Nothing Severed Yet

Tweakin the bies

My new table saw came with a Biesmeyer-style rip fence. Bies fences are only attached on one end; the far side doesn't clamp at all. I was having a little difficulty with it after setup until I figured out the problem.

There's three pads on the close side of the clamp. When the clamp is engaged, these hold it in place. There's instructions in the setup guide to make sure these keep the fence square, and what to do if they don't hold the fence solidly. But when I was done, I noticed that the far end of the fence was not always true--if I unclamped and reclamped it, the far end would wind up off by a little from where it was before.

The trick is to tighten the pads down so the biesmeyer fence just barely slides over the guide rail. If you do this, the whole fence runs truer, stays squarer, and generally makes you happier.

True up your bies. You'll thank me for it.

Don't inhale the coco

I was messing around with some cocobolo this week. It's crazy stuff. It's normally
black and reddish-orange, like this. It's gorgeous and striking. But it gets wierd. When you finish sanding it, the red parts are suddenly yellow. And I don't mean "it gets slightly more yellow", I mean post-it note, bug-lamp yellow.

Then it gets wierder. If you get any water or mineral oil on it, POOF. Instant red-orange again. If you let it sit there for a while, it will still get back to red-orange, only over the course of hours.

The strangitude doesn't stop when you cut this stuff. As soon as I cut into it, I smelled this wierd, distinctive odor of cinnamon and cloves. It smelled good enough that I wanted to lean closer and catch a closer whiff, but that seemed unwise since the tablesaw was still running.

The sawdust is orange and should be treated like radioactive waste. Basically, most people have an allergic reaction to cocobolo dust (not the solid wood) that's pretty similar to poison ivy. Ug. Further, it's a sensitizer. That means that even if you don't get nailed by it the first few times you're around it, the fifth or tenth or whatever time you'll find yourself instantly overwhelmed by just a speck.

Finally, the stuff is oily. You have to wipe it down with mineral spirits before gluing or else the glue won't stick, and you'll have to use something like Gorilla Glue anyway. When you're wiping it down, you can literally see the orange oils on the rag.

On the plus side, the stuff is rock-hard and crazy tough. The natural oils protect it from water, which is why they use it for knife handles. You could probably make an outdoor deck out of it if you really had money to burn. Heck, these people make flooring out of it. Actually, that might be worth ordering from--get a 2' piece, cut it in half, glue it up using the handy T&G that are already in place, and voila.

One other neat thing about it is it doesn't actually require any finish. You'd be insane to stain it, of course, but you can actually polish it to a high sheen without the application of any other finish. Many people do it with just a coat of wax. One catch, though: the darkening process I mentioned earlier never completely stops, and it will eventually turn black from UV exposure. A UV-blocking lacquer should solve this.

Pick up some cocobolo, a full face respirator, a new dust collector, and a hermetically sealed bunny suit. You'll thank me for it.

Hello, 45: perfect picture frame jig

What makes a perfect jig? Well, here are my criteria:
1) Easy to make. If it ain't, I won't.
2) Cheap and readily available materials. See #1.
3) Minimum of precision cutting. The more cuts have to be just-right, the more likely I am to botch the whole thing, which brings us back to #1.
4) Does what it's supposed to do.

So I made some picture frames recently, and they had pretty mediocre corners. If you've tried to get a perfect 45 degree miter before, you know what a pain in the posterior this can be. I messed around with building a crosscut sled, but the runners kept sticking, and it wasn't quite dead on.

Then it hit me, like a red sock to a baseball. I was making this way too complicated. I could do it with two pieces of wood and exactly one measurement, in about ten minutes. Here's what I did.

Materials:
1) A scrap of plywood
2) A stick of hardwood

so far, so good. Start out by putting a straight edge on one side of the plywood. Then rip the other side parallel. Not too hard so far, right?
Next, take your stick, true up one side, and rip the other parallel. Still not real tough.

Now... well, a picture's worth a thousand words. Click for an enlargement.

Basically you drive one screw, line up 45, then drive a second, and you're DONE. To use it, you clamp something against your stick and run the plywood against your fence. That's right, you use the fence--no need for runners and all the pain that entails. Using the jig is as easy as trimming a piece of plywood.

In this picture, you see the plywood, the stick (walnut in this case), and a rafter square used to set 45. The blade is also up to show how it would work if it was running--obviously not wise to leave your blade up when you're measuring, kids. You also see a bunch of extra holes from some experimenting I was doing. Don't worry, you only need two screws. I'd suggest a taller and thinner stick than I used, though; this one is tough to clamp to.

Slap one together out of some scrap lumber and see for yourself. You'll thank me for it.

A finish that's good enough to eat

Ever had a project that looked so good, you just wanted to lick it? Hmm, maybe that's just me. In any case, sometimes you want to make something that can be chewed on, drooled over, or used as a serving implement. When that time comes, you want to steer clear of most commercial finishes, which are just a bit more foodsafe than this. Actually, that's not 100% true--while most finishes are toxic, they become much less toxic when they dry. Of course, that's what they said about lead paint.

So what's a woodworker to do? Well, there are some excellent alternatives. Here's a quick wrap-up of some foodsafe finishes. These are all safe to put on toddler's building blocks, salad bowls, butcher blocks, serving utensils, and your tongue.

In order of decreasing durability:
Shellac
Like beeswax, shellac is produced by insects. It's hard and protective. Dewaxed shellac, especially "super-blonde", is fairly water resistant (other grades are less so). It is damaged immediately by alcohol. This forms a coating over the wood, so it won't work for chopping blocks.

Behlen's Salad Bowl Finish
I believe this is also a hardening finish, although I'm not 100% sure. It's been explicitly FDA certified.

Pure tung oil
Insert "tongue oil" joke here. "Tung oil finish" often has drying agents made out of heavy metals, so steer clear. Pure tung oil comes from a nut, though, and you can drink it if you want (hint: you don't). It smells kind of nasty and, without the drying agents, takes a while to dry. Also, as it dries it tends to leak back out of pores and cracks, leaving wet splotches. You want to re-wipe it with a cloth every few days until this stops. Still, when all's said and done, it provides a very tough, hardening, penetrating finish that will not go rancid.

Walnut oil
Cheap, easily available, won't go rancid, and smells better than tung oil. On the flip side it takes longer to harden and is not quite as protective. Still, an excellent choice.

Mineral oil
This is what most butcher blocks are made of. Don't use baby oil, since it has fragrances added and you probably don't want your butcher block smelling like a baby's derriere. Use the stuff from the pharmacy, but be careful at the checkout stand. This does not cure or harden, but it's dirt cheap. Many butcher block oil formulations are just mineral oil. It must be reapplied quite frequently.

Any other plant oil
Other plant oils (corn, olive, etc) can, in theory, be used to finish wood. Some woodworkers report it going rancid and smelling nasty. Some don't. If you're feeling...uh...brave, feel free to try it and report back on how it works.

So turn some of those scraps from your woodpile into butcher blocks, building blocks, or salad bowls, and try one of these methods to finish them. You'll thank me for it.

My Saw

As I hinted at in a previous post, I'm getting a new table saw. More to the point, it arrived this morning, and I have to let go of the Green Machine, old faithful, the single instrument that is most responsible for me Not Severing Anything Yet. And as one astute reader already noticed this morning, it's for sale on ebay here. The bid is now $50, which is somewhat insane considering that an identical saw is already at $250 with a couple of days still to go. Check it out--if only because you can see a sneak peak of that humidor I keep telling you I'm going to post in the pictures at the bottom.

And here's a special deal just for you: if any Nothing Severed Yet reader is the high bidder on this, I'll throw in about 10 bf of lightly spalted maple to get you warmed up, at absolutely no charge. It's great stuff, nearly two feet wide by 6 feet long by 4/4. That's easily $60 worth of lumber, probably more. The only requirement is that you have to send me pictures of whatever you make to post, and you can't cut your finger off while doing it.

Buy my saw, or at least look at the pretty pictures. You'll thank me for it.

Shellac finish, the Dan way

I've been experimenting with methods of shellac application as I work on the legs for our dining room table. They're good to play with since they're large expanses of walnut, but if I mess 'em up, who cares--they're just going to get kicked anyway. These instructions are what I came up with. They assume you're using a wood that needs its pores filled, like red oak, walnut, etc. Everything assumes a 2# cut of dewaxed shellac (garnet in my case). Actually, it assumes that I just mixed it however the heck I felt like, since I treat shellac prep like a cooking project--that is to say cavalierly.

0) Sand the surface to 180 grit or so.
1) Take microfiber cloths and cut them into quarters. The edges will be frayed; just pull off any loose fluff.
2) For the rest of these instructions, use a quarter of the cloth, folded into quarters.
3) Dip the cloth in the shellac. Apply to the whole surface. Be pretty liberal in your application, and don't sweat it too much if it's heavier in one place. Avoid drips though, especially drips that dribble over the edge of your piece--they're a pain to clean up; you'll have to soak them in alcohol.
4) Allow to dry completely--15 min past when it looks wet, minimum. Ideally an hour.
5) Dump a huge pile of powdered pumice on the surface, about a teaspoon worth (I suspect rottenstone would work better, but I use pumice since that's what I have laying around).
6) Get the rag pretty wet with shellac. Work the pumice around until it's a gray paste. Spread this vigorously, packing it into the pores.
7) Repeat. Each tablespoon of pumice will cover about a square foot. Don't sweat the nasty pumice-swirls you're leaving behind. The goal here is to pack pumice into every pore of the wood so the finish is smooth.
8) Let dry until it no longer appears wet.
9) With a rag soaked in denatured alcohol only (no shellac), clean up the worst of the pumice-swirls, rubbing very gently. This will re-dissolve some of the surface shellac and spread it around; that's OK. You may have to switch cloths periodically as it gets loaded with excess pumice.
10) Let dry completely.
11) Slather the surface liberally with mineral oil. Your hand should skate across the surface.
12) Using your Sander of Deepest Delights, lightly sand to 220. When you're done, you will appear to have taken off a good chunk of the shellac. The important thing is that the pores are packed with pumice mixed with shellac, and your surface can get glassy smooth.
13) Sand again to 320 or so, still with mineral oil. This get rid of the rest of the shellac on the surface. Occasionally wipe off the mineral oil from a spot to check how it's coming, and add more mineral oil as it drips off, gets flinged across the room, gets wiped away by the sleeve of your shirt, etc.
14) Wipe off the mineral oil with paper towels.
15) Repeatedly wipe layers of shellac on to the surface, allowing to dry after each coat (will take about 15 min, but it's safe to do the next coat when the last one isn't shiny).
Optional:
16) Near the end, do another light sanding with mineral oil. Use 600, 800, then 1000, then 2000 grit (you can get it from the auto parts store).
18) One or two more layers of shellac if needed to get a perfect, glossy finish!

Try it--you'll thank me for it.

About that url...

This weblog is now available at the more mnemonically-friendly location of www.nothingseveredyet.com.

Post-election public service announcement

WD-40 (or straight kerosene, which is what WD-40 is mostly composed of) takes off bumper stickers. It's handy stuff to have around the shop--you'll thank me for it.

Table saw roundup

I was doing some research on table saws yesterday, and wanted to give you a quick report on the results.
1) Get a cabinet saw, not a contractor-style saw. Heavier trunions mean less vibration. Everything is bolted to the base instead of the table, stabilizing the works. Everything is enclosed (make sure it comes with a motor cover), so dust colleciton works better.
2) Get a left-tilt saw. Most people put the fence on the right, and a right-tilt blade forces the cutoff down and into the fence. This makes kickback more likely, which makes everything more dangerous.
3) Get solid cast-iron wings. Stamped steel flexes and can't be used for precision work. The heavier weight of the cast-iron stablizes the saw, reduces vibration, and helps pass the ever-important nickel test.

I looked closely at three saws that met these criteria and were under $1,500.
The Jet "hybrid" saw is a cross between a cabinet and a contractor style. My buddy has one and reviews it here. $925 shipped from Amazon.

The Jet "Xacta" saw is a true cabinet saw, but it doesn't have a cast-iron wing on the right (although it has an extended wing made from a lighter material). There also seems to be severe quality problems--a good third of reviewers reported that they had to return parts, usually several times over. It's not clear if these are production problems from inadequate shipping, or just plain bad manufacturing. $1499 shipped from Amazon.

The Grizzly G1023SL is the big winner. Everything I was looking for, and outstanding reviews across the board. $895 shipped from Amazon.

If you're looking, I suggest American Woodworker's roundup. Fine Woodworking's article suffers from their usual defect of not actually rating anything that they review, but has some useful bits as well.

If your needs are the same, go with the Grizzly. You'll thank me for it.