Workshop Projects and Honest Tool Reviews
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 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 15, 2026
My neighbor stopped by the garage last month and asked why I was spending ten minutes touching up a chisel when I could just grab a sharper one from the bin. It’s a fair question—one I would’ve asked myself years ago. But the answer is exactly why I built a dedicated sharpening station, even though … Read more
Garrett Dunn · June 30, 2026
Hanging on my shop wall is a photograph of a layout scribe I destroyed during year two—the tip snapped clean off because I’d miscalculated a line by 3mm, squinting under a single fluorescent tube mounted dead center in the ceiling. That broken tool sits there as a reminder that every mistake I made during those … Read more
How to Mount a Bench Vise So It Actually Holds: Bolts, Height, and Overhang I’ve seen it a hundred times: someone restores a beautiful old vise, polishes the ductile iron, gets the jaws smooth, threads the handle like butter—then bolts it to a bench with three lag screws and wonders why it twists under load. … Read more
