When gluing up something that will be hard to clean when complete, use masking tape to keep the squeezeout from messing up your project. For example, say you're gluing up a box--the inside corners are a pain to remove the glue from. Just mask them off and wait. 30-45 min later, peel off the tape and glue, and voila.
Oh, and check out these older thoughts on the subject while you're at it.
Spalted wood is pretty, but do you know where the spalting comes from? It's the decay left behind by a specific type of fungus. The wood must be harvested when the spalting is pronounced and visible, but wait too long and the wood loses its structural integrity. In fact, the wood is often weak along the spalt lines; something to remember if you're working with it--be sure to reinforce it with a frame or backing if you have any doubts.
In any case, one might reasonably ask what happened to the fungus? Well, the spores are still present on the wood. Now, kiln-drying will sterilize and kill the spores, so you're OK if you're buying KD. But if you're drying your own wood, or buying cheap air-dried wood from a sawyer, you need to do something about it. Eight hours in a 130 degree oven should be enough to sterilize the board. Alternately, sealing the board--e.g. with shellac--should coat it.
If you don't, it probably won't continue to decay, but you don't want to use it for something like a humidor or bowl.
Toast your spalted lumber. You'll thank me for it.
Miter slots stink. No two ways about it, it's really hard to make a tool that works well in a miter slot.
The miter gage that came with your tablesaw wobbles several degrees. If you don't believe me, stick a long skinny piece of wood against the nice, 90 degree flat surface, put it in the miter slot, and wiggle. I actually made a whole damn picture frame before I figured out why I had to recut each side eighteen times to get it right on 45 degrees... the resulting frame held a wallet-size picture, but that's besides the point.
You either need a hunnert doller miter gage with adjustable width, or better, build yourself a crosscut sled. There's lots of plans around the 'net.
If you build a miter sled, you can machine the runners yourself, and get them hyper-accurate in the planer (plane a board to the right thickness then rip off strips for the runners)--it'll be a perfect fit to your table. That's what I did, and I'm plenty happy with it.
--dan
After ordering a bunch of cigars from my top-secret supplier, it occurred to me that I needed a place to keep them. Woohoo! Quickie project.
There will be a few posts about this, but for starters:
Humidors are great projects because you can build them from fairly small amounts of wood. That means you can use up scraps from old projects, plus throw some amazing-looking expensive figured woods on there in reasonably small quantities and not blow the bank.
But what about the lining? You want spanish cedar. NOT any other kind of cedar, or your cigars will smell like a hamster cage. Spanish cedar is remarkably expensive for an otherwise-unremarkable softwood; it usually goes for about $5.50/bf in inconvenient thicknesses (you want 1/4-5/8). At proper thickness, it can be 4.50 per *square* foot!
What's a thrify woodworker to do? Well, try your local cigar shop (you know, the one you shafted by buying all your stogies online). Turns out that many, although not all, cigar boxes are made of 100% spanish cedar. They can point you to which ones, and will often sell them for cheap (few bucks a box) or give them away for free. Et voila! Enviro-conscious recycler cheapskate humidor, and nobody will be the wiser.
Grab some of those boxes--you'll thank me for it.
PS: I just bought 15 bf of spanish cedar and had my wundersawyer mill it to size for me--the whole process will cost less than the Credo.
(No, I'm not smoking all 200 or so cigars... I actually went in with two friends, so only a third of those are mine. Which, if I calculate correctly, at my current rate of smoking them, is a roughly one-decade supply.)
Take your favorite combination square. Adjust it so the ruler sticks out all the way. Hold the short end against your workbench, so it looks like |_ from the top, and draw a line. Now flip it over, so it looks like _|, and draw another line on top of it. Do the two lines overlap, or do they make a skinny "V"? Yeah, thought so.
Ok, what do you do? You've got three choices.
1) Buy a really expensive combination square. These use metal instead of plastic for the critical interface between the ruler and the L-holder, so they won't wear down and go out of square over time.
2) Buy a dedicated square (or three) that does nothing except sit there quietly and be square.
3) Buy a "rafter square", which isn't designed for precision woodworking at all, but happens to be pretty darn handy for it. It's just one solid piece of aluminum, no moving parts, nothing to mess up. And it's cheap enough that you can buy a bunch to scatter all around the house. I got mine at Le Depot Du Maison.
Check it out--Amazon's got a coupon code to
save $25 off any purchase of $199 or more.
By the way, I've been out of town lately, hence the irregular postings. I've been having some... frustrations with my ecabinets supplier, but I want to exhaust every last option before I skewer them publicly, so I'm staying mum for the moment. The dinner table is coming along well, though.