A Black & Decker Workmate makes a great shop helper, but how often have you wished its jaws would stretch a little farther to hold that wide workpiece for sanding, drilling, or routing?

If you'd like to increase the holding capacity of your Workmate, just add extender blocks to the work surface. From 3/4" plywood, cut four 1-3/4x8" pieces. Bore 3/4" holes in both ends of each piece and glue a 1-1/4" length of 3/4" dowel in one end, as shown below. Insert Workmate dogs in the remaining holes. Now, your Workmate will hold a workpiece as wide as 23". You can make the extenders even longer for added working capacity.

--Robert K. Graul, Alton, Ill.
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Clamping a large glue-up with pipe clamps can turn into a wrestling match. The task becomes much easier if you secure the clamps to a clamping table, but finding a way to attach the clamps to the table can become quite a battle, too.

Plastic holders for 3/4" plastic plumbing pipe, such as the ones shown right, provide an inexpensive, effective solution. Steel 3/4" pipe snaps right in, and the holder has enough grip to keep the clamp from tipping over when you lay your glued-up stock in place. Mount the holders on two 3/4x1" strips, spaced to meet your needs, and then attach the strips to a piece of plywood to make a portable clamping table. Available from hardware stores, homecenters, and plumbing shops, the pipe holders ordinarily cost about 15 cents apiece.

--H. Dick Reynolds, Jr., Mediapolis, Iowa.
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You've accumulated so many benchtop tools now that you can't fit them all on top of your bench. You always can store them somewhere else, but how do you keep a tool solidly and safely in place on your bench when it's time to use it?

Cut a 3/4" plywood base for each of your benchtop tools and fasten a 2x4" cleat to the front edge. Store the tools and their bases out of the way. When you're ready to use one, place it on the bench and clamp the cleat in the vise.

--John Hogsett, Beaver, Pa.
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Clean crosscuts often prove elusive with a hand-held circular saw. It's almost impossible to push a saw perfectly straight, and the offcuts usually fall away leaving raggedy-looking splinters.

Make your own low-cost cutoff jig. Construct the base by gluing and screwing a pair of parallel 1x2s to the top of a piece of 3/4"x12"x4' particleboard. Attach aluminum angle bars at 90° to the 1x2s, and space them the width of your saw's base plate. Adjust the saw so it cuts through the 1x2s, and makes a shallow kerf in the base.

To use, simply clamp the saw jig to a workbench, slip your workpiece under the aluminum guide bars, and cut. (If your saw rides rough on the guide bars, a thin film of paraffin wax will help it slide more easily.)

--Michael Covington, Athens, Ga.
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Strap clamps often exert more pressure near their ratcheting mechanisms than in the middle of the straps. This uneven pressure can contribute to weak glue joints -- particularly on many-sided projects.

Your can distribute that pressure more evenly by positioning the clamps opposite each other, as shown in the drawing.

--From the WOOD magazine shop
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A regular-length (5' or 6') workbench is fine for most jobs. Sometimes, though, a longer one is handy, especially when you're working with sheet materials or long boards.

Build a sliding extension for your bench. Construct it as shown below from plywood and 2x4s or adapt it to match your bench design. Make the sliding panel so it will be flush with the benchtop when closed. For a heavy-duty extension, add a provision for auxiliary legs on the slider.

--Bill Selkirk, Plattsburgh, N.Y.
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When you have a small amount of stenciling to do, it's tempting to avoid the expense of buying a stencil brush by daubing the paint on with a standard brush. Trouble is, an ordinary brush isn't stiff enough for stenciling. Then, too, you could end up ruining a good brush that way.

Before you try to stencil with your standard paintbrush, wrap masking tape around the bristles. The tightly bundled bristles will be stiff enough for stenciling. The tape will also keep the bristles from splaying out and breaking off. After the job, simply remove the tape. Your brush will be unharmed.

--Barbara Maxwell, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
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Drilling a series of accurately spaced holes can be grueling. Even a small misalignment becomes a glaring error in a row.

Line up those holes smartly with a simple spacing jig for your drill press. Attach a fence (thicker than the material you'll be drilling) to the wooden auxiliary table of your drill press. Drill out the end hinge hole on the long arm of a T-hinge to accept a machine screw the diameter of the hole you'll be drilling.

Now, secure the hinge to the fence top so the distance from the fence to the screw equals the distance from the edge of the board to the hole location. Clamp the jig to the drill-press table so the distance from the bit to the screw is the same as the space between the holes, and the distance from the bit to the fence equals the distance from the edge of the board to the hole.

With the jig in place, measure, mark, and drill the first hole. Now, slide the workpiece along the fence. The screw will fall into the hole to stop the board in position for the next hole. Repeat to drill the rest of the holes.

--Ed Abrams, Greenville, N.Y.
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Stock wood-dowel diameters are often slightly too large for the holes that you've drilled.

To ensure a snug fit--and avoid the possibility of splitting your workpiece--chuck the dowel into a drill press or portable drill and sand the dowel as it spins. To maintain a consistent diameter (and keep your fingers cool), move the sandpaper up and down the dowel as you sand. Don't oversand!

--From the WOOD® magazine shop
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An easy way to make a pivot or hinge (as for a folding lawn chair) is to drill through the pieces and fasten them with a bolt and nut. But metal wears the wood down, leaving a sloppy fit.

Separate the wood and the metal with plastic tubing. Select tubing that fits the bolt snugly. Then, drill through the wooden pieces to fit the tubing's outside diameter. Cut a length of tubing as a bushing for each wooden part, and assemble the parts as shown above.

--Bob Kettler, Cincinnati, Ohio
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It's hard to get wood plugs to fit snugly into the holes you drill for them. Also, when boring holes for tapered candles, a standard spade bit will not produce a snug fit. The holes will be either too large at the bottom or too small for the base to be inserted properly.

Grind a slight taper on the cutting edges of some spade bits. With these tapered bits, plugs will fit into their holes like a cork into a bottle. Just a few strokes of the file or a pass or two over the grinder will suffice. Make sure both sides have identical tapers.

For candles, modify a spade bit of the appropriate size--15/16" matches standard tapered candles. Scribe lines on the bit so it tapers from a 15/16" diameter to 3/4" as shown below.

--John Wolf, St. Joseph, Mich.
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Panels constructed of hardwood-faced plywood have pretty faces, but the laminated edges simply are not presentable on cabinetry or other projects. Veneering is a possible solution--if you have the materials and tools to do the job

To disguise the plywood layers, cut beveled strips from the material with your tablesaw or radial-arm saw set at 45° as shown in Drawing A. Make a second cut perpendicular to the first one as shown, and discard the resulting scrap. Finally, glue the first strip in place as shown in Drawing B. This procedure also extends the face-grain pattern onto the edge. You also can use this technique to disguise freshly sawed edges on weathered barn boards used for picture frames.

--Howard Pieplow, West Allis, Wis.
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Attempting to draw large circles perfectly with just a length of string can transform even the coolest woodworker into a muttering grump.

For a trusty compass that makes it easy to draw circles of many sizes, drill 5/64" holes at every 1/8" mark in the first inch of a metal yardstick. Now, drill 5/64" holes at every inch on the rest of the yardstick's length. This also works fine in a wooden yardstick. Just space the holes 1/4" apart in the first inch for strength.

To draw a circle with a 27-3/4" radius, for example, tap a 19- or 20-gauge brad through the drilled hole at the 1/4" mark. Next, insert a pencil point into the 28" hole (28"-1/4"=27-3/4") and draw your circle.

--Walter S. Thomas, Jr., Drexel Hill, Pa.
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Drawer bottoms must remain free-floating (not glued to the drawer frame) to allow for expansion and contraction due to changes in humidity. But often the bottom will develop a rattle.

Apply a fillet of silicone sealer along the dadoed joints where the drawer bottom fits into the frame. The flexible silicone sealant will silence the rattle, yet still allow the drawer to expand and contract as it needs to.

--From the WOOD® magazine shop
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Clamping any long, narrow object on edge requires a door buck or other specialized equipment that most home woodworkers just don't own.

You can clamp large objects vertically with these two right-angle jigs. Glue and screw together these jigs from 3/4" plywood. Place threaded inserts in your workbench at regular intervals, and fasten each jig to the workbench with a thumbscrew and washer. Just secure your workpiece to the front of the jigs with C-clamps, and you'll be ready to work.

--Bob Shermer, Los Osos, Calif.
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Exposed handsaw blades are a triple threat: They can injure careless hands, they inadvertently mar wood, and they damage easily.

The plastic spines from business-report covers (sold at office-supply stores) perform superbly as blade guards.

--Carl Dorsch, Oakdale, Pa.
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Before a project reaches completion, it can suffer a lot of dents and dings in the shop. Cabinets or bookcases built of plywood often end up with chipped face veneer at the bottom from being shoved around on the shop floor.

Attach scrapwood blocks to the bottom corners of your project with finishing nails or small screws. Leave the temporary feet on until you've finished the project and moved it to its final location.

--From the WOOD® magazine shop
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Squaring up a tilting table on a drill press so it's perpendicular to a drill bit can prove tedious.

Instead of using a square, a small length of coat hanger will do the job quickly and accurately. Cut a length of wire approximately 6" long, and bend right angles in it as shown. Don't worry if the angles aren't exactly 90°. Chuck one end into the drill and tighten. Raise the table so it touches the wire. Slowly rotate the drill chuck 180° by hand so you can detect any high or low spots in the table.

--John Clark, Cuddebackville, N.Y.
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Even though you hammer carefully, your nail occasionally splits the wood

Blunt the tip of the nail by tapping it with your hammer to let the nail hit its way into the wood rather than part the material. Or, chuck a properly sized nail into a drill (you may need to cut off the nailhead), predrill holes, and then hammer and set the nails.

--From the WOOD magazine shop
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If you've ever used a scrollsaw to cut intricate pieces from stock 1/8" or thinner, you've probably noticed that it's hard to negotiate sharp curves and still stay on the line. It's also tough to get a clean cut.

It's easier to make tight cuts in stock at least 1/2" thick because the blade cuts less aggressively, giving you better control. Also, it's easier to control the stock with your fingers. So, tape several pieces of thin material together and stack-cut them. Need only one? Tape the thin stock to a scrap of 1/2" knot-free softwood.

--From the WOOD magazine shop
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