Nothing Severed Yet

The title of this blog has not yet changed

So last night I attempted, unsuccessfully, to remove my left thumb with a box knife. Actually, I was cutting the overhang of a spline off of a picture frame. So here's what I learned:
1) Make sure that if the work gives suddenly, the knife doesn't hit you. Duh. (actually I'd just shifted it to a "safer" position before I whacked myself)
2) One week ago I was considering buying a flush cut saw and decided not to because I'm a cheapskate. Hence why I was trimming splines with a knife. Don't skimp; buy the right tools for the job.
3) Bring a book if you have to go to the ER.

So here I am, five stitches later, nothing severed yet. Careful with those tools... you'll thank me for it.

(I feel like a total idiot about this, but maybe if I embarass myself publically on my blog, I'll be more careful next time)

Cheap drawer rails

Drawer rails are ridiculously expensive, especially for good ones. Fortunately, I just found some that look very promising, very cheap. Post a comment if you buy some and like them--I certainly will next time I need a set.
http://www.wwhardware.com/catalog.cfm?ProductID=WW1690B16Z
100 pound capacity, full extension, ball bearing movement, and the 16" ones are just over $6. Skip Home Depot and get these instead--you'll thank me for it.

(I don't know how good these are, but they have to be better than the 3/4 extension almond colored junk that HD is selling for $6!)

Porter Cable sandpaper isn't all that great

Just an update on the last "where to buy sandpaper"--I tried the aforementioned PC shandpaper yesterday, and it's no better than the Norton, and nowhere near as good as the Mirka.

(Mirka's available on amazon, but I'm too lazy to build a referral link right now)

Japanese table designs

Need to brainstorm some possible upstairs tables... might as well post the results for everyone to see.

from www.greenteadesigns.com:

from www.haikudesigns.com:

from www.gkent-furnituremaker.com

from www.ortizstudios.com

from http://www.contemporarytansu.com (for a bathroom sink)

Lost where this one is from, post a comment if you know & I'll credit it properly:

(I have to figure out how to cut curves--I hate doing anything freehand, but I'll have to learn sooner or later).

Where not to buy your sandpaper

Short entry today. I just went to Lowe's, and their hook-and-loop pads (for the greatest tool ever made) are $15 for a 50-pack. And they're Porter Cable. Home Depot? The same price, but you only get 25. And they're Norton sandpaper, which is a notoriously crappy. So if you need a big pack of sandpaper in a hurry, get it from Lowe's, not Home Depot. You'll thank me for it.

(Home Depot and Lowes both have crappy websites, but Lowes is worse. They don't have most of their stock online. I was going to fact-check my recollection of HD's lousy prices, but they don't have them on line, so tough for them.)
(I generally default to Home Depot; they tend to hire smarter people, and their cheap tool brand (Ryobi) is one of the best, while Lowe's cheap tool brand (General Something?) is one of the worst.)

Retail wood sucks

I went shopping for some walnut for the dining room table I'm about to build. I need 4 8"x84" 4/4 boards, 2 4"x84" boards, and 4 8"x40" boards. What a disappointment.

My Awesome Sawyer Connection can hook me up with gorgeous walnut, red and blue highlights, light figure, for about half what anyone else changes. Unfortunately, he doesn't have any long boards of walnut right now. I used his stuff to make the legs.

Next stop, Compton Lumber, Seattle. Their prices are great (by retail standards). Rough cut is just $4.10/bf for 4/4 stock! But they don't have anything wide in stock, and the boards are pretty ragged-lots of wane (bark edges), sapwood (the light-to-white stuff from the outside of the tree), and generally not what I'm looking for.

Final stop, Crosscut Hardwoods. Their prices aren't always sucky, but man, do they bite the wax tadpole for walnut. 4/4 stock is well over $5/bf rough, and they don't have a single board over 6'. To add insult to injury, I called ahead and idjet boy at the front desk said they had plenty. When I informed the apparant manager of this, he said, "Who did you talk to?" I replied that I didn't know, and I wasn't aware that I had to ask specifically for someone who could use a measuring tape, which got a laugh. Which is good, since he was a big guy and happened to be holding a large chunk of ash at the time.

So wood buying sucks. Find a nice sawyer and stick with that. You'll thank me for it.

(I also have a hookup with a local wholesaler, but they don't let me pick and choose boards. I get exactly what I ask for, and can reject anything that I don't like, but ultimately not picking your own boards stinks.)

Butcher blocks can kill

There are many fascinating treatises online about the virtues of plastic versus wood cutting boards. In fact, the subject approaches the ever-enlightening "linux versus windows" debates for elucidating online reading.

But regardless what the self-proclaimed experts say, I decided to make a real, honest-to-goodness end-grain butcher-block cutting board. The idea behind the "end grain" thing is that you glue together a bunch of strips, let it dry, cut them into strips again, rotate them so the wood grain is pointing up towards you, then glue them up again. That's why butcher blocks appear to be made of lots of small squares. The end grain is tougher, so it stands up to your knife better.

When I went on my spectacular wood buying adventure last weekend, my supplier had an oak glue-up laying around. It looked perfect--most of the work was already done; it had been cut into strips, glued up, and surfaced on both sides.

I brought it home, cut it the other way, and glued it up again. Then I noticed a problem. Up close, the oak looked like a packet of straws.
<--click for a closeup
It's like a water park for bacteria.

It turns out that oak is known for having open pores--very open pores. In fact, when I put some shellac on this in an attempt to seal it, the shellac literally soaked through the 1.75" thick board and dripped out the other side. Which gets us back to the plastic-versus-wood debate.

The debate hinges on whether plastic or wood is the best at harboring food particles, and hence bacteria. There are arguments for both sides. It seems pretty obvious to me, though, that oak is basically a big wooden sponge, and as such not exactly suitable for a sterile chopping block.

But still, what to do. I have this great cutting-board-shaped glueup that I hate to go to waste. So I try experimenting with a cutoff. Shellac didn't work, as you saw above. I decided to try something wacky. First, I spread a 50/50 mixture of Titebond II glue and water, and let it soak in a bit. Then I spread powdered pumice (yeah, the volcanic rock--they sell it at woodworking shops) all over the surface, working it into the nooks and crannies. I mixed it with a little denatured alcohol to get it in every crevasse. Then I repeated this again. Then I sanded it up to 220 grit. Check it out!

Pumice: it's not just for Pompeiians any more.

I'm going to try finishing it with tung oil tomorrow. I'm making chicken next week, so if you see posts dated after that, the filling process worked and I don't have salmonella. In the mean time, if you're planning a butcher block, don't make the same mistake I did. Just start with maple. You'll thank me for it.

(Please, don't try this at home...)
(pictures of the final block to follow if all goes well)
(interesting article I found after finishing this post--it's a government(!) document describing different finish types: http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/DOCUMNTS/finlines/knaeb98c.pdf)

Ridgid has left the building

I'm sorry to say, Ridgid tools are now, officially, crappy. As you may know, there are two categories of handheld power tools: Good And Expensive (Porter-Cable, Dewalt, Milwaukee, Makita, etc) and Cheap And Crappy (Skil, Grizzly, Black & Decker). The only crossover to date is Ryobi, which is cheap and relatively good, or at least a good value for the money. Well, Ridgid just decided to cross over the other way. They are, officially, the first Expensive And Crappy tools. They're moving much of their manufacturing overseas, and chopped their warranty from lifetime (as it's been for ages) to 2-year. They're also supplying to lots of stores, not just Home Depot any more. And they're not lowering their prices. So why deal with that when a Dewalt is the same price? Beats me.

Steer clear of Ridgid in the future; they've gone to seed and there's better options for the same price. You'll thank me for it.

(I said handheld power tools. Grizzly's stationary tools are great, but their power tools bite the wax tadpole. They actually got consumer report's lowest rating--you know, the "will spontanously combust while molesting your cat" rating. I think they call it the Suzuki.)

A 2-hour heirloom

One of the good things about being a woodworker is that you can whip out great gifts with very little work. The trick is to pick the gifts--you want stuff that requires very few operations on the machines, but looks cool and either is very expensive or can't be bought. This afternoon my neighbor gave me a great suggestion right up this alley.

Blocks!

That's right, kids building blocks. How simple is this:
1) Glue up some 4/4 scrap so it's two inches thick (gotta be smaller than mouth-sized)
2) Cut into blocks
3) Stack all the blocks together, clamp them so they don't fly all over the place, and sand one face. Rotate and repeat six times.
4) Run each corner of each block over some 100 grit sandpaper (by hand) to get rid of the sharp corner
5) Put on a coat of shellac
6) Run each face over some 320 grit paper, lightly
7) Put on another coat of shellac

And done! You can use *pure* tung oil, walnut oil, mineral oil, or any other nontoxic natural finish instead, or just leave them unfinished. I whipped these suckers out while I was waiting for a glueup to dry--I did a lousy job of shellacking them, but baby won't care, right?

Try making a set for your next baby shower. You'll thank me for it.

(I made six blocks of maple, cut from a scrap from an 8/4 slab, and six blocks of walnut, from some 4/4 scraps face-glued)
(For those wondering, the maple buying trip yesterday was awesome. Let me know if you need a lumber hookup in the Seattle area.)

Grass whippers and beam bouncers

When Bob the Motorized Couch needed a spine, the choice of materials was pretty straightforward. The design parameters called for five people and substantial cargo, and lumber just wasn't going to cut it. So off we went to a metal dealer.

We pulled some pieces about the right size and shape, and then laid them across two concrete blocks. Under the dealer's perplexed stare, we proceeded to stand on each beam and bounce up and down.

There are two kinds of engineering in this world. One kind takes place at a desk with a pencil and paper. The other takes place when you walk into Home Depot and jump on a wheelbarrow to determine if it can move the three-man rock in your yard without collapsing. A competent woodworker needs both.

Why, you ask? Why can't you just follow the rules and be assured everything will work out?

Let me tell you another story. I was working on a team project in school. Our goal was to produce a device that could rapidly chop thick cornstalk-like grass. It had to be built in third-world countries for under $10. During our first team meeting, a teammate (call him Ziggy) made a suggestion. Ziggy's proposal was some sort of string tied to a pole that they would spin rapidly. I was confused--we'd already determined that any sort of gearing system would blow our budget. But Ziggy didn't intend a gearing system, in fact, he expected the shaft to be turned by a crank, effectively *reducing* the maximum rotation speed.

I was completely flummoxed. It seemed ballpeen-hammer-to-the-forehead-crease obvious to me that you couldn't cut grass by waving string at it, but not so Ziggy. Hhe insisted on calculating the linear speed of the string, the inertial load transferred to the blade, etc. I just visualized going at a lawn Indiana-Jones style and knew this was a dead-end.

Ziggy graduated near the top of our class; he got top marks in almost all his engineering and math classes. But it would never occur to him to bounce on an iron shaft in a scrapyard as a basic design methodology.

Don't be a ziggy. When you're playing with a new species, run scraps through the saw, paint them with your favorite finishes, drive some screws and see if it splits, glue two pieces together and then break them apart, and generally beat on it in every way possible.

Oh, and what inspired all this: I wanted to know if pocket hole screws could hold a glue joint as tightly as clamps, so I clamped the joint just a hair less than I normally would, then drove the screw. Sure enough, a little glue squeezed out of the joint; it was definitely being clamped tighter by the screw. My little beam-bounce for the day.

To close with some words from Professor Baumgartener: "Good electrical engineers don't blow any transistors in this lab. Bad ones blow four or five apiece. Really outstanding engineers destroy one, and they can tell you exactly how they did it."

Go blow a transistor. You'll thank me for it.

(The chopped grass went to feed their horses. To date they used machetes, which were fairly slow and a frequent source of missing fingers.)

(Yes, I realize that trimmers use this technique. That was Ziggy's primary argument. But they spin at thousands of RPMs. How do I know this (he asked)? Well, I don't know it. But both gas and electric engines runs natively at 500+ RPMs, usually higher, and gearing is expensive and tends to break, so why bother? This wasn't good enough for him, but it turned out to be right).

Buying tuls on Ebay

Ebay is a strange place. I went looking for planers on ebay, and discovered this Dewalt DW735 planer for $455. What's strange about that? Well, here's the same planer on Amazon for $479.99. More expensive? Slightly. But since shipping is free ($39 from the ebay guy) and Amazon is an actual company that's somewhat less likely to vanish in the middle of the night on a midnight trip to vegas with your benchtop planer, one might have cause to think that the bidders who drove this planer up from $1 to $455 were completely insane.

So what's a penny-pinching woodworker to do? Simple. Don't search for planers. Search for planrs, plainers, playners... have a couple of beers and let your mind roam free. It turns out that many ebay sellers are spelling-impaired, and their confusion is your gain. With less competition driving up the price, there's real deals to be had. For example, a quick search for 'drils' yields a bounty of bargains, including an 18v Bosch drill ("one battery is almost new, the other one dont work neither does the charger, carrying case"). This would be going for at least double had he spelled it correctly.

The basic idea here is that efficient markets are the bargain hunter's enemy. The less bidders, the better. So whether you need a sandr, joyner, resiprikating saw, or just a set of forester bits, don't forget to commune with your inner dyslexic. You'll thank me for it.

(The Wall Street Journal had an article on this recently, but I've been using this trick for years.)
(Yes, the quote on the Bosch drill was verbatim--ebay item #3803847638.)
(Actually, I find my very best deals in the local classifieds. Ironically, they charge way more than ebay to list items. Be prepared to deal with a lot of people who are not exactly email-savvy, though).

Don't buy a whetstone

Read this. You'll thank me.

(That's it. No extended entry. Go home.)

Cheap maple

I found a guy who has a ton of cheap, clear maple boards for sale. They're air dried/rough, but he's happy to kiln dry & mill them for you. If you're near Seattle and need a hookup, shoot me a mail.

(danieljshapiro at hotmail.com)

Darth Vader's dust mask

This is your dusk mask. It sucks. Do you know why? It sucks because it looks absolutely nothing like Darth Vader's mask. Do you think Darth Vader would put up with an itchy, sweaty, ineffective piece of fiberglass rubbing against his nose all day? Neither should you.

So do like Darth does. It is crazy comfortable, it works way better, it's cheap, and you won't be blowing strange-looking black things into the kleenex all day. You'll thank me.

(OK, so it doesn't look much like Darth Vader's dust mask. It definitely sounds like it when you're breathing, though.)

The Liquid Walnut Pastry Bag

It's a day before the wedding. My soon-to-be sister-in-law is desparate: she's baking our wedding cake, and she doesn't have a pastry bag! What to do?

The secret? Ziploc bags. Fill with frosting, cut off the tip, et voila! Ze cake est fabulous.

So what does this mean for you? Simple. You can turn the dust from your Random Orbital Sander of Eternal Happiness into instant liquid wood. Just empty the catch-bag into a ziploc for later. When you have a gap to fill, just add about 3 parts Titebond (or other caesin glue) to one part sawdust and mix it all up in the bag. Then cut off the tip and work your Instant Liquid Wood into whatever gap you find. Fill the gap high, since it shrinks when it dries, and sand it down when it's all the same homogenous color. It even takes stain like the surrounding wood.

The best part is that the glue in the tip of the bag will harden, sealing it up for convenient reuse later. Keep some for a rainy day! You'll thank me for it.

(Yes, that cake (click "ze cake est fabulous" to see) was really frosted with a ziploc bag. My sister-in-law Jamie is amazing.)

(I realize that the phrase "Instant Liquid Wood" will put this site on the Cybernanny Filter List.)

Your new tablesaw blade

Look, I've been meaning to talk to you about this for a while. You know that tablesaw blade you've got? Yeah, I know it's carbide. I know it's supposed to last forever. I realize it's reshapenable dozens of times. It's made of compressed meterorites hand-culled from the Oort nebula. That's wonderful. Take it off, hang it on the wall, and save it for when your friend comes over to borrow the table saw.

No go buy yourself an 80 tooth blade of reasonable quality. Use it for basically anything involving hardwoods in reasonable shape. Let me summarize this way: a $400 table saw with a new 80-tooth blade cuts better than an $800 table saw with a crappy low-tooth-count blade.

If you don't abuse the blade too badly, you'll find your saw has miraculously started producing perfect, glossy-smooth cuts ready for a glue line. When you're working with nail-filled dirt-covered twisted two-by-fours, switch back to the old Oort 18-toother. You'll thank me for it.

(I'm sure there's some middle ground between the crappy blade that comes with your saw and the gorgeous shimmery cuts produced by sterling 80-toother, but frankly I don't want to keep dropping $50 bucks a blade to find out. With my Oort 18 and Freud 80 I can handle anything.)

My First Sander (by Fisher Price)

You need to sand something. Anything. The choices? Belt sander, finish sander, disc sander, corner sander... if, like me, you have faint memories of high school shop, you'll likely go for the belt or something else familiar.

Don't be fooled.

The Random Orbital Sander is the single best-bang-for-the-buck powertool out there. Maximum Chaiminess factor. It's 99% of the sanding goodness you'll need in one, handy, under-$100 package. Buy one right now and thank me later.
Must have:
* 8 holes (not 5)
* velcro ("hook and loop"), not sticky ("PSA") sandpaper
* minimum 5"
* cost at least $60
Doesn't need:
* Larger than 5"
* Variable speed
* Carrying case (you'll be using it that often)

Pick up a whole whack of sandpaper too, while you're at it.

Oh, you want to know *why* it's so great? Well, slap some 60-grit mojo badness on there and you can plow off squillions of helpless little wood fibers in the time it takes you to say, "which one is the belt tightener and which is the auto-tracking adjustment?". Breeze up through the coarseness levels with the slap-on slap-off velcro paper and you can have a mirror finish, no swirls, super-fast. You'll thank me.

(Yeah, I get a nickel or something for every amazon link you buy through. I plan to become rich by coaxing people into bad powertools and retiring on the 5% kickback.)

(Chaiminess is a word courtesy my friend Russ Nelson. Chaiminess = coolness / cost. It isn't yiddish, but it should be.)

("What!?" you say. "Must cost at least $60!?" See above, I'm on commision. Seriously, this is the shorthand way of saying "just don't buy a skil, ryobi, generic-house-brand-from-Central-Machinery, etc". I'm normally a big fan of buying cheap tools, but on this one, trust me--you want the real deal. And come on, it's sixty bucks.)

Severed?

I started serious woodworking about a year ago. I'm learning lots of lessons, some the easy way, some with liberal applications of neosporin. I'm here to share.

No, I haven't decided if I'll change the title if I get too frisky with the jointer.