At 3/16 of an inch, the deflection on my first attempt at a work surface was enough to wreck every square frame I tried to assemble on top of it. That gap—barely visible to the naked eye—proved costly in time and materials before I scrapped the design entirely and started over with proper dimensioning and … Read more
Garrett Dunn · July 25, 2026
Want to know why your homemade steel fire pit ends up looking like it melted after one season? Uneven heat distribution across a metal surface that’s too thin and poorly supported. That is exactly what happened to mine, twice, before I finally figured out what actually stops the warping. What’s on my bench: The welded … Read more
Garrett Dunn · July 24, 2026
I grabbed what looked like a solid deal on a vintage hand plane at an auction — paid decent money for it, took it home, sharpened the iron until it could slice arm hair, and watched it chatter and dig in on every single stroke. Weeks of troubleshooting later, I discovered the sole had a … Read more
Garrett Dunn · July 24, 2026
You’ll find conflicting advice online about workholding: some folks swear that a quality vise solves every clamping problem, while others insist you need a Swiss Army knife collection of clamps and fixtures. The first camp is wrong, and here’s why — a vise is brilliantly specialized, which means it’s terrible at everything else. Once you … Read more
Garrett Dunn · July 23, 2026
During last January, my garage temperature dropped enough that I realized something I’d overlooked for years: a crusty bench vise buried under sawdust and old rags actually worked better than the shiny one hanging next to it. That discovery came from pulling it out to use for a quick metal job, and when I finally … Read more
Garrett Dunn · July 22, 2026
Manufacturer documentation won’t mention what happens to cast iron surfaces in a two-car garage with inconsistent climate control and woodworking dust in the air. The spec sheets assume controlled storage. They don’t account for the reality of a hobbyist’s working environment — where your table saw sits next to a door that opens and closes … Read more
Garrett Dunn · July 21, 2026
The moment I pressed the start button on my MIG welder three years back, something felt immediately wrong — not a spark or a smell, but the solid *clunk* of the main house breaker slamming off. Not just the garage circuit. The whole house went dark. My neighbor’s porch light cut out mid-flicker. That instant … Read more
Garrett Dunn · July 20, 2026
Most shop hobbyists convince themselves that short bursts of noise won’t cause lasting damage. It’s the assumption that wrecks hearing. I learned this the hard way — an audiologist found I’d already lost roughly 15% of my high-frequency range by age 34, despite only working in my two-car garage shop for a dozen years. Angle … Read more
