Nothing Severed Yet

Bring the wood dealer to you

Brian tried out some online wood suppliers and reported back on how everything turned out. He didn't identify his NSY affiliation, so he didn't get preferential treatment. Plus, he bought the wood on his own dime, so he'd be free to criticize them if things didn't work out. --dan

I love to wander through a building full of lumber. It's great to poke around the stacks and discover that one spectacular piece with the burl inclusion and a bit of crossgrain ripple that just screams "jewelry box!" in a voice that only you can hear. Unfortunately, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area where you pay premium prices for wood and ususally have a lousy selection. When it came time to stock my new shop with some lumber I found that local supplies just didn't have what I wanted, especially at a price I was willing to pay.

I'd never really taken mail order wood seriously. It always seemed like a silly and expensive thing to try to ship a good chunk of a tree cross-country, sight unseen, in hopes of getting something workable. Once I started looking into it, however, I found that I could easily beat the local prices--even after shipping--and have a much broader range of wood to pick from. I was still nervous about the quality, but I was frustrated enough with the locals to take the risk. I've received three orders so far from two different suppliers and am very happy with the results and learned a few things along the way.

Most dealers sell only rough or surfaced two sides (S2S) by default, so make sure you know what you are ordering when you try a new supplier. Surfaced S2S lumber has been planed on both faces already, so it arrives about 3/16th thinner than the rough dimension with a surface ready to work. For example, S2S 4/4 lumber is actually about 13/16th thick. The upside of this is that it saves you some planing; the down side is that if the wood changes shape during shipping (and it will) you won't be able to plane it flat again. Also, the boards won't be planed to exactly the same thickness, so you'll either have to shave a bit off of each one or amend your design to deal with the variable thickness.

Shipping also gets interesting. For small orders UPS or FedEx Ground are the best deal, but the length and weight of a package is limited to 70 lbs and 72 inches. Once you hit 200 lbs, truck freight becomes the best deal and length is not limited. From 70 lbs to 200 lbs is a shipping no-man's-land where the best deal varies for different orders. Most dealers are very familiar with the shipping systems and can give you an idea how best to ship your order.

There are a bunch of different dealers out there offering wood for sale. Many of them specialize in particular types of wood such as highly figured woods, regional woods, or even a single species. There is a short list of dealer's I've located that have good reputations, however I've only tried two of them so far. I was happy with both of them and will continue to buy from both of them.

I still wish I had a good local supplier. If you're lucky enough to have one, be sure to support them as there is no better friend when you need to find those matched boards for a table top. If you can't get what you need locally though, remember that there are many good dealers who are happy to bring the wood you want right to your door step. So give it a try and be sure to let them know that Nothing Severed Yet sent you.

New England Specialty Lumber Supply was the first order I placed for 25bf of 4/4 curly maple. NESL is a newcomer to the wood-by-mail trade and a small operation. I decided to try them out because they had some incredible prices when they first started out. Typical of small operations, they did not accept credit cards - only checks and money orders. They were also a bit slow on the turn around and it took two shipments, but when the wood arrived I was very pleased. The wood was good quality with nice figure and arrived rough at 1 inch. Also typical of small operations, the owner, Joe Roberts, was friendly and happy to answer my questions before I ordered. When a problem arose with the first shipment (it contained 25 linear feet instead of 25 board feet), an email to Joe was all it took to get the rest of the order shipped out.
Overall, NESS was a great experience, and I'd happily work with them again.

Dan interrupting--by sheer coincidence, I'm in the middle of negotiating a purchase of 300 bf of mixed exotics from NESL right now. I was delighted to get Brians review and hear that I'm working with good people. I'll post here as soon as the shipment arrives and update you on how it turns out! --dan

The second and third orders I placed were with Woodworker's Source out of Arizona. WWS is a big time operation with a great website and lots of selection. They seem to have a monthly sale, and I caught it during a North American Hardwoods sale. I first ordered 20bf of 4/4 cherry and later 20bf each of 4/4 hard maple and 8/4 poplar. Both orders shipped out quickly and arrived in good condition. The quality of the cherry and maple were much better than I expected and the poplar was nice as well. All wood from WWS is surfaced two sides.

I've researched some other sites as well. Although I haven't ordered from them, the following all have excellent reputations:
Curly Woods - Specializes in figured wood
Niagara Lumber General hardwoods. Prices include shipping.
West Penn Hardwoods Wide range of hardwoods including exotics
Steve Wall Lumber Co. - North American hardwoods

Brian Todoroff
Contributing Editor
NothingSeveredYet.com

Last call for free Finger Gloves!

I forgot to announce an end date for the free Finger Gloves offer. Sign up here by Friday, April 1st, for a chance to win.

It's all in the details

Chances are that out in your workshop you have that one really great tool, the one you can't wait to pick up, the one that you make up excuses to use. You can probably rattle off a whole list of all the wonderful virtues of that gem, and it probably has a place of honor in the shop.

In some dark corner that you tell no one about is also that colossal waste of money. Perhaps it has long since been forcefully ejected from your sawdust kingdom, but the memory of the wonderful project it ruined still haunts you.

The rest of the shop is filled with dozens of other tools that we never think much about. They may not be sexy, but they do their jobs well and we never give them a second thought. Take a second to think of some of them. The block plane that you smooth out a plug with, or the ROS that is always there when you need it. Now think about the person who designed it. How did they decide where the switch went? Why is the handle 5.3 inches long instead of 5 or 6 or 5.4? How did they know to add that little curve to give your thumb just enough clearance? How did they come up with the million other details that make everything come together so smoothly?

In most cases a good designer agonized over all these details. They spend days trying to balance each improvement with each little drawback. In most cases they put infinitely more thought into each little aspect of the design then most of us ever put into using the tool.

After our recent review of the Jack Rabbit Deluxe Kit I got the fascinating opportunity to talk with one such designer, Brian Giffin. Besides being a real nice guy, Brian is passionate about the details in his designs. He loved that I appreciated the quality and details that he had put into the Jack Rabbit and, since I'm an engineer as well, we had a great exchange about trying to reach that perfect balance in a design. I wanted to share with you a bit of what went into the design on his end, so here is a bit of what Brian had to share on the depth stop:

Because no matter how careful I am, using a hand drill, I can't drill
straight into the wood, so any depth stop that is flat will contact on one
outside edge first. Because it's the outside edge on a flat bottomed
depth stop, it's going at a faster speed, in surface feet per minute, than the
diameter closer in, when turning at the same rpm. I made it convex so
that it contacts the inner part first, even when slightly angled. Second,
it's brass, so the heat build-up that happens in steel is less likely.
Brass wicks heat about five times faster than steel. You can dent the
wood but burning is not so likely.

The other feature I built in, is a chip relief at the inner edge so the
chips don't jam between the countersink teeth and the depth stop. With
most depth stops, they need frequent cleaning of the chips, to reproduce
the same hole depth, and keep it cutting a clean hole. This one sort of
glaciates out keeping a more consistent depth without having to clean it
so much. It's not a perfect solution but 80% seemed better than nothing.
I've got two different versions of the chip relief on each side of the
depth stop because maybe it's better in one material than another.

Wow! Now that's alot of thought on just one surface of the depth stop! I love to learn about this level of craftsmanship and figured woodworkers like yourselves would get a kick out of it too.

So next time you head out into the shop, take a minute to look at those chisels, planes, saw blades, and power tools and then offer up some thanks for all the people who pour their heart and soul into all the infinite details that make our woodworking so much fun.

Brian Todoroff
Contributing Editor, Nothing Severed Yet
www.nothingseveredyet.com

A new way to sell out

Rockler just sent me a very nice email asking if we'd like to become a Rockler affilliate, since evidently we've been pilfering their affilliate content for a while (without really knowing that's what we were doing). From now on, if you click a Rockler link, NSY gets a cut of anything you wind up buying. Of course, this all goes to improve the quality of the service you know and love*. I'm sharing this because here at NSY we hew to a high ethical standard, plus it's obvious from looking at the web links.

So click on some Rockler affiliate links, or sign up for Rockler's free catalog. I'll thank you for it.

* just kidding, I use it to buy lunch

Dowelmax vs. The Biscuit

Some time ago, I posted about dowels, splines, and their kin (plus a completely random tangent about my finger near the end). A reader wrote in to say:

"You talk about this amazing DowelMax doweling jig. But I can get a cheap doweling jig for a lot less money, or a great biscuit joiner for the same price. Is it really worth it?"

The short answer is, YES. In terms of usefullness-per-dollar, this sucker is near the top of my list. It absolutely blows away the competition for accuracy, ease of use, speed, and strength. Pretty impressive for a hunk of machined aluminum.

A full review is forthcoming (the good folks at OMS Tool provided me with a sample so I could stop borrowing Mike's), but I wanted to share the results of one early experiment with you.

I have a pretty good biscuit joiner--a Freud JS100, to be exact. I decided to do a head-to-head, Biscuits vs. the Dowelmax comparison. This was pretty easy. I made two cuts in a walnut board, then doweled one and biscuited the other.

As a side note, I wasn't working particularly hard at aligning either joint, but the Dowelmax one came out perfectly flush anyway, while the biscuit was about 1/16th off. I applied glue to the biscuit and the dowels and clamped.

I waited a full week before giving it a smack. I grabbed the board firmly by both edges and slammed it down on a pipe in the center to distribute the force equally to both joints. It occurred to me that I might bruise my palms bashing this thing against the pipe, but on the very first smack:

I think that pretty much speaks for itself.

It'll take me a while to get the full Dowelmax review up, but if you can't wait, I'll give you a preview: sell your biscuit joiner for scrap metal and hawk the biscuits on street corners. Take your crappy doweling jig and raffle it off for charity. Do whatever you need to get yourself a Dowelmax. You'll thank me for it.

Workbench bargain, second chance

Remember this outstanding workbench deal that Brian found? Well, it's back! Woodworker's Source is selling a $600 solid wood workbench, complete with bench dog holes and clamps, for just under $300. If you need one, here's the place to get it.

The handy dandy Shrinkulator

Now all I need is a laptop in my shop... --dan

One of the things most beginning woodworkers don't realize is that wood moves through out the year. Table tops and other wide pieces can easily change size by 1/8th inch and back through out the year. Wood also moves much more across the grain than with it, which is why you have to be careful when you join two pieces of wood with the grain running different directions. It's also why you should always finish the front and back of all wood the same way to avoid warping.

Want to get an idea of how much that table top or panel will move? Check out the handy dandy Shrinkulator. Enter the high and low relative humidity for your area and the type and dimension of your wood and it will calculate the change in dimension along the growth rings (flat sawn) and across the growth rings (quarter sawn).

BTW, you can find the relative humidity for your area here or use a moisture content of ~4% to 10% for most situations.

Nothing Severed Yet does not discriminate on the basis of gender, sexual preference, or fashion sense.

http://www.pinktoolbelts.com

The web site name pretty much says it all.

Stainer's Delight: another FREE TOOL review

We had a few hiccoughs getting this posted, but it's all set now! Another free tool review, this one from my good friend Mike. Mike's an outstanding professional cabinetmaker who does terrific work. His shop is so clean you could eat off the floor (and his one year old daughter occasionally does), and he's about five times as productive in cranking out product as I could ever hope to be. I firmly maintain that these facts are unrelated, because admitting otherwise would mean having to clean my shop. In any case, Mike does a lot of staining and was excited to try out this new product and see if it was as good as the ads say. So without further ado... --dan

FINGER GLOVES
Paean Veritas
www.FingerGloves.com
1-877-329-1974

The Good: Durable and effective.
The Bad: Doesn't protect your palm or back of your hand.
The Bottom Line: If you're a careful stainer, these completely outshine latex.
NSY RATING: Five thumbs up (5/5)

The Full Deal:

Review:
Finger Gloves come in several packages. The package I reviewed contained 12 DUET Finger Gloves™ (6 Medium and 6 Large Finger Gloves™) and cost just $5.99. They sent me two, by the way, so you can sign up to win one free. I normally use latex gloves when staining, and I wanted to test this product head-to-head against them. This week, I hand-stained a toy box for a customer. I started out using disposable latex gloves purchased from Home Depot (box of 100 - $9.99). By the time the box was done, I had gone through six pairs of latex gloves. I had to keep changing because the finger tips rip. What's worse, when this happens I get stain on my hand (the whole point of the gloves is to avoid this) and, even worse, it sometimes leaves latex pieces on the project.

I then switched to the Finger Gloves and put another coat of stain on the box. I was able to cover the entire box without changing gloves once. This made life easy. They were comfortable, easy to put on and somewhat easy to take off--no harder than latex gloves. They didn't rip or tear, and left no marks on the surface.

I really like the fact that they last a long time and can be reused several times. After staining they get a little hard from the stain, but that is fine with me. In fact, they held up so well that I was able to keep using them when I put the top coat onto the toy box.

The Finger Gloves also fit much better than latex gloves do. They provide you with a greater ability to pick up small objects and hold on to your work pieces or staining cloths. The Finger Gloves have little nubs on the ends that allows for a much better grip. You will almost forget you are wearing them.

The cost of the Finger Gloves may make it seem like you're getting less than you do with latex gloves, but I found that they are well worth the money. In fact, I found that the finger gloves have a lot of potential in other areas as well. They work great for me in trimming my roses. Great protection from thorns!

The Finger Gloves are a great product and I would encourage everyone to give them a chance! You will not be disappointed.

Want one FREE? Just fill out this form and be entered in our drawing!

Michael G Ewanchuk
MGE Custom Woodworking & Design
www.ewanchuk.net
Contributing Editor, Nothing Severed Yet
www.nothingseveredyet.com

Poker chip box plans, free from Rockler

First things first: aplogies for the long hiatus. I just took a new day job as group manager for realarcade, which is a sweet gig but has kept me busy for the last two weeks getting up to speed.

The good folks at Rockler have made plans for a walnut poker chip box available online, free. They'll show you how to make the thing, and even have links to where you can order all the parts online. From Rockler's website. They sell all the parts, in fact. Shocking, I know. Despite the merchandising tie-in, though, it's pretty slick because it uses a piece of walnut molding, so you get a cool, difficult-looking profile without a lot of work.

Which brings me to a major pet peave of mine. Why do woodworking plans always go out of their way to make things difficult? I look at plans in magazines, and they're five times as difficult as anything I've ever built, and they look half as good. More to the point, they look like something you'd buy at a store, where labor is done by giant robots or tiny children, but lumber is expensive. So they have tons of finely detailed parts holding together a big panel of plywood. Huh?

I don't know about you, but if I'm planning to spend six months building a coffee table, I don't mind spending $200 on some beautiful 5/4 FAS walnut boards. It's worth spending twice as much to have the thing made out of solid wood instead of plywood or, heaven forbid, particle board. It's going to last longer, and when you're bragging... er, when your friends ask you about it, you can say, "Yeah, that bugger's made out of solid wood. I mean 100%, SOLID gingko bilboa. In fact, I whittled it down from a tree trunk four feet in diameter, while the tree was still alive, deep in the heart of the brazilian rainforest. I was forty feet off the ground lashed to a branch, gnawing the legs out because my pocketknife had been stolen by a kukoburra, when the pygmies started firing blowdarts at me..." Your story is going to be a lot less convincing if they notice the place where you dropped your beer stein on the corner and dented the poplar veneer.

So why do plans have you marrying $25/bf spalted maple with sheets of plywood from the omeHay epotDay? Hell if I know. Which gets me back to the box design, and my original point, which has very little to do with my rant. Unlike most designs, this box doesn't have a lot of froo-froo that makes the piece look more, not less, commercial, and quadruples the length of time you're choking down sawdust for no appreciable benefit. The one piece of zizzybangness (the profile on the walnut) is done for you by the clever use of the walnut molding, and everything else is pretty much square cuts that your pet gerbil can do for you. Simple designs, snazzy result, lots of solid wood.

Note that I haven't actually tried to build the thing (I'm learning to cut dovetails with this right now, so I'll be damned if I'm going to make another box with mitered corners). It may wind up being a really clever plan for firewood for all I know. But one way or another it's a really clever plan.

Take a look. You'll thank me for it.