Workshop Setup & Tool Maintenance

Firing up your new lathe for the first time? This guide will give you some tips and techniques to help you get the most mojo from your machine. You'll learn about safety, maintenance, turning tools and lathe accessories—all topics that will enhance your turning experience, and the results at the end!

Considering the wide variety of Rockler T-Track accessories available, the utility of the Rockler T-Track Table Top is virtually limitless. Clamp objects at the edge of the table, in the center of the table and anywhere in between for fast, stable sawing, sanding, routing or assembly. Use it with any of our many T-Track Hold Downs, or with our Bench Cookie Work Grippers and the Bench Cookie T-Track Risers .

Once rust starts on a cast iron tabletop, is it too late to stop it?

What’s the most important thing you need for woodworking? OK, that was a trick question meant to get you guessing about tools and supplies, but the real answer is much simpler: Without wood, you can’t do much woodworking.

Having a ready supply of lumber in basic lengths and thicknesses is a basic shop staple. Lumber needs vary according to the type of woodworking you do, but how much you actually keep on hand depends on the amount of room you have in your shop and how efficiently you store it.

Let’s imagine for a moment that the old woodworking adage, “You can never have enough clamps,” isn’t true. If you really did have enough clamps, where would you put them all?

Fortunately, that’s a problem none of us will have to worry about, but what about the clamps we do have? If you’re like me, even though you don’t have enough clamps, you do have quite a lot. And with a lot of clamps of varying sizes and types, the key to storing clamps is accessibility.

Here are several clamp storage solutions.

Is it safe to put your woodworking shop in an area with a pilot light?

Whether you're planning to build your first workshop or you're looking for ideas to improve your existing workshop, our new Build Up Your Shop Guide has you covered. It's a collection of more than 50 articles, videos and free project plans that will help you make the most out of your woodworking shop space.

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