Tips & Techniques

Manufacturers have come up with numerous well-designed auxiliary tables and stands for miter saws and slide compound saws. These stands, however, do not come cheap, and many of them aren't…

Teaching students to drive stakes with a sledgehammer has cost me many a handle. Those inexperienced hands mean well, but they often miss the mark and end up hitting the…

Low-expansion urethane goam, roof cement, and roof vent flashing is a better process to prevent cracking.

The drawing shows the trick we use to make sink cutouts in laminate counters. First, we draw the cutline on the counter. Then we use a spade bit to drill…

A tightly stretched string is one of the most accurate tools available for getting a straight line on a building. Most of the masons and carpenters that I've seen wrap…

We installed a fiberglass tub and then caulked its perimeters with silicone, planning never to return. Three weeks later, when the plans changed, we had to remove the tub. The…

I purchased a Porter-Cable inline detail sander to prep for painting the complicated trim on our Queen Anne Victorian. With downward pressure, the contoured rubber insert and stick-on sandpaper worked well on…

The drawing shows my method for ending a run of baseboard at locations such as open stairwells, landings or uncased corners. Instead of using the typical vertical miter detail, which…

Whenever I build decks, I place the piers and then cut posts to carry the girders that will support the deck framing. The bottoms of the girders are in the…

The cheapest extra pair of hands on our framing jobs is the truss spacer shown in the drawing. We use them in pairs to keep roof trusses the correct distance…