The router is a power tool with a flat base and a rotating blade extending past the base. The spindle may be driven by an electric motor or by a pneumatic motor. It routs an area in hard material, such as wood or plastic. Routers are used most often in woodworking, especially cabinetry. They may be handheld or affixed to router tables. Some woodworkers consider the router one of the most versatile power tools.
A saw is a tool consisting of a tough blade, wire, or chain with a hard toothed edge used to cut through material. Various terms are used to describe toothed and abrasive saws.
A table saw is a woodworking tool, consisting of a circular saw blade, mounted on an arbour, that is driven by an electric motor. The blade protrudes through the top of a table, which provides support for the material, usually wood, being cut.
In woodworking, a rip-cut is a type of cut that severs or divides a piece of wood parallel to the grain. The other typical type of cut is a cross-cut, a cut perpendicular to the grain. Unlike cross-cutting, which shears the wood fibers, a rip saw works more like a series of chisels, lifting off small splinters of wood. The nature of the wood grain requires the shape of the saw teeth to be different thus the need for both rip saws and crosscut saws; however some circular saw blades are combination blades and can make both types of cuts. A rip cut is the fundamental type of cut made at a sawmill.
The shoulder plane is a plane tool with a blade flush with the edges of the plane, allowing trimming right up to the edge of a workpiece. Like a rebate plane, the shoulder plane's blade extends, therefore cuts, to the full width of the tool. The shoulder plane is used to trim the shoulders and faces of tenons. It is used when it is necessary to trim right into the concave corner where two surfaces of the same piece of wood meet perpendicularly. It is also commonly used to clean up dadoes (housings) and tenons for joinery.
A hand plane is a tool for shaping wood using muscle power to force the cutting blade over the wood surface. Some rotary power planers are motorized power tools used for the same types of larger tasks, but are unsuitable for fine-scale planing, where a miniature hand plane is used.
A Japanese kitchen knife is a type of a knife used for food preparation. These knives come in many different varieties and are often made using traditional Japanese blacksmithing techniques. They can be made from stainless steel, or hagane, which is the same kind of steel used to make Japanese swords. Most knives are referred to as hōchō or the variation -bōchō in compound words but can have other names including -kiri. There are four general categories used to distinguish the Japanese knife designs: handle, blade grind, steel, and construction.
A file is a tool used to remove fine amounts of material from a workpiece. It is common in woodworking, metalworking, and other similar trade and hobby tasks. Most are hand tools, made of a case hardened steel bar of rectangular, square, triangular, or round cross-section, with one or more surfaces cut with sharp, generally parallel teeth. A narrow, pointed tang is common at one end, to which a handle may be fitted.
A biscuit joiner or biscuit jointer is a woodworking tool used to join two pieces of wood together. A biscuit joiner uses a small circular saw blade to cut a crescent-shaped hole in the opposite edges of two pieces of wood or wood composite panels. An oval-shaped, highly dried and compressed wooden biscuit is covered with glue, or glue is applied in the slot. The biscuit is immediately placed in the slot, and the two boards are clamped together. The wet glue expands the biscuit, further improving the bond.
A flat or coulisse is a flat piece of theatrical scenery which is painted and positioned on stage so as to give the appearance of buildings or other background.
A miter saw or mitre saw is a saw used to make accurate crosscuts and miters in a workpiece by positioning a mounted blade onto a board. A miter saw in its earliest form was composed of a back saw in a miter box, but in modern implementation consists of a powered circular saw that can be positioned at a variety of angles and lowered onto a board positioned against a backstop called the fence.
Japanese carpentry was carpentry in Japan developed more than a millennium ago through Chinese architectural influences from the 12th century. It is a form of ancient Chinese wooden architecture and woodworking joints that involves building wooden furniture without the use of nails, screws, glue, or electric tools.
A thickness planer is a woodworking machine to trim boards to a consistent thickness throughout their length. This machine transcribes the desired thickness using the downside as a reference / index. So, to produce a completely straight planed board requires that the down surface is straight before planing. Obtaining the first flat side requires either face planing with a jointer or face planing using a planer and jointer sled.
A shooting board or shootboard is a jig for woodworking which is used in combination with a hand plane to trim and square up the edges and ends of boards. It is typically used on a workbench. A plank or board with edges planed flat is called a shot edge board.
A butt joint is a wood joint in which the end of a piece of material is simply placed against another piece. The butt joint is the simplest joint. An unreinforced butt joint is also the weakest joint, as it provides a limited surface area for gluing and lacks any mechanical interlocking to resist external forces.
This glossary of woodworking lists a number of specialized terms and concepts used in woodworking, carpentry, and related disciplines.
A riving knife is a safety device installed on a table saw, circular saw, or radial arm saw used for woodworking. Attached to the saw's arbor, it is fixed relative to the blade and moves with it as blade depth is adjusted.
A cheese knife is a type of kitchen knife specialized for the cutting of cheese. Different cheeses require different knives, according primarily to hardness. There are also a number of other kitchen tools designed for cutting or slicing cheese, especially the harder types. These include the cheese cutter, cheese slicer, cheese plane, cheese scoop for soft cheese and others, collectively known as cheese servers.
Milling is the process of machining using rotary cutters to remove material by advancing a cutter into a workpiece. This may be done by varying directions on one or several axes, cutter head speed, and pressure. Milling covers a wide variety of different operations and machines, on scales from small individual parts to large, heavy-duty gang milling operations. It is one of the most commonly used processes for machining custom parts to precise tolerances.
The splitting band knife is a kind of knife used in several fields including: tannery, EVA/rubber, foam, cork, shoe and leather goods, paper, carpet and other soft sheet materials. It is a power tool which is very similar in operation to a band saw, with an endless loop blade; the material to be cut is supported by a flat table.
