Austin’s Shop

Hand tool woodworking and other shenanigans in my home shop.

[austins-shop]

This took me a long while to read, but I finally finished The Anarchist’s Design Book by Christopher Schwarz over at Lost Art Press. It was a truly great book and was quite entertaining. Chris is a good woodworker, but is a professional writer and it shows. Many woodworking books are more like big how-to guides, this book is an adventure.

If you’re into hand tool woodworking no matter the level, I highly recommend this book.

[austins-shop]

I've been looking for an egg beater drill that was in good shape and wasn't all rusty for doing fine drilling. I looked around at eBay, but everything was either rusty or expensive, so I searched the internet and found this little guy at Lee Valley. It's not cheap, but it's a brand new tool from a reputable company.

It's small and light weight, but I find it to be really capable. It's tailored for drilling small holes, I wouldn't use it for anything larger than an eighth of an inch, but for small bits it works really well. It has two collet sizes which support very small bits. In the video I demo drilling a small hole in black cherry.

You can read more about it here.

Discover the Lee Valley Replica Egg-Beater Drill. Buy this product now on our Lee Valley online store.