Ron Kirk

Intermediate is the awkward middle of table tennis, and the buying mistake I see most often happens right there. You can rally, your loop lands most of the time, you have started thinking about placement, and then you buy a blade that demands a technique you have not built yet. The best table tennis paddles … Read more

Short answer: the JOOLA Outdoor Table Tennis Table is the best outdoor table tennis table for patios in — a 9 by 5 foot regulation surface, a 6mm aluminum-plastic composite top that shrugs off rain and sun, and two folding halves on 3-inch wheels that roll into a garage when the weather turns. I own … Read more

The best laser level for hanging cabinets is a 360-degree green-beam line laser, like the Huepar HM03CG or the CIGMAN CM-701, because it throws a continuous horizontal reference across the whole room at cabinet-top height so you never re-measure, and never move the tool. That is the short answer. The longer one is that cabinet … Read more

A clamp set is a bundled group of woodworking clamps in matched sizes and types, sold together so you can glue, assemble and square up a project without hunting for individual clamps one at a time. Buy the wrong group and you will spend a glue-up evening squeezing boards with something rated for a third … Read more

The problem with a garage shop is that a car still has to fit in it. That single constraint rules out the 12 inch floor model jointers most forums recommend, and it is exactly why the best benchtop jointers for small shops have become the machines that get recommended instead. They bolt to a workbench, … Read more

Choosing the best wood lathes for beginners is harder than it looks, because almost every listing sells you a machine rather than an answer. I spent weeks comparing spec sheets, digging through owner comments on r/turning and the AAW forum, and working out which machines survive a beginner’s first year without a fight. A good … Read more

The best dust collectors for small woodshops are not the biggest boxes on the market. What matters in a 12×12 room is whether the unit can be fed by the largest machine you own, whether it fits between the table saw and the workbench, and whether it shares a circuit with anything else. I have … Read more

Yes, a shop vac handles wood dust, and for most hand-tool and machine-tool woodworkers it is the right first purchase. The catch is that the best shop vacs for woodworking dust are chosen on airflow and filter life, not on the peak horsepower number splashed across the box. I have spent the last several years … Read more

Short answer: the Sterilite 4 Shelf Cabinet is the best garage storage cabinet for most tool collectors, the Yizosh 43-inch steel locker is the heaviest-duty pick, and the Letaya 72-inch locker is the strongest value in the group. I compared all twelve cabinets below on manufacturer-stated shelf load ratings, steel gauge, locking hardware, footprint and … Read more

A shop can have a dust collector, a bench grinder with a hood, and a good shop vac, and still fill the air with dust that hangs there for the rest of the day. That is the gap most home workshops leave open when they go looking for the best air filtration systems for garage … Read more