Nothing Severed Yet

Dowelmax rocks my world

No free tool giveaway for this one--unfortunately these things are spendy, so they couldn't part with a freebie.

The Good: The best way to join two pieces of wood together, period.
The Bad: The price.
The Bottom Line: One of those cases where the best really is that good.
NSY rating: FIVE THUMBS UP (5/5)

The Full Deal:
The DowelMax doweling jig probably already has you scratching your head. "OK", you think to yourself, "This is a really nice dowling jig. I get that. It's better than the next best dowling jig, maybe even a lot better."

"But TWO HUNDRED THIRTY DOLLARS?!?" you think to yourself.

"No way it's that good."

And you're wrong.

There's two reasons the Dowelmax is worth every penny you'll pay for it, and in fact will become an indispensible part of your shop on par with your table saw or router. First, because it's made perfectly. Second, because it works perfectly.

When I say it's made perfectly, what I mean is this. The people who invented it thought of every tomfool way you could bollox up your woodworking projects with their product, and engineered around it. Here's just a sampling of the dumb things you can't screw up with it.
1) Drop it. The thing's machined out of solid metal. If you drop it, you might have to file down a small ridge. But since the faces are all huge, that won't affect your accuracy one bit.
2) Not use it right. They put these checkmark and registration marks all over it, and give you instructions for how to use them that even a concussed chimpanzee can comprehend. Some of the advanced features may require a few moments' thought, but even then, you can watch the instruction video (included) and repeat after them.
3) Wear it out. As previously mentioned, this is the direct descendant of a large cube of solid metal. The inserts are all hardened tool steel; you'll break your drill bit before you make a dent in them (and they're replaceable anyway).
4) Line it up improperly. No careful eyeballing, ginger clamping, or trying to remember which edge is the registration face and which edge is gonna make your box turn out like a rhombus. Large, flat, perfectly machined edges make sure that it's trivially simple to align it. The pieces are symmetric, so you can flip them on axis without ruining your alignment.
5) Get frustrated using it. It takes about 30 seconds to switch from one setup to another. The screws, like everything else, are machined out of big hunks of metal, so they spin on and off like butter.

When I say it works perfectly, it's a little harder to explain. Let me try.

Woodworking consists of roughly three phases.
1) Cut/drill/rout/puncture/maul/splinter things
2) Align and glue
3) Apply finish
They don't always come in order, but they usually do. Master these three steps and you're set. Now, of all 3 steps, which one is the most heartrending?

It's not 1. During step one, everything's in pieces. Even if you make a mistake, it's probably not obvious. If you did screw it up, you've only destroyed one piece; a small fraction of your total project.

It's not step 3. During step 3, the whole damn thing is sitting there beautifully before you. You might have to strip off your finish if you botch it, but there's no question that the project is gonna get done.

It's step 2. Alignment and glueup is the most heartrending, miserable, desolate time in a woodworker's life. It's when you notice that you referenced to top of Piece A and the bottom of Piece B when you cut your biscuits, so the thing just ain't gonna line up no matter how loud you cry. It's where you first notice that your table's glueup will require you to sand off three board feet of walnut to get it flush. It's that delicate discovery when your tenon kinda jiggles around in your mortise. Etcetera. Basically, it's where all the mistakes of 1) become evident, with approximately four minutes left until the glue sets up.

Dowelmax fixes this.

Any joint that can be made with a dowel can be made perfectly with a dowelmax. I drilled over 300 dowel holes with the dowelmax on one project, and I had exactly 1 of them come out wrong. It was not because the product was somehow defective; it's because I, with all the mental alacrity of the aforementioned concussed chimpanzee, forgot to put the depth stop on the drill bit. Sure enough, I drilled a hole right through to the back side. Even then, it was nothing a plug cutter and a bit of glue couldn't fix.

Compare that with 8 dowels I drilled with dowel points for comparison--2 of the 8 didn't align properly when I assembled it.

So what this all means is that the dowelmax is so precise, your glueups always match. Always. Without fail. Take a look at this.

Shown are four of six boards that need to be joined in pairs. I decided to do massive overkill and use 15 dowels per pair (which, by the way, took me about 12 min for all 6 boards). That means each of the 6 boards requires 15 holes. If any one of those 90 holes is off by 1/32, the pieces won't slide together.

Every single pair of boards slid together perfectly.

What about strength? Well, here's a board that I cut in two places. The left cut I doweled, the right cut I biscuited. Note that I could only fit one biscuit, but I could fit 5 dowels. I skipped one because I felt particularly daring.

Here's that same board after I slammed it over a pipe, holding both ends firmly.

The poor biscuit didn't have much of a chance. How is a piece of pressed fiberboard supposed to stand up to four solid wood pegs?

Of course, I had to bounce the beam. I set the board on a few pegs and whacked it with a hammer. Again, and again, and again.

Note that the wood literally split in half the long way down the center; the dowels were fine.

You've probably got a couple of tools in your shop already that cost more than this one and will get used less. Take it from me, this one is worth the dough.

Pick up a Dowelmax. You'll thank me for it.

Seat 29 E

This has absolutely nothing to do with woodworking.

I'm terribly sorry. I try to stay on topic, really I do. But sometimes something comes along that's just so odd, I have to share it with everyone, even though there isn't even the faintest connection between woodworking and the subject at hand.

This is an official complaint lodged with Continental Airlines. It come across my desk by way of Exotic Metals and Northrop Grumman.

It's hilarious.

Give it a read (111k PDF). You'll thank me for it.

Wipe your baby's butt with your table saw

What can I say... it's plans to make baby wipes with your table saw. How cool is that.

(found via boingboing)

Getting wood online

I'm a big fan of Woodweb's forums. Here you can find anything from reclaimed antique pine timbers, 10,000 boardfeet at a time, to a box of snakewood selling for an unbelievable $4/lb (that's $18/bf). For comparison purposes, snakewood is typically about $100/bf. Hm... if I buy four bf of snakewood, I've just saved enough to buy a new drill press. Brilliant!

It's important to be careful since there are a few ripoff stories floating around. You can always ask for references. It probably makes the most sense to by from someone nearby, though, so you don't pay shipping, and can see the goods before you fork over the cash.

Check out the forum--you'll thank me for it!

Filling a burl hole

Today I was working with a walnut burl piece, about 11"x15"x0.355", give or take 0.0015". Unfortunately, it had a big old hole in it.

There's a few ways to deal with such a thing. In the past, I've used liquid wood. This time, I decided to use epoxy--no colorant, just clear.

I discovered an interesting tradeoff, which of course I have to share with you. It turns out that if you have a hole that goes all the way through the board, exoxy (even the thick stuff) will drain right through to the other side. No surprise. The solution? Put a piece of tape on the back side.

But not so fast! It turns out that if you do that, there's no where for the air trapped in the hole to go, and you wind up with a big bubble at the bottom of the hole.

The solution? Cover the bottom with tape, but make a pinhole. When epoxy starts to drip out, cover the pinhole with a second piece of tape.

Oh, and watch out for the epoxy fumes. They're relatively odorless, but quite toxic. Another good reason to buy Darth Vader's dust mask.

Some dovetail tweaks

I've been making dovetails for the past week, which means I've screwed up a lot of dovetails. In no particular order, here are some of the lessons I've learned.

0) My Incra jig rocks.

1) Joint and plane EVERYTHING. If it ain't square, the joints don't fly. These even applies to the small little highlight piece when cutting double dovetails... it can't be that important, right? Wrong!

2) Check your router table, fence, and everything else you can think of for true, even in the weirder dimensions. My router table was bulging upward in the center by a good 1/16"!

3) Cut the pins fast; they'll come out OK. Cut the tails slow, especially as the bit leaves the wood. This is easy to screw up, in which case you wind up with splinters near the dovetail corners.

4) Think twice before you apply glue. Hint: it doesn't go on the end grain of the pin board. Use extra glue in the tail slots; there's room to spare because the round router bit cuts out more wood than the square tails need.

5) Clamp the joint. It will help close any cracks between dovetails.

6) Along the same lines, start out by gluing two joints, not just one, and spread the loose ends apart slightly. It will serve as a lever to close the dovetails so you don't show cracks.

7) If cutting a double dovetail and the accent piece cracks, don't sweat it. Glue and clamp it at the same time you glue it into the main board--it will be invisible when it's dry.

8) If you assemble a joint and then realize you've messed it up, you can use a bandsaw to save half the boards. Cut notches between the tails, then use pliers to pull the formerly tight-fitting pieces out.

9) Once the thing is together, pack all your mistakes with liquid wood. No one will ever notice.

Hope this helps.