Category: Tools

Cradle Project (formerly the mystery project), Turnings, and Tool Gloat

Published on by Mike  (Leave a comment)

I know it has been a little while since I made a post here, but that is simply because I have been busy in the shop!  It is a long post, but reflects what has been going on the past couple months.

First thing, is I finished what I previously referred to as the mystery project, which is a cradle for my wife’s cousin and her new daughter. When I decided to build this project, I had very little time to complete it, but I figured that would add to the challenge of completing an already challenging project.  I love a good challenge!  🙂  I started out drawing a design using Sketch Up.  After making a few slight revisions, and worked my way through some design challenges, I got started.  My plan was to make the frames of the panels out of maple, with cherry inserts.  I started out making the parts for the two end panels, both of which were the same.  The frames are being assembled with haunched tenons, which create a very strong joint.  The two side boards (the stiles I supposed you could call them) are also be where the side panels attach to the end panels.  After dry fitting the end panels, I went on to make the two side panels, including the tabs that will help fit the side panels to the end panels.  After fitting all the parts together for the side panels, I went ahead and did the glue ups for them.    Once the glue was dry, I was able to mark on the stiles for the end panels precisely where the tabs of the side panels will meet.  I then proceeded to cut out the tabs before the glue-up of the end panels, and made sure I had a decent rough fit, with enough material left to further tweak for final assembly.  Before gluing up the end panels, I went to the band saw and cut out some of the more intricate curves on the runners, but left the larger curves for after assembly.  This allowed me plenty of flat clamping space so I could achieve good solid joints.

After the glue dried, I cleanup the glue lines, and then put an extension table on my band saw.  This allowed me plenty of table space to cut the curves for the runner, and to make a nice profile across the top.  From there, I cleaned up all the glue joints, lots of sanding, and putting round-overs where round overs where needed.  This did involve some time with rasps and other hand tools to make the round overs look right on the inside corners.

 

This brings us to final assembly.  This involved a LOT of dry fittings, and a LOT of tweaking of all the pieces.  I kept doing this until I achieved as square a fit as possible.  My awesome wife also helped me with a lot of these dry fittings as it proved to be very difficult to put together with out a helper.  She also helped me with the final glue up.  Once glued up, I flush cut and sanded all eight tabs, the sanded all the joints smooth.  From there did the final sanding, working my way up to 220 grit.

With the cradle now ready for finish, I took advantage of the heat wave were having and applied two coats of boiled linseed oil.  The high heat helps the oil to dry and cure fairly quickly.  I let the second coat of oil sit for several days to give it a chance to cure and off gas.  This brings me back to a point I made earlier in the post, and a lesson learned.  The lesson being, just because you pull a board off of the maple shelf from hardwood supplier, does NOT mean it is maple.  Now, up until the point of finishing, the color of all boards where pretty close (as shown in the pictures)  Imagine my surprise as the oil brought out the color of the wood (which is why I like using oils) that some of the boards were not at all maple, but were in fact cherry!  Thankfully I already had cherry elements in the project, and where the boards ended up worked very well, and added a lot of character to the overall project, and I really liked the look of it.

After the oil was dry and cured, I applied man coats of shellac, with sanding between each coat.  After the shellac was dried, I made the bottom panel and put a couple coats of shellac on that as well.  From there my wife took care of getting the mattress, sheet, and bumpers for it to make it comfortable for the baby.

Today we delivered the cradle to my wife’s cousin, and her new daughter appears to be very comfy in the cradle!

After completing the cradle, I cleaned up the shop and sharpened all my chisels and planes.  I also decided that I would get started on turning some Christmas gifts so that I would have plenty of time to get them done.  Someone I think I will be making them last minute again this year.

Finally, I do have a bit of a tool gloat!  🙂  If you recall in the shop tour video I did back in January, I showed my bench top jointer and basically said it was a POS.  Well it has finally been replaced!  I ordered a freestanding jointer from Grizzly and had them deliver it to me.  Due to the weight (240lbs!) it was shipped freight.  It was a pretty awesome feeling seeing the UPS Semi Truck pull up to the house to drop that thing off!  It took me a couple evenings to put it together and tune it up, but from the test runs I have taken on it, this is definitely light years ahead of what I had before.

 

Table Saw Woes

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Damaged Pulley

I have made some pretty good progress on the mystery project since my last post, however it was not without some difficulty, largely with my table saw.  Last weekend was a long weekend for Memorial Day.  I also took a 1/2 day off from work that Friday.  I got through most of what I planned on finishing that Friday, when the belt on the Table Saw shredded.  That stopped me for that evening, but the next day I got a new belt for the saw, and was back working.  Saturday I didn’t get too much done as we went to a family event.  Sunday and Monday I made a lot more progress and was getting close to being able to glue up the first two panels, when I noticed the table saw was literally jumping around when starting and stopping it, and was making a lot of noise.  Started looking things over when I realized the pulley on the arbor split!  Between figuring out how to get the pulley off and getting a new ordered and delivered, I was down till yesterday (Friday).  Last night I got the new pulley on the saw, made sure everything was lined up, did a few other checks, and squared everything up again.  At this point, the saw is running great, better then ever.  I will keep my fingers crossed that it stays this way!

 

Table Saw Guide Part 2 – Choosing the right saw

Published on by Mike  (Leave a comment)

This is can be topic of huge debate, and has been discussed many times over.  Reading through the various woodworking forums and chatrooms, I see reoccurring themes along the lines of “You get what you pay for” and “I can’t afford to buy cheap tools!”  While I don’t disagree with these statements, I have noticed that a lot of those who say that tend to own very high end tools that sell for top dollar.  The reality is that most people starting out with woodworking as a hobby would run away screaming if they saw how much some of those machines sell for.  On the other end of the spectrum I have seen more than once, myself included in this, where a low end machine is purchase and a high degree of frustration due to the machine not performing as expected.

However, I do believe that was proper planning and research, the right table saw can be found for your needs.  With my conversations with others, I often hear “I am just starting out so I don’t want to start out with something too expensive” or “I am just a beginner, I am going to get a cheap machine.”  I shudder a little bit every time I hear something like that.  Instead of looking at your current skill, look at the skill level you want to achieve.  Next think about what you will be primarily using  the table saw for.  For example, is it primarily going to be used for repairs around the house, building furniture, or even going into more fine woodworking.  Next look at your power availability.  Many higher end table saws require 220 volt outlets.   This may or may not be a big cost depending on the location of the circuit panel, and the number of open slots.  If it is not feasible, there are still many good table saws that run off of 110.  Finally, (and this was intentionally left for last) your budget.  It is very tempting to to put budget first, but the issue is that you may end up buying too much or not enough of a machine to meet your needs.  If you determine that you need a higher end machine but have a limited budget, perhaps waiting a little longer to save more for the machine you need, or looking at used saws.  I personally use an old table saw I bought used via Craigslist, and while I made some upgrades to it, has proven to be a very good saw for my needs, and didn’t bust any budgets.

So, the question remains what table saw is best to buy.  When walking through your big box stores you see a lot of the bench top/job site table saws.  If you are doing anything other than home construction and/or repair, I would stay away from them.  Based on my experience from owning one myself, at first, you will have a decent saw.  Can you learn from this type of saw? Yes absolutely.  In fact I have seen where some old timers use these saws and do beautiful work  on them.  However, it does take a considerable amount of patience with these saws to achieve this.  The issue is the materials used to make these saws just do not hold up well over time.  The trunnions are thin aluminum, the table is cast aluminum, and the body is made from plastic.  With my old saw I was constantly fighting it to keep everything square.  What finally did it in for me is the table itself went out of flat, which made getting the blade square to the table near impossible.  For furniture and fine woodworking, this makes it very hard to use this saw well.    If you are planning on making this a serious hobby, possibly planning doing some commission work then I would start looking at the high end of table saws.  Look at the high end hybrid or even cabinet saws  You will want a machine that keeps up with your demand.  For folks, such as myself, who are primarily weekend warrior woodworkers, look at the contractor and hybrid saws.  Any of these saws, which come with either cast iron or granite tops, well allow you to achieve a much finer degree of woodworking.  Obviously the higher you go on machine quality the better cut you will get.

Lastly, whatever table saw you decide to buy, along with it, buy a good blade.  The blades that come with table saws are awful.  They aren’t very sharp and will dull pretty quickly, which will leave you with a poor quality cut.  A crappy blade will even make the best table saw perform crappy.

Chisel Collection Update & Current Project

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I know it has been awhile since I last updated, but I have been busy make sawdust!!  I am happy to say that the chisel collection is now complete!  The last picture you saw, there were only 3 chisels.  I am happy to say I now have the complete set at 11 chisels!    There were a couple of factors into why I opted to get the complete set.  The biggest factor is cost.  The local woodcraft had a 25% off sale for all chisels, which started AFTER I bought the first 3 pictured in the earlier post.  Except for those 3, I was able to take advantage of that sale for the remaining chisels.  Thankfully the sale ran for awhile!  The other reason was after some coaxing from a few people on TheWoodWhisperer.com chat room (you know who you are) they convinced me it is better to have them all and use them occasionally, and not have it and need it.  Surprising, I have found I have used all the chisels, fairly frequently while working on the current project, which has had a lot of hand work on it.  Fyi, the chisel have been great, I would give them a 5 star rating.

The project I am working on is a storage rack for the chisels.  This started out with a drawing I made in sketch-up.  From the sketch-up drawins, I estimated the amount of wood I would need.  I ended up buying 7 board feet of cherry for the rack.  This was 2 more than I figured I would need, however I ended up using ever bit of it!  Most of the longer dados were done on the router table.  A lot of them were stopped short, and the squared up with my chisels.  The short dados on the bottom piece were done largely by hand with the only power tool being the drill press to hog out most of the material.  All the mortises were done by hand, again using the drill press to hog out much of the material.  The back panel is a glue up of two smaller boards.  I had the foresight to glue them together at 3/4″ thick, and let them acclimate awhile.  Sure enough, I got warpage.  I used, for the first time, my jack plane to get the wobble out, then planed it down to the 1/2″ thickness.  The pictures below are all the parts needed to assemble the rack.  Each piece has been sanded to 220.  The next step is assembly, which as of this posting is not done yet. I will make a future post of the assembled rack.

Table Saw Guide Part 1

Published on by Mike  (Leave a comment)

Depending on where you are from and the type of woodworking you want to do the table saw is arguably the most important power tool you can have in your garage or shop.  Some alternatives include a good band saw or a track saw, and like the table saw each has its own strengths and weaknesses.  This post will be focusing on the different types of table saws available.

Bench Top / Job Site saws:  This type of saw is the most common saw you will see as you walk through Lowe’s, Home Depot, and Sears.  They are all shapes, sizes, and have a wide range in pricing from around $100 up to $600.  The main characteristics of these saws include plastic bodies, aluminum top (some of the higher end saws have an anodized top to prevent marking up the wood), and a direct drive universal motor.  Because of their light weight, a lot of these saws come with stands that can be collapsed so that they can be stored off in a corner.  The drawback to this saw is that they are light weight which results in a lot of vibration.  The fences are usually not very good, and often the tables are small.  Precision can be achieved with these saws, but I would recommend frequent checking and tweaking of the saw to make sure everything is aligned and square.  These saws work well for doing rough work.

Contractor saws:  You can see a minimal number of these in the box stores, but because of the higher price point, they typically don’t stock a lot of these, if any.  These can priced from $400 (if you find a good sale) to over $1000.  These saws you will see the cast iron top (some brands offer a granite top as well), with a belt driven induction motor, usually external to the saw body.  The motors usually run between 1.5hp to 2hp, and can either be run on 110 or 220 volts, depending on how the owner wants it wired.  The body is typically made from stamped steel.  Like a Bench Top saw these still sit on a stand that saw is bolted on to, but these are heavier stands and will not fold down.  These are heavy enough that vibration is greatly reduced but still can be easily moved around if the stand is on wheels.  The fences that are typically included are step better, but still not great.  The good news is that the fence on these saws can be upgraded, and many manufacturers offer options for better fences.  With a good fence precision can much more easily be attained, and because most of the parts are bigger and made from metals the saw will hold its alignment much better.  Occasional checking is still recommended.

Hybrid saws:  Except for maybe Sears, you won’t see these in box stores.  You will need to look for these at woodworking specialty stores such as Rockler and Woodcraft.  They can be priced anywhere from $700 to nearly $2000.  The motors are configured similar to the contractor saws, except for that they are usually inside the saw.  Amother difference is the body of the saw is one piece and goes all they way to the floor.  The greater weight reduce vibration even further.  I believe some hybrid saws, if not all, the trunnions that hold the motor and blade assembly attach to the body of the saw rather than to the top.  This saw provides a lot of the same features as a cabinet saw, but with a smaller motor and a lower price point for the budget conscious.

Cabinet saws:  This is the type of saw you see Norm use on the New Yankee Workshop.  These are priced from $2000 up to $5000.  The body is bigger than the Hybrid saw, and the trunnions are attached to it.  The motor is also bigger, typically starting out at 3HP.  Also, these must be ran with 220V.  These are typically very heavy tools, and very rarely fall out of alignment.  These are typically the choice of the serious hobbyist and professional woodworker.

My next post of this topic will include my experiences on table saw purchases, and my recommendations for getting started.