GlueUpDate

Jacques Richer gives us this updated suggestion to an old article on getting glue off your glueup. He rightfully points out that the good old-fashioned hand scraper is a great task for the job...

Option 4:
Cabinet scraper. A sharpened square of steel used to remove wood without sanding. It's great for this.

Here's how: Glue normally. Wait about 1 1/2 hrs, and you have a semi-blob. Scrape with a cabinet scraper - wiping it fairly often. It doesn't chip like using a chisel, and it doesn't take nearly as long or make nearly as much mess as wiping.

Rock in your wood

Long time readers will remember my coffee table project with the embedded slate tiles. This is a quick follow-up post to let you know how those tiles are working out.

The regular flooring-type slate tiles were washed thoroughly, then brushed carefully with three coats of Minwax Polycrylic. I say brushed carefully, because the rough, natural slate tiles I used have lots of rough spots. If you're not careful, you'll get bubbles in the finish if you brush quickly over these. I did three coats and the tiles looked great.

Unfortunately, I then decided to get clever. I was waxing the rest of the table (since it had a shellac finish) and I decided to wax the tiles as well. This was not such a good idea. The wax built up in the crevices and was very noticable. It made the things look dirty. Unfortunately, anything that would have dissolved the wax (alcohol, mineral spirits) would also dissolve the nearby shellac finish and I didn't want to take any chances. I used good old elbow grease to get rid of the wax.

Wax adventures aside, the tiles are fantastic. They don't ring when you put drinks on them (their main purpose in life). They haven't chipped. They look terrific.

Try out some tiles on your next project. You'll thank me for it.

Speakers at CES

So I was at the Consumer Electronics Show for the last two days. I had lots of time wandering the floor and seeing what was new.

The speaker displays were incredible. This year, all the cheap overseas speaker manufacturers have figured out that they can make absolutely gorgeous floorstanding speakers for not too much money, using the magical secret of veneer. I saw walnut, curly maple, and figured bubinga. Plus some zebrawood but that was hideous. The veneer is applied over an acoustically dead MDF base, so you get a great speaker that looks fantastic.

Then they took a good thing a little too far. If veneer is cool, well, why not make the speakers out of solid wood? So sure enough, they're using fancy 4/4 lumber to make speakers as well (not so cheap!). They look fantastic... but this is an accoustically stupid idea. Solid wood is actually worse for speakers than MDF, because the wood fibers resonate and mess up the acoustics. It's also more expensive. So why replace cheap, good MDF with expensive, worse solid wood? Probably because consumers won't know any better (possibly because the manufacturers don't know any better!).

Anyway, it was pretty stuff. Look for a big improvement in the looks of floorstanding speakers at the Best Buys of the world next year.

Oh, and the lesson for us woodworkers? Veneer over MDF. Cheaper, more beautiful, and sounds better.

Walk-in closet 102

And here's the link I left off the last post. Whoops.

http://flickr.com/photos/larsliden/sets/1737556/

(thanks Brett!)

Walk-in closet 101

Lars Liden did a ton of work to redo his walk-in closet, including building an outdoor hutch for his hot water heater. It's more a home-improvement than a woodworking project, but it's still worthy of note because he has detailed pictures of the whole thing.

http://flickr.com/photos/larsliden/sets/1737556/

One note: if you build a project with movable shelves, instead of painstakingly locating each shelf pin hole, use a shop-made shelf pin hole jig like this one at Benchnotes or this one at Woodworking Tips.

You'll thank me for it.