Nothing Severed Yet

Ecabinets, part 3

More ecab! So here's a summary of current challenges. This is a "bad news" post; read the other entries under Software for more perspective.

1) Crashing. Frequently. Annoyingly. The problem seems to be something in the render engine. I'm going to mess with video driver settings to see if I can fix it. On the bright side, I haven't had a problem with a degenerate file yet (that always crashes when you open it), so with frequent saving, I can make progress. On the down side, this means it's very hard to isolate the bug to report.

2) Performance. This software is very non-performance-optimized. For example, if you enter an editing mode (e.g. "door frames") and then immediately exit, everything is re-constructed from scratch. Clearly, they're not marking dirty bits and only doing the necessary work; they're rebuilding the whole shmeer each time anything might have been changed. Plus, this stuff's just slow. Lots of number crunching. I might consider a system upgrade if everything works out.

3) Unnerving bugs. I just reported one where adding a partition causes a shelf to magically disappear, leaving behind a corrupt and unusable file. This is unnerving because it's easy to reproduce, and makes me think they may not have a robust testing methadology. Or any testing methadology. The good news is that I spoke with them about it this morning and they hacked out a fix for next week's build. That's somewhat reassuring, on the theory that if you're going to ship buggy software, you better be prepared to fix the bugs fast.

4) No closed boxes. You can't make a six-sided box. Kind of an odd limitation, and it prevents me from easily using it to make really amazing custom speaker boxes that are built in to cabinets. Not a major ding, just a shame. You can work around it, but you can't use blind dados to attach the sixth side.

(I have to say that, generally, the software just feels slow and buggy. They do appear to be hard at work fixing this, and I hope they're successful. So far the benefits do outweigh the drawbacks, though.)

A good use for a bad bandsaw

So I borrowed a junky little Ryobi bandsaw from work to mess around with. I was going to try to use it to cut some curved pieces for a japanese table I'm going to get around to building sometime. I was using 8/4 stock for the curves.

ha ha ha. Yeah, I know. What was I thinking. The sawblade was wandering around the lumber like a drunken fratboy on mardi gras. The results weren't pretty. I left it at that, and continued in my resolve to go buy a decent bandsaw sometime (mostly for resawing, but also for the odd curved piece).

Well, as you may remember, I've been having some troubles with spline trimming lately. And recently it occurred to me... a bandsaw would be a pretty decent way to trim a spline, no? Sure enough, I ran the only-slightly-bloodied edge of that old picture frame along the junky bandsaw blade, and it was a match made in heaven. The darn thing sheared off perfectly.

Highly recommended approach. By the way, my friend who was putting splines in his cigar box said that the whole flush-cut saw thing works OK, but be very careful to start cutting at the *loose hanging* end. If you don't, then you risk breaking off the tip of the corner of the spline as you finish the second cut. That's OK, his humidor will look great with the corners rounded over. But keep it in mind--you'll thank me for it.

(for those of you keeping track, yeah, I mentioned it in my post of a few days ago, not actually realizing that I *did* have a functional-albeit-crappy bandsaw in my basement at the time. Oh well, I learned.)

Splines

I've been thinking about splines lately. Not the curve, but the slice o'contrasting beauty you stick in the corner of something to strengthen it.

I cut my first splines in some picture frames I made. It's generally a good practice, and in this case, I was very unsure that the wood was dry, so it was extra necessary--I didn't want the corners popping open when the wood dried. I used a Delta tenoning jig, but you don't need to; it's easy to whip up a little sled to slide along your fence. Just put two 45 degree blocks on it and you're in business. One note--make sure in this (and any) jig that any screws you use aren't in the path of the saw!

In any case, cutting the suckers is easy (although I still managed to be careless and get them non-centered). Filling them is what's hard.

The big problem is that you want to cut a bunch of thin strips of wood, one saw-kerf wide, to put in there. But the obvious way to do that is put the fence 1/8 of an inch away from the sawblade, and that's an excellent recipe for turning your spline into a projectile weapon. Remember the rule, skinny side on the outside. Anything else results in kickback.

But if you do that, it's a royal pain to measure the width, and you have to move the fence closer every time. I cut it the wrong thickness three times (wasting about 3*2*1/8 = 3/4 inch of walnut), and when I finally got it right, I had to move the fence and start over again. Not cool.

So here's my new cheating trick. I set the fence the nasty kickback way. I cut the spline, but not all the way through, so it's still firmly attached to the base block. Then I use a sharpened chunk of obsidian tied to a twig with dried sinews to hew off the last bit, and repeat. Ok, so I use a saw and chisel... it still seams backwards when I have a perfectly good table saw sitting in front of me. But I digress.

Make sure you cut it flush (or slightly indented) and you can repeat indefinitely. You'll have to discard that ragged last bit that you hacked off so crudely, but it beats the heck out of readjusting each time.

(you could probably use a bandsaw to trim off that last bit as well, but alas I'm ashamed to admit I am without le saw du band. I've got my eyes open though--drop me a line if you see a good deal on one!)

eCabinet Systems, part II

eCabinet Systems is an interesting ongoing project. I've been spending all my free time working with it instead of real woodworking. As I get further into the 350+ page tutorial (!) I'm impressed by the flexibility of the system. It does still have bad problems with crash-prone-ness, but saving frequently solves most of that.

Right now the one big problem I have with it is a stupid question: what the heck do you do with all the exposed plywood edges? I'm designing all this nifty stuff with sheet goods, see. And you take something like a shelf... nice pretty shelf, cherry on both sides. But what about the part that's *facing* you? It's raw plywood! So do I edgeband, put solid wood edging on it, what? The system doesn't seem to offer a lot of high level options for this problem, or at least I haven't found them yet. I don't see them calculating linear feet of veneer I need to order, for example, or providing an option to route a tenon so I can slide some grooved solid stock over it. Still puzzled on the best way around this one...

(net-net, eCabinets is still getting a thumbs up from me, but the real proof is when I produce my first cabinet with it)

Cordless tools--no assault or battery

I wrote this for my wife's weblog at www.personworks.com/weblog. It's written for a non-toolie audience, but may be useful anyway.

Executive Summary:
* If you think you might like to have a cordless screwdriver/drill around, but you're not sure if you would use it, get a Porter-Cable 9820 9.6-Volt Cordless Drill/Driver Kit
* To get a bunch of useful tools cheap, get the Ryobi 18 Volt Super Combo II from Home Depot
* To get everything you need in one box and have it last you forever, get Porter-Cable 9887QP Network 19.2-Volt Quad Pack
* Don't buy anything from Black & Decker, Skill, Ridgid, or Craftsman unless you've researched it exceptionally well.

Part 1: What tools do you need?
You can buy just about everything cordless these days, but that doesn't mean you should.
A cordless drill/screwdriver is absolutely essential. This will let you mount pictures, stir paint, fix railings, and on and on. You may want a corded version as well; if you are thinking about drywalling all day or for some reason you need major power, batteries can't hold a candle to a wall socket. But the cordless version is so handy that you should get that first and get a corded version later.
A cordless reciprocating saw (or "Sawzall") is something you may or may not use often, but when you do, you'll be very glad if you have the cordless version. These are excellent for felling small trees, minor house demolition, and rough-cutting just about any kind of wood or siding. The only time you may wish for a corded version is if you have a full day of demolition--they run through batteries faster than a drill, so you'll need more than two to last all day.
A cordless circular saw is a common choice, but it has some serious drawbacks. Circular saws go through batteries incredibly fast--you can drain a battery in 15 minutes or less depending on what you're doing. Battery powered circular saws have much less torque than their corded counterparts. And I find that when I'm using a circular saw, I'm usually in the middle of a big project, so it's not too inconvenient to run an extension cord. All that being said, I do have one, and I use it, and it's certainly handy from time to time.
These, plus the inevitable flashlight and dustbuster that get thrown into the combo kits, are the most common battery powered tools. Some others are:
-- Chainsaws (get a corded or gas one, or get a long blade for your reciprocating saw instead)
-- Jigsaws (never tried one, seems like it would be handy)
-- Rotary tools, a la Dremel (I use a corded one, but a cordless one could be handy)
-- Boom boxes that run off the tool batteries (cheaper to just buy one of these like I did)

Part 2: Which Brand to Buy
There is a significant difference between brands of cordless tools. The quality and price tends to be consistent within the brand. Also, batteries don't work between brands, so it makes a lot of sense to have all your tools be the same brand. Each brand has its own color that is used on all the tools; I'll identify that so you can spot them.

Expensive and high quality
Porter Cable (gray) and DeWalt (yellow) are tried-and-true here. You pay big bucks for the brand, but the quality is usually perfect. Hitachi (green) has some budget items, but most of their tools fit in this category and get solid reviews. Bosch (light blue) doesn't seem to sell as much as Porter Cable and DeWalt, but the reviews are as good or better and the prices are similar. Makita (also light blue, easily confused with Bosch) is better known for its saws than its drills, but comes in at the slightly cheaper side. Milwaukee (bright red) is a contractor's favorite, expensive and indestructable. Panasonic (black and gray) rounds up the batch as being the most high-tech, featuring things like NiMH batteries that offer more power with less weight. Price, of course, is also on the high side.
If I was getting a tool from a company in this category and price was no issue, I would get a Milwaukee. In general, though, going with the most inexpensive tool from these top-end manufacturers is a fine plan.

Inexpensive and lower quality
Skil (dark red) makes tools of wildly varying quality at very low prices. Black and Decker (reddish-orange) is scraping the bottom of the barrel; they charge the least and, in my experience, offer the very worst quality tools. Actually, they used to be the same tools as DeWalt. If you heard they used to be great that's true; they went downhill. Craftsman is all over the map; they're unreliable enough that you have to do a lot of research on the particular tool to know if it's any good (and the good ones tend to be way more expensive). Again, they used to be reliably good, but went downhill. Last in the "how the mighty have fallen" category is Ridgid, who started out producing very high quality tools at medium-high prices. According to articles I've read recently, they just outsourced all their production to China, sold the company, and reduced their warranty from lifetime to 2 years--but didn't lower their prices. Stay away. Ryobi (dark blue) is the big winner in the budget category. Carried exclusively at Home Depot, the tools are about as cheap as Skil and B&D, but are actually quite useful. A contractor I know put it to me this way: "I can buy a Milwaukee and it'll last me 10 years, or I can buy a Ryobi for a quarter of the price and have it last 3 years." What will last him 3 years of heavy-duty work will probably last you or me 10 years, so I'm a big fan of Ryobi.

Part 3: Getting a deal
There's a few simple rules to getting a good deal on cordless power tools.
--Buy combo packs. You save a ton of money. Example: Ryobi 18 volt battery, $50. Ryobi 18 volt drill with two batteries and a charger, $99. Ryobi 18 volt drill with two batteries, a charger, a circular saw, a reciprocating saw, a dustbuster, and a flashlight, $169.
--Costco sometimes carries the expensive brands (Milwaukee and DeWalt). They're a good deal when they have them there.
-- For expensive brands, all the major tool shops (Lowes, Home Depot, Amazon.com, Tool King) carry them, and they all promise to beat the competitors by 10%. There's a catch here. Say you find it at one place for $100 and somewhere else for $110. Some stores like Amazon will beat the price by 10% of the DIFFERENCE, for a final price of $99. Other stores like Home Depot and Lowes will beat the price by 10% of the TOTAL, for a final price of $90. Find the cheapest price, then go to Home Depot or Lowes and show it to them, and you'll pay 10% less than that.
-- For Ryobi, only Home Depot carries them, so there's not too much room to haggle. Check their web site for occasional specials.
--For any brand, they tend not to go on sale except when a product line is being discontinued. This usually happens when they phase out one combo pack and introduce a slightly different one (adding a radio or swapping one saw for another). When that happens, it happens everywhere, so don't jump at the first such sale you see. Use the 10% trick above to get the very best deal.

(Note that the cheap/expensive difference is not so black-and-white for corded tools. Porter-Cable makes cheap mediocre compressors (I have one), Craftsman makes some dandy stationary powertools, etc.)
(Since I wrote this, Consumer Reports published a study on cordless drills. Their results match my recommendations, including Ryobi as a top value for the money, with one exception--they like the Skil drill. I recommend against it anyway. Even though the drill is OK, the other Skil cordless tools are, in my opinion, of varying quality. You want to stick with one brand for your cordless tools so that the batteries are interchangable. Better to sign up for Ryobi, which is consistently good across their line of tools.)

Step Tansu chests

Considering one of these for yet another forthcoming project--here are some pics I'm looking at for inspiration.
From www.asiandreamsfurniture.com:

From www.bamboowall.com:

from www.orientalhome.com:

from www.smithsonianstore.com:

There's a nice one at www.jcollector.com and another one here too.

(Yeah, I realize I'm accumulating quite a backlog of projects. That's OK, designing is half the fun.)

Free woodworking plans

I'll be darned. Freeplans.com actually appears not to be a rip-off. Their deal is pretty simple: it's a list that publishes free woodworking plans, with advertisements. They promise not to sell your name for anything else, and to make it easy to sign off the list. I just got the first plan, and it was high-quality step-by-step instructions on how to make a cherry bookcase. Pictures, clear instructions, the works. I'm impressed!

(I used a "tearoff" email address, so I'll know if they sell my name. Basically, it's a one-shot email address that forwards to my regular address--if I start getting spam, I can know where it came from and delete the email address, ending the spam).

eCabinet Systems, Part 1

Wondering where I've been lately? Well, eCabinet Systems' software finally arrived, and I've been spending every spare minute working on it. Well, every spare minute that wasn't spent working on a finger jointing jig, but that's for another post. In any case, here's my notes on it so far. These are, of course, just my observations after using the software for less than a week.

* It really is free; there appear to be no strings attached whatsoever.
* Installation is easy.
* I couldn't register the software for three days because their server was offline, but it just hung instead of telling me that. Other poorly-thought-out-error-conditions abound. I suspect Thermwood needs to hire some good dedicated testers.
* It crashes periodically (bad), but doesn't appear to corrupt the files when it goes down (good).
* Pricing of stuff you buy through the system seems OK, but I can find better prices in most cases elsewhere.
* It is still buggy; for example, if you have a cabinet without a face frame, you can't add doors without jumping through some hoops (like adding and then removing a face frame).
* It's moderately difficult to use. The UI is a combination of windows-standard and what I believe is AutoCAD-compatible. There are some pretty silly UI choices all over the place, like using buttons when they should be using tabs, and giving things similar-but-slightly-different names. All that being said, it's not completely crazy and is quite learnable.
* The "manual" aka learning guide is invaluable; working through it is time consuming (>350 pages) but very helpful. I'd estimate it'll take me ~10 hours to get through it at a leisurely pace, including lots of playing around.
* I'm psyched about designing some quick and dirty bookcases to try this out further.

Expect more sporadic postings as I ramp up on this.

(yeah, I do software design in my other life--my last job was as a lead program manager for the Windows XP user interface at Microsoft--but I tried to keep the UI critique to a minimum.)

Change your sandpaper. Again.

One of the things I've started to learn about woodworking is not to skimp on disposables. My previous post on sawblades was the first thought in this vein, and it won't be the last.

So for a long time I thought I hated sanding. Then I discovered the beautiful light of infinite radience, and discovered that sanding's not so bad. But it still takes a while. Or so I thought.

I was changing my sandpaper like many people do--when I could see it had deteriorated (e.g. tear marks on the paper). This would happen after about an hour of sanding. I'd put on the new paper, and for a few minutes, accidentally sand giant gouges into everything I'd touch. Then everything would go back to normal.

Turns out that what I thought was the "normal" part of sanding was actually me rubbing dead limp sandless paper repeatedly over wood. Any sanding effect that appeared to result was probably the effect of microscopic aluminum oxide particles free-floating in the atmosphere. Here's the skinny: depending on the quality of your sandpaper, you have five to ten minutes of serious sanding each time you change the pad. After that time, you may as well switch over to Charmin, because you're not sanding squat. Those gouges I mentioned? That's because I was using waaay too strong a grit, since I effectively wasted all cutting power of the sandpaper in the first useful five minutes.

When you try doing it right--changing sandpaper every five to ten minutes--your sanding tasks will take roughly one four hundredth as long as they did before. As a bonus, you'll be using higher grit sandpaper than you were before (since it's cutting so much faster) so your finishes will be better.

So the moral of the story is buy a crateful of sandpaper, change it constantly, and learn to love sanding again. You'll thank me for it.

(Although I previously recommended hook-and-loop sanders & sandpaper, I'm beginning to reconsider, since PSA (sticky) sandpaper is so crazy cheap. Cheap sandpaper means I change it more often, which is good, so I may try an H&L converter & report back on the results)

The simple joys of a planer

I have a Ridgid TP-1300 planer that I picked up used for a pretty good deal. It is my current favorite power tool. It does all the things a good power tool should.
First, it pretty much performs as advertised. You can simply crank to a given cutoff depth, it shows the depth right there on the ind-i-cut meter, and feed the sucker in. Voila! That much is gone. It's also got standard stops for 1/2", 3/4", etc., and an absolute-thickness reading that's easy to adjust.
Second, it's been designed with idiots like me in mind. There's handly little stowage spaces for extra blades, a magnetic blade holder, wrenches, and everything else you need for regular maintenence--and it's all included with the planer itself at no extra charge. I guess they now throw in a stand too, but mine didn't come with one (at the price I paid who cares). I built one out of 2x4s and a couple of lockable casters that's better than the one they provide anyway. But I digress.
Third, it fails gracefully. This is critical for me, since I fail often, and so must my tools. When you accidentally tell it to shave 1/4 inch off a 13" wide hard maple slab, it slows down, and eventually the rollers stop feeding while the blades keep spinning. You can turn it off, raise the thing up, berate yourself, and set things right with no major harm done. In fact, if you try to take off more than the max allowed, the wood simply won't fit in the opening.
Fourth, it does good work despite operator stupidity. Unless you're dealing with LOOONG boards, you just don't get snipe (the extra divot at the end of a long board). And if you support the board, or set the snipe-lock, you don't even get it then. It's really hard to feed the wood in in a way that makes the planer upset--at an angle, diagonally, it's all good.
Finally, and most importantly... planing is awesome. There is no immediate gratification in woodworking like taking something that looks like a the mutant offspring of a fuzzy caterpiller and a railroad tie and discovering it's flame maple with a burl inclusion. Yes, this happened to me last week. I mean, it's truly incredible that you can reveal such spectacular beauty from beneath what is in fact the rotted carcass of a dead plant. But the point is, power tools do work. Great power tools do VOODOO MAGIC. This is a great power tool.

So go get yourself a nice planer. Not the Ryobi, the dust collector is flimsy plastic. But try it out with some mystery rough-cut lumber from the bottom of your local sawyer's wood pile. You'll thank me for it.

(Astute readers wonder why I am praising a Ridgid planer when I recently steered readers away from that very same brand. Actually, that's incorrect. Astute readers will read that I got it *used*, from the pre-Ridgid-went-to-seed era, and will not be asking stupid questions.)

Nesting tables

Tempting project from Popular Woodworking. A weekend project that you might even be able to finish in a weekend!

(If I make it, it'll be out of solid maple, though... gotta do something with these 20"x6'6" spalted maple boards I've got!)

Get a leather apron

Just read a news article about a guy whose table saw kicked a 12" splinter back at him. It pierced his groin, and although he was rushed to the hospital, he died of internal bleeding. Nothing's for sure, but a heavy leather shop apron (the full length ones are sometimes called "kilts") might have saved him. Plus, you've always got your tape measure handy--beats the hell out of my current system of strategically placing tape measures every five feet around the shop.

So I was at a friend's house for dinner tonight, and said "watch, I'll get you a new shop apron". I proceeded to tell the story to his wife. We're both going apron shopping this weekend.

Here's a link that's great reading if you're getting a little frisky with your table saw:
Table saw accident summaries

Get a heavy apron--you'll thank me for it.

(Hi Lynn)

Cheap Wood

Not an ED ad, this is a serious subject for amateur sawdust-makers. Where do you get lots of cheap boards so you can mess around without stressing about the cost? The solution is your local sawyer. Check the yellow pages, the classifieds, and anywhere else you can think of to get started. Then visit them and see what they carry.

Expect prices to be less than half what you'd pay at a good, local hardwoods store like this one. In fact, take notes on prices at the local store before you go. Remember that wood prices vary regionally; local species are always much cheaper, so price things from a local source. As a rule sawyers don't take credit cards, so bring a chunk of cash.

And prices aren't the only benefit. Usually all your wood comes from one tree, so the boards match much better than what you get from the store. It's typically got more character--the interesting boards are grabbed first at the store, and this stuff comes from naturally grown trees, not tree farms. And best of all, it's common to get bookmatched and even flitch-matched sets of wood that look spectacular when you use them together.

The biggest gotcha in buying wood like this is that it is probably not ideally dried. There are a few possibilities here.

Best case is the sawyer has a kiln and knows how to use it. If the wood was KD recently, it should be 6-8% moisture content. If this is true, you just need to leave it indoors for a week and it's ready to go (and it's probably fine if you use it immediately).

Second best is that the wood has been cut for at least 1 year per inch of thickness--that's how long it takes to air-dry. It doesn't matter how long the log has been sitting around, since the wood only really dries when properly stacked and stickered. Which gets to the second point--the wood should be stacked neatly, under cover (a sheet of plastic or metal is standard), and stickered with 1-inch spacers. Check for sticker stain where the stickers contact the wood. Bring a knife and scrape the stain off off to get an idea of how deep it goes. If it's air-dried, the moisture content should be between 10% and 12%, although it can be higher. Again, a week or two indoors is a good idea before using it.

If neither of these is true, the wood is wet, and the price should be roughly a quarter of what you'd pay elsewhere. At that price, it still may not be a good deal. Not only will you have to store the wood properly for a year per inch of thickness, but there's a nonzero chance that it'll crack and warp badly over the course of that year. This is normally a risk the sawyer takes, but now you have to take it. Incidentally, if the sawyer hasn't painted the ends of his logs, run-don't-walk since he has no clue what he's doing (wood tends to loose moisture faster at the ends of the log, causing splits there).

Also important to remember is that the average sawyer is an enterprising businessman, and as such, may well be lying to you, especially about the moisture content. The solution to this problem is the moisture meter, which I'll write an article about as soon as I actually buy one.

For the moment, hit the Nickel Classified (or, if you're in WA, drop me a line) and get in touch with a local sawyer. Cheap, great, local, high-quality wood... you'll thank me for it!

(To give you an idea of how well this can work, I just bought 100 bf of airdried 8/4 maple for $0.70/bf, less than the cost of an equivalent volume of 2x4s.)

eCabinet Systems

Just ordered a copy of eCabinet Systems. My neighbor, a semiprofessional woodworker, recommends it highly. Evidently it lets you design your cabinets in a CAD environment, then shows you renderings of the finished cabinets, lets you order all the hardware wholesale, produces cutlists, and ultimately creates files you can send to have the wood milled for you. Looks promising. I'll post when I know better how it works, but for the moment you can check out this review.

(right now I use TurboCAD 8.0 for everything; I'll post a review about that sometime)