Tips & Techniques

Sometimes the dirt that has accumulated in a crack just won’t budge when I try to suck it up with my vacuum’s crevice tool. In these cases, I tape a…

When I’ve needed to remove an old bathtub drain, I’ve found that the center crossbars on about half of them are missing as a result of corrosion. Without the crossbars,…

Lower your risk for injury when adjusting router collets with this quick tip.

When I started designing a new fence for my house on Oahu, I couldn’t stop thinking about the high groundwater level and the termites. I want the things I build…

As soon as my hands get dirty on a job site, it seems like my smartphone starts to ring. To keep from getting it dirty, too, I started keeping it…

Use bolts dipped in wood preservative to coat drill holes and prevent rot.

Here’s a variation on the common scribing technique of transferring the contours of a wall to the edge of a countertop with a pencil. As shown in the drawing below,…

The pleated filter on a shop vacuum can get thoroughly clogged. Cleaning one of those filters, which I do with compressed air and a small screwdriver, is a dirty and…

When painting with a roller, it is frustrating to have loose roller-cover fuzz ruin a nice finish. This is especially likely with cheaper roller covers, but even the best ones…

We usually build custom homes, but recently, our crew had a different kind of job: replacing 5000 sq. ft. of vertical wood siding with fiber-cement siding on our local firehouse.…