Posted: July 22nd, 2005 | Author: Brian | Filed under: Woodworking | No Comments »
Bosch has released a new battery system for their line of cordless tools. These new batteries have a lifetime that is 50% longer than traditional batteries and includes chargers that charge in just 30 minutes. The secret to the two packs is a combination of new heat rods inside the batteries and a microchip to let the charger know what’s going on inside the pack while charging. Heat is the enemy of any battery pack. As the cells get hotter they litteraly start to cook and burn and can no longer hold a charge. As cordless tools get more and more powerful, this becomes even more of a problem. The heat rods embedded in the battery packs suck the trapped heat from deep inside the battery pack to the outside air keeping the batteries cooler. This keeps the batteries much happier and lets them last much longer.
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The microchip inside the battery packs talk to the charger when the pack is inserted. This way the charger can know exactly what the conditions are like inside the battery pack and optimize the charging to get the most life and quikest charge out of the system. At the same time, the charger can let you know how healty your battery packs are so you aren’t supprised at the jobsite with a dead battery pack.
Best of all, Bosch has made these new packs compatible with their existing cordless tools. That’s right, instead of squeezzing you to buy a whole new set of tools to get these advantages you can just replace your existing packs as they wear out. The new chargers will happily handle your old battery packs as well, so you only need one charger durring the switch over. As an added bonus, the new charger will even charge your old batteries faster, so even the old packs will have you back to work sooner.
I’ve gotta give Bosch kudos for offering a new system that upgrades both their old and new tools. It’s great to see a company that doesn’t abandon their existing customers when a new technology comes down the pipe.
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Posted: July 6th, 2005 | Author: Brian | Filed under: Woodworking | No Comments »
The Good: Adjust the height from above the table with out breaking the bank
The Bad: May need some adjustment to achieve precise height
Overall: A great value for your router
Rating: Four Thumbs Up (4/5)
A router table is a wonderful thing! A router table can also be an expensive thing. It seems that sticking a router under a hole in a table and using it from the top should be a simple bit of engineering, but until recently it eluded most router manufactures. Your two options were to spend a few hundred dollars on a router lift or to bolt your fixed base under the table and go spelunking every time you wanted to adjust the height.
The Bosch 1617 kit that I bought a couple of years ago was no exception, but every time I looked at the fixed base I just knew that it should be a simple modification to find a longer screw for the adjustment and then drill one hole. I just knew that was all it would take…
My wife will happily tell you that I come up with far more projects than I could possible ever get done, so once again I never took the time to follow through on the modification. Luckily someone from Bosch was hiding in the rafters and took my grand idea back to the factory. The result is the ponderously named “Undertable Router Base with Above-Table Wrench Access: Model RA1165” which I’ll just call the table base. It’s exactly what I wanted and had envisioned and you can pick one up for under $60. Bosch was kind enough to send me one to try out and it works just like the excellent fixed base that came with my router. Flip open the latch, turn the screw for fine adjustment, close the latch. You still have to reach under the table to find the latch, but all your adjustments can be made from the top with the included wrench.
Also, the combination of the open design and the included plastic window makes for great dust and chip collection. If you set up the table right, air is sucked down the hole in the router table and into the dust collector grabbing dust from above and below in the process.
I did have two minor issues with the base:
1) They should have included a template to locate the hole for the adjustment screw. Not a big deal but since there is no removable plate to use as a template you have to be a bit clever in figuring just where to drill the hole.
2) Occasionally the router would tilt just a hair when the latch was released and straighten back up when the latch was closed. This made precise adjustment of the height tough. I was able to fix the issue by tightening the nut on the latch to reduce the slop between the router motor and the base when the latch was opened, but now the latch clamps down on the motor tighter than I’d like. This could be fixed with a bit of grinding on the latch lever, and is somewhere on my list of projects.
Over all I’m very happy with the base. It does everything I need at a good price. If I were running a full time shop routing day in and day out I’d still by a nice router lift, but for something that gets used once a week it’s perfect.
Brian Todoroff
Contributing Editor, Nothing Severed Yet
www.nothingseveredyet.com
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Posted: May 19th, 2005 | Author: Brian | Filed under: Woodworking | No Comments »
In Dan’s recent run down on creating a happy table saw, he says that PowerTwist Plus V-Belts are “reputed to be the bees’ knees for smooth, quiet running operation”. I had to step in a correct this statement… they are not only the bees’ knees, but their elbows, toes and other favored insect anatomy.
Being an arrogant engineer by day, I pride myself on understanding how things really work, but these beauties make no sense whatsoever. You’d think that for a smooth running belt you’d want, well… a smooth belt. However, in a twist of logic worthy of Douglas Adams, these belts are about as far from smooth as possible. Fenner claims this is due to “high-tech urethane/polyester composite” and the lack of a “continuous internal mono tension cord”, but best I can figure someone sold their soul to make these work.
The belts are constructed of many segments, each about an inch long, that lock together with a twist yet are every bit as strong as a conventional belt. This also means that there is no worrying if the belt is the right length because you can create any length you need by adding or removing links. It also means that in a pinch you can grab the belt off your band saw and size it for your table saw with almost no down time.
This is one of the easiest upgrades you can make to any of your belt driven machinery and gets a lot of bang for the buck. The belts are available in a range of standard profiles to fit any machinery you’re likely to run across. Don’t try to make sense of them, just enjoy ‘em.
Brian Todoroff
Contributing Editor, Nothing Severed Yet
www.nothingseveredyet.com
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Posted: May 11th, 2005 | Author: Brian | Filed under: Woodworking | No Comments »
Most of us have done something really stupid at one time or another and been glad to come out of it with all our digits. If you haven’t than I salute you and say keep up the good work. For the rest of us dummies, commemorate that, err… “moment of clarity” and remind yourself to keep it a once in a lifetime experience.
The back is as shown, and the front has a simple “NothingSeveredYet.com” over the pocket. Take your choice of a range of colors and styles. Infant sizes are even available for the budding woodworker.
It doesn’t have the new NSY logo yet, but I gave this a test run at the recent Santa Clara woodworking show and it got more than a few big grins.
Brian Todoroff
Contributing Editor, Nothing Severed Yet
www.nothingseveredyet.com
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Posted: May 4th, 2005 | Author: Brian | Filed under: Woodworking | No Comments »
Finishing can be a pain in the neck. It’s also scary, since no one wants to ruin the project they put so much work into. While I can’t answer all your finishing questions – or for that matter all of my finishing questions – I want to tell you a bit about the most important part of success for brushed-on finishes: the brush.
Now don’t let all the FUD fool you; brushing is a great way to apply many types of finish, and it’s not a lot more work than most other techniques. Where most people get into trouble when brushing is either rushing successive coats or using a cheap brush. A brush can last for many years if you take good care of it. A good brush will make the finishing an absolute pleasure, and make the finish come out better. Don’t skimp to save a few bucks.
There are three things that make a good brush: long bent bristles, flagged ends, and a fluid reservoir. The picture shows what it would look like if you were to slice a good brush in half.
One of the first things you’ll notice is there’s a gap in middle of the bristles. No, the child laborers in the Indonesian paintbrush factories aren’t smuggling extra bristle material out to pay the rent. Well, maybe they are. But that gap is the fluid reservoir, and it’s where the brush holds the finish before it is delivered to the wood. When you dip the brush into the finish, this reservoir fills with finish. This is what allows you to take long smooth strokes while the finish flows smoothly on to the surface.
If you look a little closer at how the gap is formed, you’ll notice the next aspect of a good brush. The bristles are one long fiber bent in half at the top–not a whole bunch of short fibers stuck together. This prevents the bristles from falling out as you brush on a finish. Tada! No more cursing about those %#@$! bristles stuck in your finish. It also means that your nice brush won’t suffer from premature pattern baldness.
Lastly are the tips of the bristles. Like a professional swimmer’s hair, your brush should have a severe case of split ends–or, in the brush biz, “flagging”. The purpose of flagging is to split all those relatively coarse fibers that make up the brush into thousands of tiny fibers just where they deliver the finish to the wood. This allows a smooth even coat of finish to be spread across the surface.
One last thing about the bristles that throws many folks for a loop – natural vs synthetic bristles. Natural bristles are actually real live animal hair, and are priced and classified by the animal of origin–badger, for example, being the very top of the line. In general, natural brushes are best for oil and solvent based finishes, but they don’t handle water based finishes well. That’s because natural bristles will soak up water from the finish and swell, so when you are dealing with water based finishes use a synthetic brush. They’ll distrube your water-based finishes more smoothly and uniformly, and they’re usually cheaper to boot.
Hopefully this will help you choose a good finishing brush for your next project. Remember that the brush is the last thing to touch the valuable project you worked so hard and so long on, so don’t skimp at the end.
Brian Todoroff
Contributing Editor, Nothing Severed Yet
www.nothingseveredyet.com
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Posted: April 22nd, 2005 | Author: Brian | Filed under: Woodworking | No Comments »
Congradulations go out to Rob Chatlin who was the winner of the Jack Rabbit Deluxe Set generously provided by Jack Rabbit Tools as part of our review.
Once Rob got the chance to run the Jack Rabbit through it’s paces he dropped me an email with these comments:
“Drilling the pilot holes and countersinks is fast once the adjustments are made for the given situation, and switching to the screw driver couldn’t be easier. My thanks again to Nothing Severed Yet.”
The free tool reviews keep coming so check back often for your chance to win.
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Posted: April 14th, 2005 | Author: Brian | Filed under: Woodworking | No Comments »
Taunton Press, the publisher of Fine Woodworking Magazine, was kind enough to supply me with one of their recent publications for review. Taunton has always managed to bring a deep sense of quality to everything they produce, and their recently released The New Best of Fine Woodworking series of books is no exception. Each book is filled with excellent articles and covers a specific woodworking topic ranging from finishing, to router techniques, to shop layout. If your new to woodworking you’ll find a treasure trove of information from a variety of top woodworkers.
These books are a collection of selected articles published in Fine Woodworking over the last decade, and that may lead some to believe that if you have or read the magazines the books won’t add much. However, I found that having all these articles grouped together by subject made it a joy to explore a topic. For instance, spending an evening with the volume on finishing gave me several alternatives on how to finish an upcoming cabinet, and, by combining tidbits from different articles, I was able to pick up several tips and details to make me feel comfortable with trying a new finish.
In each book I did find one or two editing errors, usually involving a mismatched image or caption, but these were minor and none interfered with understanding the article. I did appreciate that Taunton took the time to mark price estimates and/or brands that might be out of date.
This series of books is a great way for a new woodworker to gain a trove of information. For the old dog looking to learn a new trick, it’s great to be able to thumb through one volume with a variety of alternatives and viewpoints on a topic. I’ve never been disapointed with Taunton’s offerings. You can check out their full range of woodworking books, DVDs, and magazines on their website.
Brian Todoroff
Contributing Editor, Nothing Severed Yet
www.nothingseveredyet.com
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Posted: April 11th, 2005 | Author: Brian | Filed under: Woodworking | No Comments »
Penn State Industries is having a pretty good sale on clamps. For comparison, Jorgergengerhansonson (or however you spell it) clamps on Amazon are more than twice as much. I’ve placed many orders with PSI and always been pleased, so take this opportunity to stock up and remember to tell them that Nothing Severed Yet sent you.
Brian Todoroff
Contributing Editor, Nothing Severed Yet
www.nothingseveredyet.com
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Posted: April 6th, 2005 | Author: Brian | Filed under: Woodworking | No Comments »
I’ve been working on a design for a contemporary wall case and decided I wanted a light, figured wood for the body with a black wood for the top and bottom. I have some curly maple that will be great for the light wood, but I wasn’t so sure about the black wood. Ebony is notoriously temperamental when it comes to working it and has a nasty reputation for suddenly splitting long after you believe all danger is past. One alterative I’d recently read about involved treating walnut with a somewhat caustic chemical to blacken it – possible but not real appealing. Then I recalled reading that India ink worked well to blacken almost any wood.
After a bit of Googling around I’d found out that India ink is simply super fine carbon in a solvent and a binder. Solvents and binders are no big deal, and you and I are made of lots of carbon, so it passes the safety test. Another bonus is that carbon, being an element, simply won’t fade and is as black as black gets. So off to the art store…
They only had the little 2oz bottle, but I figured it would do to experiment with even if I used it all up. Found some scrap birch ply and a foam brush an a pair of dish washing gloves (it may not be dangerous but apparently it stains like anything) and was ready to go. Probably take a few coats to get real black… a bit on the tip of the brush… let’s see what happens… Dang! That’s black! Wow! It couldn’t have taken more that a few drops to turn a 4 inch square jet black.
It has a nice texture that doesn’t look painted and the grain looks unchanged. Just a few minutes after applying the ink it looked dry so I tried really scrubbing at it to see if I could smear it. With a bit of work I could create a slight smudge (visible at the top of the image) but it seemed stable. I tried a quick coat of an oil/varnish mix to see if the ink would stay in place while top coating and had no problem whatsoever. You can see in the image that it held all the small detail where the foam brush left some hair lines at the transition with no bleeding. It actually held so well it makes me wonder if I could use India ink to monogram box tops and such…. something to try another day.
For now though, I do believe I’ve found my ebony substitute.
Brian Todoroff
Contributing Editor, Nothing Severed Yet
www.nothingseveredyet.com
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Posted: March 30th, 2005 | Author: Brian | Filed under: Woodworking | No Comments »
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
(You might want to subscribe or follow me on Twitter so you don’t miss new articles)
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The microchip inside the battery packs talk to the charger when the pack is inserted. This way the charger can know exactly what the conditions are like inside the battery pack and optimize the charging to get the most life and quikest charge out of the system. At the same time, the charger can let you know how healty your battery packs are so you aren’t supprised at the jobsite with a dead battery pack.