Posted: March 14th, 2006 | Author: Dan | Filed under: Woodworking | No Comments »
Jacques Richer gives us this updated suggestion to an old article on getting glue off your glueup. He rightfully points out that the good old-fashioned hand scraper is a great task for the job…
Option 4:
Cabinet scraper. A sharpened square of steel used to remove wood without sanding. It’s great for this.
Here’s how: Glue normally. Wait about 1 1/2 hrs, and you have a semi-blob. Scrape with a cabinet scraper – wiping it fairly often. It doesn’t chip like using a chisel, and it doesn’t take nearly as long or make nearly as much mess as wiping.
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Posted: January 14th, 2006 | Author: Dan | Filed under: Woodworking | 1 Comment »
Long time readers will remember my coffee table project with the embedded slate tiles. This is a quick follow-up post to let you know how those tiles are working out.
The regular flooring-type slate tiles were washed thoroughly, then brushed carefully with three coats of Minwax Polycrylic. I say brushed carefully, because the rough, natural slate tiles I used have lots of rough spots. If you’re not careful, you’ll get bubbles in the finish if you brush quickly over these. I did three coats and the tiles looked great.
Unfortunately, I then decided to get clever. I was waxing the rest of the table (since it had a shellac finish) and I decided to wax the tiles as well. This was not such a good idea. The wax built up in the crevices and was very noticable. It made the things look dirty. Unfortunately, anything that would have dissolved the wax (alcohol, mineral spirits) would also dissolve the nearby shellac finish and I didn’t want to take any chances. I used good old elbow grease to get rid of the wax.
Wax adventures aside, the tiles are fantastic. They don’t ring when you put drinks on them (their main purpose in life). They haven’t chipped. They look terrific.
Try out some tiles on your next project. You’ll thank me for it.
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Posted: January 8th, 2006 | Author: Dan | Filed under: Woodworking | 1 Comment »
So I was at the Consumer Electronics Show for the last two days. I had lots of time wandering the floor and seeing what was new.
The speaker displays were incredible. This year, all the cheap overseas speaker manufacturers have figured out that they can make absolutely gorgeous floorstanding speakers for not too much money, using the magical secret of veneer. I saw walnut, curly maple, and figured bubinga. Plus some zebrawood but that was hideous. The veneer is applied over an acoustically dead MDF base, so you get a great speaker that looks fantastic.
Then they took a good thing a little too far. If veneer is cool, well, why not make the speakers out of solid wood? So sure enough, they’re using fancy 4/4 lumber to make speakers as well (not so cheap!). They look fantastic… but this is an accoustically stupid idea. Solid wood is actually worse for speakers than MDF, because the wood fibers resonate and mess up the acoustics. It’s also more expensive. So why replace cheap, good MDF with expensive, worse solid wood? Probably because consumers won’t know any better (possibly because the manufacturers don’t know any better!).
Anyway, it was pretty stuff. Look for a big improvement in the looks of floorstanding speakers at the Best Buys of the world next year.
Oh, and the lesson for us woodworkers? Veneer over MDF. Cheaper, more beautiful, and sounds better.
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Posted: January 5th, 2006 | Author: Dan | Filed under: Woodworking | No Comments »
And here’s the link I left off the last post. Whoops.
http://flickr.com/photos/larsliden/sets/1737556/
(thanks Brett!)
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Posted: January 4th, 2006 | Author: Dan | Filed under: Woodworking | No Comments »
Lars Liden did a ton of work to redo his walk-in closet, including building an outdoor hutch for his hot water heater. It’s more a home-improvement than a woodworking project, but it’s still worthy of note because he has detailed pictures of the whole thing.
http://flickr.com/photos/larsliden/sets/1737556/
One note: if you build a project with movable shelves, instead of painstakingly locating each shelf pin hole, use a shop-made shelf pin hole jig like this one at Benchnotes or this one at Woodworking Tips.
You’ll thank me for it.
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Posted: January 2nd, 2006 | Author: Dan | Filed under: Woodworking | 1 Comment »
Apologies for the long absence, dear readers! I assure you it’s been for good reason. Several months ago I founded a company with a friend. I still had my day job, so this was entirely a spare-time activity. Unfortunately it took ALL my spare time, leaving little for things like woodworking, let alone blogging about woodworking. Also, since some work friends read the blog (Hi!) and it’s considered poor form to talk about such things while you’re still employed elsewhere, I couldn’t share with all of you in internetland.
I’m happy to share that as of tomorrow, I will be working for my new company, Ontela Inc., fulltime! This means that I will be working my butt off at just one job instead of two, leaving dozens of minutes a week for woodworking and blogging and personal hygene.
The rub of it is I’m back, although probably not as prolific as I used to be. Thanks for sticking around, and I’ll try to keep the sawdust coming and the digits firmly attached.
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Posted: September 7th, 2005 | Author: Kevin | Filed under: Woodworking | 1 Comment »
After spending 2 weeks stripping paint from the exposed beams in my living room I have devised a 3 step process for refinishing painted wood.
Step 1. Throw out painted wood.
Step 2. Buy unfinished wood.
Step 3. Apply finish.
I’ve read the books, the websites and the myths about how to remove paint. I’ve applied liquid strippers and gel strippers. I’ve sanded and scraped. Steel wool, burlap, kitchen sponge. There is no way to remove *all* of the paint without also removing a serious portion of the wood.
The basic problem is that my beams have 5 layers of paint. Each one seems to require a different blend of stripper. So the only tool that indiscriminately removes paint is the belt sander. (It does a pretty good job too.) Once the belt sander has done it’s work 98% of the paint is gone. The remaining 2% is there to stay. In groves, pores and cracks are tiny speckles of paint that will not go away. So, after applying the new finish the wood looks as if it’s a bit moldy. In all fairness it looks like reclaimed wood. If that isn’t the look you want then go ahead and strip and sand. If you want any other look then follow my simple 3 step process.
Kevin Smith
Contributing Editor, Nothing Severed Yet
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Posted: September 5th, 2005 | Author: Dan | Filed under: Woodworking | No Comments »
Sorry for the long period without any posts! My non-woodworking real life has been too busy to spend much time in the shop, and I just returned from a long vacation in Vietnam. I’ll get back to posting soon, but things may still be a bit sporadic for a while…!
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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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