Wood Destruction by a Woodscrub

PSI's Shock Absorber Kits

2011-11-16T10:21:00.000-08:00

Well, I finall got some time to work on the lathe, and thought this would be a great opportunity to try PSI's new Shock Absorber pen kits.

First off, these look more like either coil-overs or McPhearson struts to me. But that's neither here nor there. ;)

Fit and finish appear to be decent. Plating looks good. My only real complaint about the quality is the choice of refill. They used @#$%^ mini refills! That pen is pretty large, and there's no excuse for using the mini refills. They're crap, and I'm pretty bothered they made that choice.

The pens are very much a gimmick. They're not comfortable to write with, and don't have a pocket clip. This is something a mechanic or gearhead has laying around to look cool.

And they do look cool!

The barrels are my black/silver swirled poly resin.

No posts for a while...

2011-11-06T11:32:00.000-08:00

We had an emergency move in October 2011. Sold most of my tools and such to facilitate the move from CO to CA.

I'm keeping this blog up, but won't be posting for a while until I get settled somewhere that I can start making stuff again.

Sorry!

By most I mean that I only kept:
Rikon lathe
Cman 10" bandsaw
Delta 12.5" planer
Cman grinder (to sharpen lathe tools)
Hand tools
Casting stuff

Everything else was sold, including my table saw, miter saw, compressor, etc etc etc...

Review: Rikon 70-050 Mini Lathe

2011-09-15T10:04:00.000-07:00

I recently sold my Delta 46-701 lathe. Two primary reasons:

Too bloody big for my one car garage.
Needed the money (I've been out of work).

But I use a lathe a lot, so I needed to sell the Delta for enough $$ to buy a smaller replacement as well as have some cash.

It worked out really well. The Delta sold the same weekend that Woodcraft had the Rikon 70-050 online for $200. AND $5 flat rate shipping. Sweet!

Opening the box my initial impression was that the lathe was very substantial. While it is comparable to the PSI Turncrafter Pro I used to have in size and features, the Rikon is heavier and has a superior fit and finish. It is also quieter. My old Delta, having a Reeves drive, was a noisy beast. This Rikon is quiet and a pleasure to use.

I mentioned fit and finish. There are two places where the lathe itself shows a lack of attention to detail. First is the Rikon badge on the bed. It's a puffy sticker that wasn't well attached. I was able to pop it right off and stick it back on.

The other place is in the upper belt access door behind the headstock. The paint is cracked at the tab:

While neither are work impacting, I worried that there would be other more important issues. But as of yet, I've found none.

I do recommend dumping the centers that come with the lathe, however. When I checked the center to center alignment I found it to be off.

Turned out to be the live center wasn't square. When I installed my own live center it was fine. So the one that came with the lathe has been relegated to the box of crap I'll never use.

Vibration is far less than the Delta or the Turncrafter. But a small amount is still there. That small amount went away when I bolted the lathe directly to the table.

And I finished off my little workstation by drilling out some 1.25" holes around the back to hold my tools:

In conclusion: The lathe was absolutely worth the $200. Without a variable speed, I don't think it's worth much more than that. The 70-100 has the variable speed and is a superior lathe. But it is much more expensive. By the way, this lathe had a retail price of $339. Far too high.

It's a capable and pleasurable lathe that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend.

Making a pen using a CYOC blank (Part 6)

2011-09-11T17:51:00.000-07:00

Carefully press the furniture into the polished barrel.

And the end result, a beautiful pen!

As you can see, the red showed through the clear areas beautifully. And it influenced the black areas to create what I call "Red as Night".

I hope you enjoyed this little peek at my process for making pens. There are, of course, many steps I didn't discuss. You'll already know about most of them if you're a penturner. If not, feel free to ask!

Making a pen using a CYOC blank (Part 5)

2011-09-03T13:10:00.000-07:00

This is part four of the series, "Making a pen using a CYOC blank".

Now the blank is turned to size. You know about this stuff.

Like any other poly resin or acrylic blank, sand through the grits with your Micromesh, or use wet/dry sandpaper to at least 4000 grit. Then buff.

Making a pen using a CYOC blank (Part 4)

2011-08-29T13:59:00.002-07:00

This is part four of the series, "Making a pen using a CYOC blank".

Once the drilled out holes have been smoothed with acetone, it's time to "reverse paint" the blanks.

Reverse painting a blank is to paint the inside of the drilled hole, as opposed to painting the tubes that go inside. Reverse painting avoids problems like glue showing and color/texture changes at glue boundaries.

In the first photo you see some red spray paint, two part epoxy glue, and nitrile gloves. I hold the blank in my hand while spray painting, and hate getting paint on my hands. The gloves are awesome.

Really could have used a helper here to actually focus the camera...

I generally apply two coats 30 minutes apart. that's enough time to make the first coat sticky. One coat would probably be OK, but you won't know if there's a problem until AFTER it is turned and polished, and the pen is ready to be assembled. That's too late to fix it easily. I'd rather be safe than sorry.

Once painted, the blanks will rest for 24 hours to allow the paint to cure. If the paint doesn't cure fully, it can come off when inserting the tube. So be patient!

Making a pen using a CYOC blank (Part 3)

2011-08-28T10:25:00.001-07:00

This is part three of the series "Making a pen using a CYOC blank".

The way I get rid of the drilling marks, scratches, scuffs, and so on, is with acetone.

Soak a cotton swab (aka "Q-Tip") with acetone, and rub vigorously inside the drilled holes. It'll probably take several soaks to get everything smooth. You will end up with the hole being hazy white. This is OK, because the paint will saturate the haze, making it disappear.

Making a pen using a CYOC blank (Part 2)

2011-08-26T12:27:00.001-07:00

This is part two of the series "Making a pen using a CYOC blank".


Drilling on the lathe makes it far easier to get high precision holes than with a drill press.

Now to drill the holes for the brass tubes. I prefer drilling on the lathe because of how easy it is to get precision. Fiddling with the drill press to get a perfectly aligned table, then mounting and holding the blank, all take too much time. But with the lathe, it's "mount and go".

Because the walls can get pretty thin with the El Grande kit, going slow and pulling the bit out frequently to clear the waste from the bit and allowing everything to cool are very important.

The end result is well drilled holes, with some scratches and such from the drill bit. I'll clean those up in the next installment.

Making a pen using a CYOC blank (Part 1)

2011-08-21T08:10:00.001-07:00

This is part one of the series "Making a pen using a CYOC blank".

CYOC = Choose Your Own Color

A new pen blank design that allows the penmaker to choose the contrasting color when making the pen, rather than when purchasing the blank.

CYOC uses a swirl of one color and clear poly resin. Reverse painting the drilled holes permits the penmaker to choose any contrasting color he or she desires.

Using a sled on the tablesaw makes cutting small parts like pen blanks safe and easy.

First, cut the blank to a smidge larger than the tubes. In this case, I'm cutting the blank to match the tubes for an El Grande Elite kit.

The blank is left a bit larger so it can be trimmed square to the tube later.

New Resin Design: Choose Your Own Color!

2011-07-03T11:25:00.000-07:00

These two pens are made from the same blank!

In honor of the 80's juvenile books that I loved so much, Choose Your Own Adventure, I have named this style of resin, "Choose Your Own Color". (CYOC from now on...)

The pens in the photo above are both made from the same blank. Well, the same batch of blanks anyway.

The blank is made from polyester resin by swirling a blue colored resin with clear. This allows ANY color to be added after the fact by reverse-painting the hole drilled for the pen tube.

This photo shows a raw blank, un-machined, against two different backgrounds. Keep in mind that this 3/4" thick blank is FAR thicker than any pen barrel would be!

The difference is immediately visible even at this thickness. But the transparency is made, ahem, "clear" with the following backlit photo:

As you can see, this frees the penmaker up to choose any contrasting color! he (or she) can use white, black, red, even a different shade of blue, to back up the blue swirls in the blank.

Another great benefit is the blue swirls are shown with amazing depth, thanks to the three dimensional effect of having a clear resin alongside the colored swirl. Impossible to photograph, but it's amazing in the hand.

In the photo at the start of this post, I painted the inside of the drilled holes with different colors. The black really brightens the blue swirls, while the white gives it a more pastel look. Also, the cap of the dark pen is far thicker than the lower barrel, showing the difference that thicker barrels can have on the look of the pen. (The dark pen is a modified slim, while the light pen is a "Diva", with a similar thickness to the "Sierra" or "Gatsby".)

I'll be making these available via http://www.mantadesigns.com soon, in many colors.

Review: Diablo Framing Blade

2011-06-20T18:43:00.000-07:00

I don't use my circular saw very often. I usually prefer my table saw or my miter saw. But I *do* use it occasionally.

I was at the BORG (Big Orange Retail Giant) a while back and they had a two pack of these Freud Diablo Framing blades for $9.95 so I grabbed 'em. My cheap $3 Harbor Freight blade was getting dull.

When I'm using a circ saw, I'm usually not needing precision, instead going for quick chops of 2x4's or something similar. So I was satisfied with the performance of the HF blade in my cheapie circ saw from Wal-Mart.

Until I tried the Freud blade.

I needed to trim some overhanging bits of pine from a lapped joint. I could have used a router with a bearing bit to cut them, but precision wasn't required. So I went for speed: My circular saw.

I loaded it up with the Freud Diablo Framing 7 1/4" blade and started cutting. I was impressed with how clean the cuts were on the endgrain! Smooth as glass on the endgrain, with light tearout where it brushed the long grain.

Please note that the cut marks are from my crap saw or my technique, NOT the blade.

It cut quickly and smoothly through the pine, something my HF blade never did. In fact, that HF blade would bog down my wimpy 12 amp saw when cutting pine 2x4's. But not the Freud Diablo.

These are my first Freud blades, and I'm now impressed enough to replace my 9" Delta Industrial blades when they (finally) wear out with a Freud.

My only complaint is the red paint/coating on the blade WILL come off on the wood if the blade body rubs against it. You can see some of that on the wood pic above. Otherwise I'm VERY happy with my purchase!

More on the Delta 46-700 Lathe

2011-06-18T21:45:00.000-07:00

The top photo is the "before" shot. You can't tell, but the pulley half closest to the motor is warped. The thing was CAST warped! The bored hole is not square to the face. Grrr... It caused some vibration as mentioned in my previous post about this lathe.

I ordered a new pulley half and belt from dewaltservicenet.com ($50 for the two with overnight shipping!)

I installed the new pulley half and found I have to practically disassemble the headstock to replace the belt. ARRGGHH! I decided to see what the new pulley would do with the old belt.

I gave it a quick run through the gears and was happy with what I saw. Much improved. But something that bothered me the last time I did this got me again. The two pulleys are not aligned! As you can see in the top photo, the tail half of the headstock pulley is further upstream than in the bottom photo.

I loosened the set screw and the pulley slammed south. That spring is pretty darn strong. I stuck a large open end wrench between the casting and the pulley to lever the pulley back north. I did this several times, tweaking the alignment, as it changes a bit depending on the RPM setting. I decided I wanted it rock solid at the highest setting, when I'm taking my finishing cuts. So it's aligned for 2500rpm and a bit off at 500rpm.

I'll tell you, this made a HUGE difference. I can still feel some vibration, which I attribute to the belt, but it's very minor, and doesn't seem to translate to the spindle at all.

I've read about others who have used link belts with this lathe. I was surprised, as I thought the pulleys would crush the link belts. I may have to give one a try and see how it goes. If a link belt works, it may solve both the tiny vibration that's left, and the tear-the-bloody-headstock-apart-just-to-change-the-belt issue.

Harbor Freight Circular Blade Sharpener

2011-06-15T16:48:00.000-07:00

The final result.

I ordered this before being let go from my job. I suppose I could return it but...

Here's a link to the sharpener:

http://www.harborfreight.com/120-volt-circular-saw-blade-sharpener-96687.html

$59 and I get to sharpen my own table saw and miter saw blades! As expensive as those blades are, I'd love to be able to sharpen them myself.

When I got it and tried to set it up, I found the instructions accurate but not terribly helpful. So I thought I'd try it out on an old rusty blade that came with an old Rockwell saw I restored a while back.

What I started with. Ugh!

The sharpener is VERY fiddly to set up. Even after spending 30 minutes trying to dial it in, I still ended up screwing up the set of the teeth.

The sharpener *does* work. But as you can see in the first pic, the results are a bit rough. The diamond blade leaves some serious grooves!

I'll fiddle with it some more later, but for now I wouldn't sharpen a high end blade with it.

More pics:

Gold Rush Doorbell

2011-03-28T05:14:00.001-07:00

This was an emergency repair of my doorbell button. So I failed to take pics before or during. Sorry...

I took a scrap of my Gold Rush resin (sold here: Exotic Blanks ) and carved the shape of the original button that was shattered from being so old. A quick sanding and buffing and on the wall it went.

The mostly clear resin works great as it allows the LED light behind the button to shine through. The gold leaf in the resin refracts the light in all directions.

Whimsical Shelf

2011-03-19T15:48:00.001-07:00

This is a quick and easy project.

Make a shallow box shelf. I used 1x4 poplar (of course that's really 3/4" x 3 1/2").
Nail a 1/4" plywood back on it.
Trace the outline of the shelf onto a large scrap of particle board.
Sketch some crazy design, making sure all edges of the shelf are hidden.
Use a jigsaw to cut the design out.
Rout the edges so they're rounded
Apply sanding sealer.
Paint. I used lavender for the shelves and purple for the splash.
Fasten the shelves to the splash.
Hang.

Here's what it looks like before painting. As you can see I screwed up and glued it together before deciding to paint contrasting colors. Whoops!

Antler Handled Pizza Cutter

2011-03-12T17:55:00.000-08:00

My latest toy is antler. I picked up a couple racks from Craigslist over the winter, but it wasn't until today that the weather cooperated enough to work with the garage door open.

I'd always heard antler was stinky to work with. So I waited. I'm glad that I did! It was a combination of the aroma of wet dog mixed with the scent of a dentist drilling on your tooth.

:puke:

I cut the antler then drilled a 1/2" hole for the threaded insert for the pizza cutter kit. Sanded the cuts and epoxied the insert so I wouldn't risk splitting the antler. A little thin CA for the exposed marrow to keep bacteria and such from throwing a party inside.

The kit was purchased from Rockler during a recent sale. I'm very impressed with this kit. The blade is decent brushed stainless steel. The body is heavy chrome plated steel with rubber bushings for the blade. Very nice weight to help when cutting pizza.

I left the body loose so the handle could be removed to wash separately. I doubt running it through the dishwasher is good for antler, so that can be hand washed while the blade gets treated as any other piece of cutlery.

All in all, a fine result. I'll need to make some pens from the antler pretty soon!

Harbor Freight Pressure Pot and Compressor

2011-02-05T15:19:00.000-08:00

My gold and silver leaf blanks sold very well. I was shocked. So I was getting ready to make some more, but the temps have been VERY cold here. Keeping the resin warm during the mixing and pouring was a challenge. That means the possibility of air getting trapped and not able to escape the resin, resulting in bubbles in the casting.

I'm not excited about having bubbles in my casting, but I'm not about to cast polyester resin in my house either.

That's when I decided it was time to work with pressure casting. Lots of folks have written about how they used a Harbor Freight paint pot (item 66839) for their pressure casting, so I figured I'd give one a try.

I had an ad from HF with 20% off any one item, plus what appeared to be a decent air compressor at $99. It was the 2HP 8Gal horizontal compressor (item 67501). Checking it out in the store, I was happy with it for the price.

So, for well under $200, I came out with a compressor, a paint pot, and an accessory kit (hose, fittings, etc).

I got it home and started with the compressor. Super easy to assemble. Filled it up with 30w compressor oil and did a 1 hour break-in. A little bit of sparkly stuff came out with the break-in oil, but not much. I'll change it again in a little while. It had no problem getting up to 100psi and held it overnight. Nice!

I then tackled the tank. There is a single mod that *has* to be done, and some testing as well.

The pickup tube inside the lid needs to come out. Otherwise it would be in the way of anything I placed inside. The write-ups I've read said they had a lot of difficulty removing the tube, and ended up just cutting it off. I twisted it by hand and the thick wall aluminum tube came right out. It was 3/8" NPT threaded. I headed to Lowes and for $2 bought a brass plug with the same thread. Taped it up and put it in from the inside. The outside shows an open fitting, but it's sealed from the inside.

A mod that's been suggested is to add a brass elbow to the air entry point. But my model came with a deflector that keeps from shooting the air right into the resin inside the tank. So that mod wasn't needed. I lubed the lid seal to let it wiggle and settle into place. Lubing also prevents it from gluing itself to the lid or the pot.

I connected everything yesterday and ran up the pressures. First to 20psi. The gauge on the pot and the gauge on the compressor matched within a pound. Nice! I did that a couple of times, releasing the air and then refilling. Once I was happy with that, I ran it up to 40psi.

The seal popped out at 40psi, I think I didn't clamp the lid down evenly. I reseated the seal, clamped the heck out of the lid, and did it again. Much better! I left it overnight, and when I went into the garage this morning it was still holding just a whisper less than 40psi. Sweet!

Today I built an insert to allow me to cast pipes standing up in the pot. I made two round boards (one from particle board, one from plywood). I screwed them together and used the trim bit on the router to make them exactly the same. I then used a forstner bit (7/8" I think...) and bored through the plywood and halfway into the particleboard. 16 holes fit in that frame. I then bored three 3/8" holes for the legs. I used 4" lengths of 3/8" dowel in the holes and used CA to put it together. (It doesn't need to be strong, just present.)

The insert fits nicely into the pot and holds my pipe molds upright.

Tonight I'll do my first cast!

Buy my Precious Metal Blanks

2011-01-26T13:54:00.000-08:00

I'm on Exotic Blanks!

http://www.exoticblanks.com/index.php?page=shop.browse&category_id=132&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=60

You can buy my blanks there. They seem pretty popular, so I'm making more!

Precious Metal Nugget Blanks

2010-12-31T12:36:00.000-08:00

I've come up with a cool new poly resin. Gold/Silver/Whatever Nugget.

It is made of shredded metal leaf mixed in polyester resin. Kind of a pain to get it mixed in without a bunch of bubbles and crap, but the end result is worth it.

I'm making enough to send to a retailer to see if they're marketable. Here are the first couple batches:

A close up of the blanks straight out of the molds as well. I'm currently only doing gold and silver, as they are the most obvious as well as being the easiest. I've made some copper ones too, but the copper is less cooperative. It tends to clump up. I just need to work out a technique because it's a really good looking material.

Below are some pens made with the various nugget blanks. Definitely worth the effort!

As Hand Tool as I Wanna Be

2010-12-12T18:01:00.001-08:00

Well, as hand tool as I *can* be anyway.

This project started out as a pine bunk bed bought from Al's Woodcraft in Huntington Beach, CA (I think) in the early 80's. My step-dad and I built it. Well, we bolted it together... Heh.

I'm not sure what it was finished with. I think it was done with Watco danish oil followed by lacquer. But I was like 12, so don't remember for sure. I *do* remember the Watco can left under the sink for years after we built this and the rest of the set - A desk and dresser, both of which I still use.

The bed was used by me, my baby brother, then by my son and my daughter. It was finally retired when my mother-in-law sent my daughter a bed from Disneyland that was used in one of the hotels. She works there, so has access to the employee store where cool stuff like that shows up.

Because of the history of the bunk bed, I didn't want to just toss it or give it away. So I chopped up the wood into usable chunks, tossing only the joinery. I waited for a project that would be suitable for some truly crappy pine, but that I'd be willing to keep as an heirloom and maybe pass on to one of the kids.

The opportunity finally came when I got an LCD TV for the living room, replacing the 27" CRT TV that's been there for many years. My daughter wanted the big TV. Her 14" LCD TV was too small for her room (to her anyway...) But the dresser holding her little LCD was too small and lightweight for the big TV. Aha! Those big sturdy pine boards would be perfect!

But I didn't want to just cut and glue and such. I took the opportunity to use my hand tools as much as possible. But I don't have many. A Stanley Bailey No. 5 plane and various saws are about it. But I could do much with those.

I used the plane to strip the varnish off the wood, and to flatten the glue-up of the top. I used my table saw to rip the boards for the glue-up. There was no way my hand sawing could make glue line joints, and I don't have a jointer plane. The rest of the cuts were done by hand. The edge treatments were done with my PC router, and the table saw did the dadoes to hold the shelves.

The shelves came from an old Ikea bookcase that got mangled during the move here to Colorado from California. They're crappy pine too, and matched well.

Finish is BLO rubbed in, followed by brush on lacquer.

Now I just need my son to get over the flu so we can put the TV on it!

Simple oak shelving

2010-11-28T07:35:00.000-08:00

I hate to break away from the 111 post count, but I thought I'd share something I did for myself.

Dimensional red oak, 1x4 (3/4x3.5") slapped together with dadoes and some simple router work around the outside.

The Delta dado set I have is missing its shims. To fit this wood, I needed a shim about the thickness of a piece of notebook paper. So I stuck a piece of notebook paper in there! Worked great. Routered with a cove bit for around the outside corners, and used a flat bit and my router table fence to create the vertical stripe on the sides.

Simple BLO and lacquer finish. I love working with BLO and lacquer. I can apply the BLO one evening, and start applying the lacquer the next morning. BLO (Boiled Linseed Oil) adds a warm tone to the wood without blotching or darkening end grain. And lacquer sprayed is so fast... 30 minutes between coats and ready to hang in a few hours after the last coat.

Speaking of hanging, I drilled 3 pocket holes on each side and used Walldog screws to fasten to the wall. The wood will break before these guys pull out.

I used the black ones so they'd hide better in the holes.

Pen Size Comparison Chart

2010-10-25T05:00:00.001-07:00

One thing I've never seen is a chart comparing the different pen sizes. I don't know just how helpful this is, since tiny differences in pen girth = huge differences in the feel of the pen.

1-Pocket Pen
2-Slimline (modified)
3-Sierra
4-Pentel Conversion
5-European
6-Tall Slimline
7-Jr Gentleman's
8-Jr Majestic
9-El Grande

This isn't comprehensive by any means, though it can be used as a basic guide. If I say it's "Number 9 sized" then you know it's the thickest of the lot.

I hope this helps!

Pen Disassembly Parts Catcher

2010-09-26T21:01:00.000-07:00

(Sorry, I forgot about this one. THIS is the last one for the night. REALLY!!!)

I often have to disassemble parts for one reason or another. A barrel needs to be refinished, or I don't like the end result, or I'm tired of the barrel on a personal pen, or whatever. The worst part, aside from getting a bit of skin pinched during the process, is chasing the little part after I've removed it with strong whacks from a mallet.

I've tried boxes. I've tried bags. I've tried all sorts of things, but the stupid part always ends up buried in my junk in the garage.

I got the idea to use a bench brush after seeing how much crap gets stuck it in when it's just hanging there minding its own business. I figured it couldn't hurt. So I gave it a shot.

Lay the brush on its back and aim the pen part directly into the bristles. If your brush is worn and the bristles are bent, I doubt this will work. But if it's relatively new, and the bristles are straight and soft, go for it! It works awesome! I did three pens and not one part went flying!

Pipe Mold Rack (Casting Polyester Resin)

2010-09-26T20:55:00.000-07:00

(Last post of the night, I promise. I've been sitting on these ideas for a while and just need to get them out.)

I own lots of molds from expensive silicone molds where you cast the resin straight to a pen tube, down to lowly pieces of plastic pipe. The pipe are my favorite molds. They use less resin per inch of usable blank than a rectangular mold, and are more flexible than the "Resin Saver" molds with the pen tubes. Plus they're round, so the resulting blanks are easy to drill.

I use two sizes: 1/2" and 3/4". The small one is for Pentel pencils and 7mm kits, the larger one is for everything else. I also use 2" pipe for "bottle stopper" sized castings, but that's outside of this article.

Anyway, the biggest challenge to using the pipes is how to keep them standing upright both during pouring, and when moving around (I'm ADD... I can never do only one thing at a time!)

If simplicity is brilliance, I should call MENSA. I made a rack to hold 'em. Took two lengths of "white wood" from Lowes (1x4 aka 3/4" x 3.5"), used a 1 1/4" forstner bit and cut holes. The top board got the holes all the way through, the bottom board got them 1/2" or so. Ripped some scraps from the wood and fastened them with Kreg pocket hole screws.Slapped a coat of garnet shellac (what else am I gonna do with that stuff?) on it to seal the wood. Then sanded smooth and put a buttload of wax on it with the buffer to help keep drips from sticking.

Works a treat! First cast is in there now. I love it! I can't believe I didn't think of this before!!!

Dust Collection at the Lathe

2010-09-26T20:47:00.000-07:00

I picked up a 2hp dust collector off Craigslist for $50. I haven't had the $$ to get a proper hood to mount to the lathe, but having a DC at the lathe makes a HUGE difference in how much mess gets on the ground and in my face.

So I bungie corded the bare hose to my tool rest banjo. Works great!

Polyester Resin and Plastic Cups

2010-09-26T20:45:00.000-07:00

Yup. Polyester resin and plastic cups don't mix. At least not the ones with a "6" in the recycle triangle:

I was out of my usual wax coated paper cups, and grabbed some of these. Ugh. Don't do it!

Delta 46-700 Lathe Reeves Drive Warped Pulley

2010-09-14T17:31:00.000-07:00

Video at the end of this post.

I noticed last week that my lathe was making more noise than it should. Being a Reeves drive, it already makes a fair amount of noise, so it took a bit for me to catch that it was louder than it should be.

A Reeves drive is a pulley system that allows infinitely variable speeds while keeping the motor speed consistent. It does this by moving the two pulley halves further apart for slower speeds, closer together for faster speeds. The V-belt moves in and out, effectively changing the pulley diameter.

It's a good design and less expensive than an electronic speed control. Being mechanical, it does have its drawbacks. Namely that parts wear and break. When I bought this lathe (for $100) the outboard pulley bearing set was broken. I installed the new outboard gear and it worked fine, but noisy.

I pulled the cover off today to find out why there was so much noise. I found three problems:

Inboard pulley mounted incorrectly-
The inboard pulley set screw was on the motor shaft, not on the key as it should be. This made it impossible for the key to be fully seated, making the highest lathe speeds unavailable because the two pulley halves couldn't get as close together as they should.
Belt is old and stiff-
The belt was old and dried out, resulting in bumps preventing the belt from traveling smoothly.
Warped pulley-
The inboard pulley is warped. This was slapping the belt around, causing a lot of noise and some vibration.

You can clearly see the belt slapping around in the video below. The low resolution of the video doesn't really show the pulley, however.

A new inner pulley is only $15 from www.dewaltservicenet.com, but it's still annoying to have to replace it. Especially considering how slow their shipping is.

At least I've found the problem!

Update on the Mini Mounting

2010-08-11T12:05:00.001-07:00

Some pics of the mini mount in use in a school:

Mounting the Wild Mac Mini

2010-07-17T13:53:00.001-07:00

My church just bought 32 Mac Minis to use with the Promethean smartboards in the classrooms. Of course, Apple changed the dimensions of the Mini this summer, making all the available wall mounts obsolete. Nobody currently has one available for the new Mini. "A few months..." is what we hear.

So I decided to make my own. Less than $10 in materials per mount, and it matches all the oak in the building. A t-nut and a set screw hold the mini securely in place. Self-adhesive foam in the bottom and hardboard between the set screw and the mini protect it from harm. The cable ports are exposed on one end, the optical drive slot exposed on the other. Finished in BLO with shellac and lacquer. We'll probably have to use a darker stain to match the finish on the rest of the building, but it's pretty darn close. And I don't have anything else handy...

Ideally, these will be mounted to sliding mounts so they can be slid behind the whiteboards most of the time, while allowing them to be slid out for access to the USB ports. But if not, a pair of WallDog screws will hold it securely to the wall. (Those holes are not in this prototype.) If this gets approved, a co-worker and I will be making 32 of 'em.

The Craftsman 10" Contractor's Saw Model 21833 - Review Summary

2010-07-11T11:25:00.000-07:00

I posted detailed articles on the purchase and assembly of my Craftsman 10" saw model 21833 in Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Now that I've been using it for a little while, I thought I'd do a review of the saw's use.

There are Pros and Cons around this saw, as there are for any product. At a little over $400 on sale ($550 normally), the manufacturer had to make some shortcuts.

Riving Knife
The riving knife was a huge feature for me. I've never had a saw with one, but I liked splitters when I could use 'em. The riving knife seemed like a truly usable solution. And it is! There are only two things I'd change, and one feature request:

The blade has to be fully raised to extend the riving knife if it's retracted. Something binds the knife when the blade is more than 20% lower than fully extended.
This is a wish because I doubt *any* riving knife does this: Allow the knife be adjusted to the diameter of the blade. For example, an 8" blade has over an inch between the blade and the riving knife. That's a pretty big gap. And since I often use odd sized blades to get the cut I want, it would definitely be useful.
Can someone make different thicknesses of the riving knife so I can match the knife to my blade's kerf? It sucks to not be able to use it with really thin kerf blades.

On-Base Storage
The saw comes with places to store your saw's accessories. This is nice because there's nothing worse than having your miter gauge fall off the barstool you precariously balanced it upon. When everything's stored, the saw can be moved around without worrying about stuff falling off or getting in the way. However...

Can't place or remove the fence if the miter gauge is in the storage slots
The guard/pawls/insert plates storage is a joke. PITA to get stuff on there, and it's not terribly secure
Blade/tool storage is immediately beneath the right wing. Sucks to get to. I've ended up putting it all on my wall, especially since I now have a router table in that wing

The storage is still useful, but could be better. I'd move the blade storage to the left side on the motor cover to start with.

Blade
In the previous articles I talked about the scary pits in the blade body, so I won't rehash that here. But I did try some cuts with that blade. Ripping and crosscutting both hardwoods and softwoods resulted in tearout, rough faces, and a much higher feed effort than should be needed. In other words, it's completely useless. Make a clock out of it or something. (You didn't expect a WWII blade with a $400 saw, did you?)

Table Inserts
The saw comes with two steel inserts, one for single blades, one for dadoes. The table of this saw isn't friendly to making your own zero clearance inserts because of the shallow lip in the opening to hold the insert. Some folks have had good luck making them anyway, so I may attempt it later. In the meantime, I'll continue using the stock ones. However...

The paint finish on the two inserts is of different thicknesses. That means having to reset the adjustment screws when switching between the two. Ewww...
The paint finish is so thick on the dado insert that I had to scrape it off around the edges just to get it to fit the opening. Yeah, that makes me feel SO good.

They're adequate, but could be MUCH better.

Design Flaws
I mentioned this before, but it bears mentioning again. The mounting of the arbor and such under the table is such that when the blade is fully extended vertically, the whole thing shifts a smidge. So you can never hit the stops if you want to keep the blade square.

To me, this is the most serious flaw in the entire saw. Others have noted it as well. It makes me worry about the durability of the design for use over years.

The miter gauge is simply a joke. Buy an inexpensive Incra (the v27 is under $50) and hide the stock gauge in a deep dark part of your shop.

It's really not all bad...
The pros significantly outweigh the cons in this saw. I'd buy it again.

Huge bang for the buck!
A cast iron top, built in rollers, 1 3/4 hp motor, all for under $500!!!
The 1 3/4 hp motor is quite nice. Smooth, quiet, and powerful. 6/4 oak is no problem for a sharp blade on this saw.
The built in rollers are very nice. Aside from having to walk around the table to hit both levers, it's perfect!
The fence is decent, and works really well. Not a Bies but it's better than a $400 saw should have.
The vertical and angle adjustments are smooth and light.
The wings, while being stamped steel, are much more substantial than other steel wings I've seen.
Storage for accessories on the saw is a feature common to many new saws, but this is the first saw I've owned with it. Nice!
Passes the nickel test (once I shimmed the feet to get the saw level. My garage floor is nowhere near level.)

Definitely a good saw, but not great. The bang for the buck is certainly there. Plus, your local Sears probably has one in stock, so you can take it home today if you want. (You'll need a pickup and possibly a crane or a couple of strong helpers to get it out of the truck.)

If you need a saw in the $500 range, this is the one to get. I can recommend it without reservation, as long as the issues noted in this and the previous 3 articles are kept in mind.

The Craftsman 10" Contractor's Saw Model 21833 - Part 3

2010-06-28T07:31:00.000-07:00

In Part 1 I talked about the unboxing and a quick summary of the assembly of the saw.
In Part 2 I talked about quality issues with the saw blade, and the minor tolerance challenges I had.
Here in Part 3 I will talk about dialing the saw in.

The instructions that came with the saw (new ones with photos, not the old ones. If you get the old ones without photos, download the good ones from the Sears website) were quite good. If you follow them IN ORDER you will have a nicely dialed in saw.

There are five critical adjustments and a few minor adjustments. For now we'll talk about the critical ones:

Saw blade to miter slot parallelism
Wings to table
Fence to blade/miter slot and fence to table
Miter gauge
Riving knife and guard system

Let's start with the blade adjustment.

The instructions give a great way to measure the blade front to back parallelism. One thing they don't tell you... Do NOT raise the blade 100%. Keep it a bit shy of fully extended. The design of the trunion mounting causes it to twist a bit when it hits the stops, and this will throw off your measurements. Clamp a dowel or stick to your miter gauge (doesn't matter if the miter gauge is adjusted for this). Set the dowel so it just touches a tooth at the front of the blade. Mark that tooth with a sharpie or something. Rotate that marked tooth to the back of the blade and slide the miter gauge with dowel so it's pointing to that same tooth. Is it just touching exactly like before? If not, you need to adjust the trunnions.

Mine was 1/64th off, so I followed the instructions. I removed the six screws on the panel at the rear of the saw and located the 4 bolts mounting the trunnion to the table. The manual said there are 4, but the picture only shows three. The fourth is way up front, hidden from view. Reach up there and feel around and you'll find it.

I loosened all four bolts and tapped the trunnion with the heel of my hand until it was fully aligned. There's one angle where you pretty much have to hit the blade shield so be gentle. Once it's aligned perfectly (take your time, there's no rush here), tighten two bolts - One in the front, and one in the rear. Now measure again. This is making sure you didn't knock it out of alignment while tightening the bolts. If it's still perfect, tighten up the other two bolts.

In my saw, the rear panel was one of the places with some tolerance and alignment issues. When you put it back on, only start the threads on the six screws. Then tighten the middle ones first, and diagonally tighten the rest. Middle, middle, top right, bottom left, top left, bottom right. And so on. This will keep the panel from warping or pulling the cabinet out of square.

Now for the wings.

As with most inexpensive saws, the wings are stamped steel. The enamel coating on them is crap, just like most of the paint on this saw. So be gentle... I got a set of scratches on mine from laying it face down on the concrete floor. Whoops!

I'm assuming you have a good straight edge around. I have two. A steel high quality 48" straightedge and an aluminum 48" level. Both are very straight. I use the straightedge simply as a reference to check the level, then the straightedge goes back on the shelf. The nice thing about using the level is it will stand there while you work. You don't have to hold it. Makes life much easier!

I first mount the wings on both sides, getting the bolts only finger tight. Then I place the level on the table at the middle of the wing and tighten that bolt a little more, just enough for the lock washer to start to compress. Then I move to the front and do the same thing. By the time I get to the rear, it should already be on a plane with the table top. Crank all the bolts down and double-check that they stayed put.

At this point, before doing ANYTHING else, clean the table and wings from your greasy fingerprints (you cleaned them before assembly as the instructions said, right?!?!?!) and apply a coat of quality wax. I avoid automotive waxes for tool use due to the additives they have, instead preferring a good quality furniture paste wax. I like Bowling Alley wax, which is available at Ace Hardware and elsewhere. But use what you prefer or have handy.The wax will help protect the paint and the table surface from light scratches, and make cleaning it up later much easier. Plus, if you're in a humid area, your table top started rusting the minute you cleaned the shipping grease off it!

That beautiful fence.

I like this fence. There are some complaints about it out there, but the design is wonderfully adjustable, and light and smooth. No, it's not a Bies, but it's much better than it should be for the price.

Assuming you mounted the rails per the manual, this will be a breeze. Follow the instructions!

Let me say that again: Follow the instructions!

If you make the adjustments IN ORDER, the fence will work wonderfully. Keep in mind that all of these adjustments are methods of applying pressure to the plastic glides inside the fence. So don't overdo it. If any adjustment causes the fence to feel tight, or take effort to move, back it off and try again.

Align it to the miter slots, NOT the blade. You've already aligned the blade to the slots, so use that slot as your reference point. Otherwise you could be compounding errors and end up with a kickback machine instead of a quality saw.

The miter gauge.

The miter gauge that comes with this saw is a joke. Maybe I got spoiled with my Incra I used on my Rockwell Contractor's saw, but this thing... Ugh. The face isn't machined, it's enameled. The "stops" are just adjustable screws you bump against with a thin pin. And they were far out of adjustment out of the box.

It was such a mess, I decided to align it to 90* and lock it down. No messing with the rest. That is enough to build a couple sleds, while waiting until I can get another Incra.

Don't spend any time on this thing. Buy a quality miter gauge and put this one on a shelf somewhere.

The riving knife and guard system.

My favorite part of this saw is the riving knife design. The knife itself is fully adjustable from completely hidden to all the way over the blade. All with a lock knob and a release button. Super easy.

For 90% of the cuts you'll make, the guard can stay in place, with the riving knife all the way over the top of the blade. It's a slick system. For the other 10% of your cuts, you lower the riving knife just below the height of the blade and you still get the kickback protection! I can't imagine a need to have it completely hidden, but if I think of one, I'll let you know.

The adjustment is a matter of aligning the knife to the right side of the saw blade. That's it. And mine was perfect out of the box. Again, follow the instrucitons!

That's it for dialing it in. If everything is right, make sure the saw is flat on the floor (wheels retracted) and plug it in. Make sure you're standing off to the left side of the saw (motor side) and turn it on. It should smoothly come to speed in moments. There should be no vibration on the saw, and if you either cleaned up the stock blade, or installed a good quality blade, there will be no vibration visible in the blade either.

A popular test of saw performance is the "Nickel Test". Basically, you make sure the top is level to the world, and stand a nickel up on its edge. Then you turn on the saw. If the nickel stays standing, you have a finely tuned saw.

After shimming the legs (my floor is nowhere near level) I did the nickel test on this saw. It passed.

Next post will be a summary review of the saw after running some wood through it!

The Craftsman 10" Contractor's Saw Model 21833 - Part 2

2010-06-27T07:33:00.002-07:00

In Part 1 I talked about the unboxing of the saw, and a quick overview of the assembly.

Here in Part 2 I will discuss the issues and challenges I discovered while putting this bad boy together.

First, I'd like to talk about saw blades. A 10" circular saw blade is usually attached to an arbor with a nearly 1:1 relationship with an electric motor. That motor is usually a 3450 rpm motor in table saws. So the arbor is spinning at 3450 rpm. The edge of the blade is moving at nearly 100 mph! Also, a blade gets pretty hot plowing through wood causing heat expansion and possible warping. That is why you see the little curly cutouts in some of the better saw blades.

Now, if a saw blade is under all these stresses, you want it to be absolutely clean, smooth, solid. You want it to mount perfectly flat against the arbor. You don't want any pits or voids in the metal. Well, the blade that came with the 21833 meets NONE of those things. The arbor hole has pits AND burrs. There are pits throughout the blade. And the hole doesn't even fit solidly over the arbor, being a smidge sloppy. (Note that my old Delta Industrial blades have NONE of those problems. No slop on the arbor, no pits, no voids, and no burrs!)

The first two pics in this post show both sides of the blade. That stuff makes me incredibly nervous. So that blade will not be used on my saw. I'll stick with my 9" Delta Industrials for now until I can order a nice Freud or Forrest.

During the saw's assembly, there were some challenges with tolerances. Not a huge problem, but be ready for them. Things like bent steel not being bent exactly as it should. Massaging the metal by tightening screws a little at a time in whatever center-outward pattern fits the number of screws will take care of it. Also, a couple of the M8 screws had burrs on the threads. I chased those threads with a metric die set I have so no biggie. But if you don't have one, a small file should take care of it. Or call Sears and have them send you some replacements.

One kind of biggie was on the front rail. The fence rails are each made from two parts butted together with a plastic coupler in between. Aside from the PITA that the rears were, the design seems solid. However, on the front rail, where the two parts come together, there was a raised lip on each side. This made a bump whenever the fence mount was moved over it. Plus, I had to account for those lips when adjusting the fence, so it was never as tight as it could be. I decided to sand those lips off rather than deal with the challenges of leaving them in place. Made a huge difference in how smoothly the fence mount moved along the rail in that spot.

Next I'll talk about tuning the saw in Part 3. It was much easier than I thought it would be!

The Craftsman 10" Contractor's Saw Model 21833 - Part 1

2010-06-26T13:36:00.001-07:00

The Unboxing
I got a new toy! The Craftsman 10" Contractor's Table Saw, model 21833. It was on sale for $409.99. Sweet...

The delivery guys manhandled it into my garage. The box was WAY bigger than I expected. Though I've never bought a saw new before.

There is damage on the corner of the box. I was leery, but as you can see, once I opened everything up there was no damage. The styro did its job.

There are LOTS of parts to this. I can see why reviews of this saw talk about the difficulty of assembly. If you aren't careful, and follow the steps EXACTLY as shown in the manual, you're going to have trouble.

The instructions are really quite good. There is one bit I wish they suggested... After the saw is right side up, you're told to check the blade to miter slot alignment. Mine was off by 1/64th. To adjust, you need to remove the back panel of the cabinet. 6 screws. I made the adjustment and then put the panel back. A few steps later, the instructions said to remove the back panel to install the rear fence rail. Grrr... If they had said, "And leave this panel off as you will need to remove it later..." I would have been happy.

The other annoyance is that rear fence. You need a 4 year old's fingers to get the nuts on those bolts. With my fat 40 year old fingers, it was a real PITA. Adding a half inch to the table depth would have made this MUCH easier.

Otherwise, it went together well. 2 hours to assemble, 2 hours to dial it in. Not as bad as I had expected based on the reviews on the net.

Enjoy the pics. In Part 2 I will talk about the dangerous saw blade, and cleaning up some burrs.

Part 2: http://blog.woodscrub.info/2010/06/craftsman-10-contractors-saw-model_27.html

Stone Pens

2010-05-23T07:06:00.000-07:00

My latest fun has been with soapstone and alabaster.

This pen to the left is made from green soapstone with white alabaster trim on a rhodium slim kit. It was done as part of a no-saw challenge over at IAP.

Some notes about working with these stones:

Alabaster cracks. A lot. No matter what you do. So let it! Use it as a design element!
Use a glue that fills the gap between the brass tubes and the stone. CA doesn't cut it, nor does epoxy. JBWeld will to some extent, but Gorilla Glue (or Sumo or whatever) expands as it cures. This is perfect as it fills all the gaps and holds the stone even when cracked.
Your scraper and your skew are your best friends. Gentle light cuts are needed, especially with alabaster. Soapstone is softer and less brittle so you can be more aggressive.
Wear breathing protection!!! The dust from these is VERY fine. A respirator is best. A strong fan blowing across the lathe and out the open garage door works too, but you still need at least a dust mask.
Finish if you like. I triple buff instead, finishing with a nice carnauba wax. Some folks apply a CA finish.

That second pen is strictly white alabaster on a black Ti Jr Gent. See how the cracks run throughout. But the material is solidly attached thanks to the Gorilla glue.

This is great stuff to work with, I suggest picking up some pieces and seeing what you can do!

Where did the Amazon links go?

2010-03-28T12:49:00.004-07:00

While I had never made a penny off it, I ran Amazon ads to help steer my blog's visitors to Amazon for some good deals on woodworking tools and supplies.

This is no longer the case.

Amazon recently dropped me as an advertiser because the State of Colorado had passed a sales tax law requiring sales tax to be paid for online purchases. And I live in Colorado.

However my personal feelings about that law (I wrote a slew of letters against it before the bill went up for a vote), Amazon is punishing all advertisers in Colorado by halting all business with us. Of course, the ads still ran just fine. We just wouldn't get paid if someone makes a purchase through those ads.

That is sleazy, cheap, and should be illegal.

So not only will this (or any of my other blogs) be Amazon ad-less, I will no longer purchase anything via Amazon. And I've spent a lot on that silly site over the past several years...

Rockwell 10" Homecraft Table Saw

2010-02-15T15:21:00.004-08:00

Last summer I picked up this 80's Rockwell 10" Homecraft table saw. I found it on craigslist for cheap so I brought it home. The table (steel, not iron) was heavily rusted and the gears and screws to adjust height and tilt were rusted solid. I figured "someday" I'd get around to fixing it up.

Then early this year I traded my good Rockwell Contractor's saw (and other tools) for a car. Fixing this one moved up to the top of my priority list. The first photo is how it looked when I brought it home. It looks like someone spilled a drink on it and left it to rust.

The first thing I did was clean and lubricate the screws and gears so the blade could be adjusted. It was easier than expected. I soaked them all in PB Blaster every day for a week, then started tapping on them with a hammer. They broke loose, and a brass wire wheel cleaned the rust up. I coated everything with grease and it all moves fairly well now. Not like a nice cabinet saw, but usable.

This saw isn't a direct drive, though the motor is a universal type inside the housing. Instead, there is a short belt between the motor and the arbor inside. Interesting design.

It also uses the same arbor, nut, fence, etc, as my old contractor's saw! While I still had them both I swapped fences between them to see if they were truly interchangeable. They were.

As I did with the Contractor's saw and jointer I de-rustified before, I used the nylon stripper wheels to remove the rust. But first I hit the table top with a belt sander to knock off the worst of the rust bubbles. The stripper wheels took care of the rest, but MUCH more slowly than on the cast iron tops of my previous saw. The steel top of this saw is harder and takes more effort to strip.

In addition, the top was painted (or maybe powder coated... hard to tell the finish is so damaged), which left me with a decision. Do I leave any of the paint? Or take it to bare metal. After finding rust under some of the apparently good paint, I decided to take it all the way down.

I briefly considered repainting it. There would be two benefits here. First, paint means I could fill the rust pitting with JBWeld or something and have a flat surface since the paint would hide the signs of fill. Second, it would look as it did when it left the factory.

Neither benefit were enough to get me to paint it. I just needed a smooth surface to move wood along. It didn't have to be filled, but could be bumpy all it wanted as long as the wood moved well. And no need for rust protection... After all, cast iron tables are unpainted. If I kept it waxed I should be good.

Besides, I wasn't going for a full restoration. Just enough work to make it usable. I don't much care how it looks. In fact, I didn't bother de-rusting the mounting brackets for the wings. They'll be fine for many more years in my shop/garage. Perhaps I'd pay more attention to all the rust if I lived someplace humid. But here in Denver, no need. Low humidity, low temps, mean low rust. As long as I don't spill any drinks on it, that is.

After several hours with the stripper wheels, the surface was smooth enough to work with. I put several coats of synthetic automotive wax on it the top and mounted up the un-restored fence and miter gauge.

Everything works well and smoothly. I did some test cuts to make sure I wasn't being overly optimistic. The only 10" blade I had was a dull Freud Diablo. I really need to get that thing sharpened... But it worked for this test.

I haven't yet adjusted the fence or gauge for accuracy, but the saw works great! Enough power to cut small oak, and a 2x6 chunk of pine.

I'm happy enough with it. It's smoother than my contractor's saw was, but only because the c-saw had a dinged pulley on the arbor after the set screw worked loose and the pulley went flying.

Still, it's very functional. And using sleds for critical cuts instead of trusting the steel surface will keep everything true and accurate.

Lots of work, but lots of fun. Now I need to find a sharpening service...

Delta 8 1/4" Compound Miter Saw

2010-02-15T15:17:00.002-08:00

Right after New Year's I traded my table saw and my RAS for a car: A 1986 Saab 900s.

That left me without any good cutting tools other than the rust pile old Rockwell table saw I've been wanting to fix up.

So I was surfing Craigslist and stumbled on this little guy. A 8 1/4" Delta Compound Miter Saw. Last Sunday I went and checked it out and decided it was worth the asking price. Took it home and did some test cuts. It was already dialed in at 90* and 45*. Sweet!

Stuck a quick aux fence on it from 3/4 x 10/4 red oak (so I could get a zero clearance backing for the cuts), greased the rollers for the guard, and had some fun with it.

It cuts pretty good considering it has a crappy Vermont American blade on it.

This saw is very small, perfect for my one-car garage "shop". And with the accuracy of its cuts, is perfect for picture frames and pen blanks and the like.

I debated building a stand for it but decided that I want to be able to stick it under the bench when not being used. It's small and light so that's no big deal, but I may decide it's more convenient being permanently mounted to the bench for quick cuts when needed.

I have to say that it was worth every penny of the $20 it cost.

=D

Radial Arm Saw Recall Results

2009-11-13T15:04:00.005-08:00

A little while back I had posted about my free radial arm saw here:

http://blog.woodscrub.info/2009/09/free-craftsman-radial-arm-saw.html

It was a great deal and I was *very* happy to get it. Then a couple weeks later I found the Radial Arm Saw Recall website. It seems that Emerson is recalling a whole bunch of the saws they made for Sears under the Craftsman badge. The safety gear originally offered was inadequate. In fact, I have seen very few saws with the guards actually still in place. (The same goes for most table saws, unfortunately.) See the original saw photos at the above link if you wish to compare.

Emerson did this, " In cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)." I suspect it was less in cooperation with and more under threat from. But who am I to argue? Emerson committed to retrofitting some 3.7 *million* saws. That's a lot of recall and a lot of cost. Especially when you see what they provided.

I signed up online at the above website and thought I'd get some silly guard thing that I'd hate. I was absolutely wrong. A HUGE box appeared at my home a week or two later. I hauled it into the garage and left it for a week, while life got in the way. When I was finally able to open it I was shocked to find:

New blade guard - This Rube Goldberg contraption looked horribly complex. I figured I'd hate it.
New tables - Brand new MDF table surfaces. Everything but the fence (which is a consumable anyway.)
New table support wings
New table clamps
Set screw system for the center of the table to prevent sag
Dust deflector
New handle
Accessory guard - For use with dado blades or molding cutters.

Wow. A LOT of stuff. And none of it appears cheaply made. Except for the table which is drilled for several models, the whole thing appeared to be made specifically for *my* saw.

Installation was less challenging than I thought it would be.

I ripped my old table out and chucked it. I suspect it was the original particle board table from when the thing was sold 20-ish years ago. Buh-bye! I pulled the original table support wings off, saving the hardware and original clamps, and fastened the new ones on. Spent a little time dialing in the height per the instructions that came with the kit. Easy.

I installed the new table using the original hardware. The kit also described a T-nut and set screw for the center of the table, but only the T-nut was found. The screw was MIA. It's a standard size so I'll pick one up at Ace Hardware next chance I get.

I then attached the adapter for the guard. The adapter bolts to the motor housing and provides a more secure place for the guard to attach. It keeps the guard from moving as my original one was prone to.

A note about the new guard: It includes a riving knife! HOORAY! That is the one thing that has had me looking into replacing my beautiful Rockwell with something newer. The safety provided by a riving knife is huge when ripping. It prevents the wood from pinching at the back side of the blade, causing the blade to grab the wood and send it flying from the 3200 rpm spin. Also, the pawls are much improved. They don't appear to get in the way as easily as many I've seen, plus can be easily lifted out of the way for jobs where they just interfere. While leaving the riving knife in place!

Once the guard was on, I attached the rubber elbow to the dust port. It allows me to redirect the stream of dust away from me while cutting. While I can attach my shop vac to the port on both guards, for a quick cut that would be way more trouble than it was worth. Plus on the original guard the port faced me. So I either had a blast of dust and air, or I had a big hose in my face. Neither encourages comfortable operation.

After aligning the riving knife to the blade per the included instructions, I swapped handles. I've got to say that the old one was more comfortable. It had a better ergonomic design. But the new one had something the old one didn't. A lever to raise the guard. Such a simple yet useful feature! No depending on pressure against the wood stock to raise the guard. No needing 3 hands: One to raise the guard, one to hold the stock, and one to push the handle. Sweet.

I do have a problem though. The instructions said to re-use the bevel indicator and screw on the new handle. The hole is drilled too big for that. The screw doesn't seat properly. A larger screw will solve it, but I wish the instructions said so...

Everything assembled and dialed in and I'm a happy camper. It's much safer to use this tool now, and I'm more confident in its use. Now to see if it replaces my table saw as my go-to cutter. I've never ripped on a RAS before so I don't know how well that will work for me...

Surfboard Clock

2009-10-01T08:12:00.003-07:00

A daily battle in my home is with my 18 year old son and his 45 minute showers. I've been trying to set an example by keeping my showers short, and turning the water off when not actively rinsing. To no avail. And the $135 a month water bills keep coming.

I thought maybe a clock in the bathroom would be helpful. Even if not, I'd like a clock in the bathroom to let me know when I'm running late.

My bathroom is done in surf theme, with redwood shelves and towelbars, and a big cool surfboard shower curtain. So I wanted a design that brought surfboards to mind without being obviously a surfboard, and incorporated redwood and some color.

I used a piece of curly maple for the center and redwood for the sides, and poly resin with blue pigment inlaid into the dividing lines between the maple and the redwood.

I also used this as an experiment on using a slot cutter with wood wedges to locate the joints and add strength, as a replacement for a biscuit joiner.

I cut the slots, used lengths of scrap walnut to fit inside the slots, glued and clamped. I sanded the pieces flush and then sanded the sides more to give the face of the clock a curved shape. I then drew circles on the ends with a compass and cut them on the bandsaw. I sanded the round ends smooth then did a finish sanding to 220 all over, easing the edges with the sandpaper.

I cut kerfs into the joints between the woods with my table saw blade, only cutting 1/16" deep. Tape was used on the ends to keep the resin from pouring out. I mixed up my resin and poured it into the kerfs. 30 minutes later it had gelled enough that I took the tape off and placed the whole thing into my oven at 170* for 4 hours to harden the resin.

I used a cabinet scraper to remove any splatter or overflow from the resin. then sanded the whole thing again to 220.

That set aside, I started working on the clock face. The cheapo clock kit from WalMart ($6.97) included some really cheesy looking plastic numbers. I threw those away and searched the internet for a clock face diagram to get the marks lined up properly. I found one, but didn't save the link (sorry!). It looks like it was supposed to be a printable face for a clock project from one of the woodworking mags.

I cut thin strips of walnut and then cut them to about 3/4" long by 1/16" square. I glued them to the paper with thin CA glue (wax paper underneath to keep the glue off the wife's table cloth!) It just takes a dab of glue since you're going to sand off the paper anyway. Once that was set I flipped the paper over onto the clock, using medium CA glue on the walnut. Clamped by laying a stack of phone books on top.

I drilled the center hole for the clock mechanism shaft, and finished with rattle can poly. Mounted the clock mechanism and hung it on the wall.

I love the look and it fits wonderfully in my bathroom. Unfortunately it didn't help with my son's shower problems.

The FREE Craftsman Radial Arm Saw

2009-09-20T17:46:00.004-07:00

Friday a Freecycle ad was posted for a "Not Working Radial Arm Saw".

I never get in on these, but fired off an email anyway. Turns out I was the first responder. YAY.

I get there Friday afternoon, and the tool was already disassembled for travel. So I didn't get a chance to check it out before taking it.

I loaded it up in the Guacamole Bus and took it home. It wasn't until Sunday afternoon that I got a chance to unload it and put it together.

Everything went together nicely like it should, and I plugged it in. One last look over before hitting the power button, and I found the breaker tripped in the motor.

I pushed the big red "RESET" button and it clicked. Hit the power switch and it whirred into life. All that was wrong with it was the breaker had tripped!

This saw has a reasonably powerful motor. The head moves smoothly on the arm. All the adjustments are positive and solid. All-in-all a decent saw.

If I was spending money on a 20-30 year old RAS, it probably wouldn't be a Craftsman, but for free, well... ;)

I haven't trued it up yet since I really don't have a place to put the thing. A radial arm saw is a large tool and needs elbow room. Room I just don't have.

I think I'll put it on the bench where my 10" Craftsman Bandsaw lives, but I'll need to build a base for the bandsaw. A base for the bandsaw wouldn't need to be as substantial as the one for the RAS would, so I think that'll be the better decision.

What would be great is if a larger garage fell out of the sky and attached itself (neatly) to my house.

Riiiight... THAT'LL happen.

In the meantime, I'll enjoy my free saw.

By the way, that Oldham 60t carbide blade came with the saw.

Woot!

Updated Privacy Policy

2009-08-26T12:58:00.001-07:00

We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.

First (mostly) Kitless Pen

2009-08-26T12:00:00.003-07:00

For my first "kitless" pen, I decided a twist pen would be a great starting point. No threads to mess with, no caps to lose, and so on.

For the twist mechanism I used a transmission from a slim, flipped upside down to power a Parker-style refill.

I took the two "A" tubes from the same slimline kit and butted them together in the long poly resin blank. The blank is cast poly resin in green and black. I named it "Alien Blood".

Once the tubes were glued into the long blank, I turned the whole thing round on the mandrel then cut a tenon down to the tube at the end.

The nib is made from 5/8" aluminum rod from the BORG. I drilled a hole for the writing tip (7/64" I think... Can't remember from here) then a 7mm hole most of the way through to stop the refill spring as well as mount on the brass tube I exposed on the barrel.

The nib I glued onto the exposed tube with 5 minute epoxy, then turned the whole thing between centers. This gave the nib a seamless fit onto the poly blank, and was super easy.

The finial houses the transmission. I drilled a 7mm hole and glued in a short bit of tube to press fit the transmission. The finial is then pushed onto the barrel with the transmission friction fit holding it together.

It's a weighty pen, with excellent (surprisingly) balance. Very easy to write with. The only downside is the spring on the refill tends to push the finial up out of the tube over time. I tried cutting some of the spring off to weaken it, which helped. But isn't perfect.

Next incarnation of this design will use the nib threaded onto the barrel instead of glued, and the transmission will be glued in place. This should eliminate separation of the assembly with use.

An aluminum pencil

2009-06-22T11:44:00.003-07:00

Click the pics for bigger photos!

I've done many Pentel based mechanical pencils. Woods and plastics are beautiful and (generally) quite durable. But I've been wondering just what it would take to make one from metal.

Having only a wood lathe, my attempts to work with stainless steel have been unsuccessful so far (but I'm still trying!) Softer metals seemed like a safe bet. So I started with aluminum since it's cheaper than brass, which I plan to tackle next.

This pen in the photos is *NOT* of selling quality. It is a learning experience. And I'm pretty darn happy with the results. I drilled a 3/4" aluminum bar on the lathe using the same stepped bit I use on all my Pentels (purchased from rherrel at iap.org). It was a bit trickier than drilling wood or resin since the bit is long and slender. It tends to flex and vibrate during drilling.

Aluminum also gets quite hot when drilling. At a minimum this can quickly dull the drill bit. With the aluminum clamped in my large scroll chuck, I also worried about the heat getting to the bearings. So I cooled the bit and blank with cutting oil repeatedly. Drilling took a really long time because of this, but preserving my tools was worth the effort.

Next I mounted the blank on my Pentel mandrel, also purchased from rherrel, and started turning. I experimented with several different tools, including carbide metal lathe bits, and found my big roughing gouge (carbon steel... not even HSS!) to be the best at smooth cuts in aluminum. But it required very frequent sharpening to keep it cutting, and not chattering or squealing. Whatever tool I used, I had to take super light cuts. The aluminum came off in such thin ribbons that it turned to dust when I touched it.

I also used a round nosed scraper to get the final finish. It worked very well, but took even less material off per pass so I didn't use it for shaping. Only to remove any ridges left by the gouge.

I sanded 400-600-800 and gave it a quick buff on the felt wheel. I have a bright satin finish on it that I think suits it very well and doesn't show every fingerprint.

I debated giving it a lacquer finish but decided since this isn't going to be sold, it would be good for me to use it every day for a while to see how the "finish" holds up, and what it will take to restore a beat up aluminum pen. I expect some Mother's mag wheel polish will shine it up nicely.

A Pentel-Based Mechanical Pencil - Start to Finish

2009-05-31T11:35:00.004-07:00

I've enjoyed making these Pentel mechanical pencils so much I figured it's time to share the process. I'm using sappy walnut for this walkthrough.

The tools are:

Lathe- A Turncrafter Pro 5-speed lathe from PSI
Drill Chuck- MT2 drill chuck from Harbor Freight
Dead Center- Generic MT2 dead center
Live Center- 60* live center from Woodcraft
Step Drill Bit- Step drill bit from rherrel on www.penturners.org
Step Mandrel- Step mandrel with steel and delrin bushings from rherrel on www.penturners.org
Scroll Chuck- Generic scroll chuck came with the lathe
Your chosen sharp pointy things- I generally use a roughing gouge and a skew for these

I first choose the material. Here I used some interesting sappy walnut. For a lighter color, I use air-dried wood. If I want it darker, I will either stain the air-dried wood, or buy steamed walnut.

Square the end then measure it against the step bit. From experience I've found that I like the length from where I mounted the stop on the bit to about halfway down the small end.

Cut the blank at the mark using the same tools you used to square the end. Mark the centers of the blank and drill a small shallow hole to guide your centers. Mount the blank on the lathe between centers and rough it round.

Take the blank out and remove the centers. Mount the scroll chuck on the headstock and loosely mount the blank in it. Mount your drill chuck with the step drill bit in the tailstock and line the bit up with the hole in the blank from the center. Assuming your drillstop is set up correctly, you can now drill the pen's hole.

Drill as you would any other blank, 1/4" at a time, backing out to clear chips and keep from overheating the bit or the material. I like to rest the drill stop against the blank's end to burn it square. I usually get it pretty good off the table saw, but this also helps define the click end nicely.

When it's drilled, remove the blank from the chuck. Remove the drill chuck and bit, and mount your live center. Mount the mandrel on the scroll chuck (or a collet chuck if you have one) loosely and bring the live center up to the mandrel. When you tighten the scroll chuck, the mandrel will be perfectly aligned with the tailstock.

With many woods, particularly softer woods such as this sappy walnut, stabilization is needed. I prefer CA glue.

Pour thin CA glue into the hole, making sure the wood is fully saturated at the nib end where it is thinnest. I will also saturate the click end because that gets some abuse as well. The center of the barrel won't generally need to be stabilized unless it is a burl or spalted wood. Then you may need to saturate the entire blank.

I am using Titebond's CA glue here because I was out and that's what Woodcraft (I think) sells. Use what is most cost-effective or available to you.

When you're done soaking the wood in CA, let it cure for a few hours minimum. While the outside may be dry, the CA inside the tube might still be sticky or even really wet.

At this point you will need to re-drill the hole. I just hold the drill chuck in my hand with the bit still mounted. Gentle turning by hand will smooth the hole and remove any runs or blobs without removing any more wood.

When you're done, mount the blank on your step mandrel with the steel bushings. Loosely tighten the nut then bring the tailstock up snug enough for the live center to turn when you spin the mandrel. Tighten the nut on the mandrel finger tight, bring up the tool rest and go!

Turn the shape you want for your pen, but larger than the final diameter. I like to rough it big, then pare it down to size with the skew. Final sanding will take it a bit undersized, the difference to be made up with my CA/BLO finish. If you want a different finish or don't want to build it that much, make sure your sanding takes it to the final diameter.

As mentioned, I use a CA/BLO finish on my pens. The BLO will darken most woods, but more importantly it acts as a lubricant and accelerator for the CA. Using this method, I can put 10 very thin coats on in 15 minutes. Makes for an extremely durable and beautiful finish that can be done in a few minutes instead of days.

This pencil I made "beefy", a more masculine shape than is usually found in pencils. In the final photos, you can see it compared to a more typical pencil, in this case one made from curly jatoba.

I hope this walkthrough helped you decide to start making some Pentel-based pencils. The Pentel Sharp mechanism is miles better than any pencil available as a "kit" from the usual penturning suppliers. And it's available in 0.5, 0.7 and 0.9mm sized leads.

Simple Pen Photo Tutorial

2009-03-29T12:30:00.006-07:00

A pencil of mine was recently awarded "Featured Photo" at the International Association of Penturners website (http://www.penturners.org). Since then I've been getting lots of, "How did you take that picture?" type questions.

I've significantly changed my way of shooting pens since the last time I talked about it, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to do a walkthrough of my process.

It's actually VERY simple, and requires minimal equipment.

First of all is the camera. Many moons ago I was into "serious" photography. I had tons of gear, 35mm and medium format and all the bits and bobs that go with those cameras. But when digital cameras were able to match (or exceed) the quality of 35mm film, I got out. I sold the bulk of my gear while I still could, and only had a few accessories left.

Considering that background, I have always had a hard time buying a digicam that did not have a PC socket. The PC socket is a generic flash socket and has been around for decades. It allows the most flexibility in strobes and flashes. I had hung on to some of my lighting gear (my main photography focus was nature, but I still had need for artificial light on occasion), and a PC socket was required to utilize that gear.

My current camera is a Kodak Z7590. It's a few years old, but was the best camera sporting a PC socket I could afford. It also has some pretty decent manual controls, including a realtime levels meter.

The built-in flash is surprisingly good, but of course is still fixed in place, and REALLY close to the lens. So its use is limited.

But I have a Vivitar flash that has more than enough power for my needs, and will attach to the PC socket on the camera. The camera has no way to control the flash other than "on", but the manual controls on the camera for aperture take care of that. The flash also has an "auto" mode, where it tries to guess the exposure based on a sensor in the flash body, but that is never used.

The flash by itself isn't much better than the built-in flash in the camera. What makes it perfect for me is the fact that I can bounce it off the ceiling or wall as needed. It doesn't need to be mounted to any brackets or the camera itself. In fact, it wouldn't be as good that way. (There is another way though if you have a higher-end flash with a pivoting head. If you're interested, leave me a comment.)

Depending on how lazy I am at the time, I may or may not mount the camera to a tripod. The flash allows hand holding with minimal loss of sharpness, so it's not critical. In one hand I hold the camera set to "M" (manual) and with the aperture set to 4.0 to start with. Shutter is 1/25 or so, just fast enough not to capture any ambient light. With the camera pointed at the subject, I point the flash at the ceiling and press the shutter.

That's it! No magic, no sacrifices of small animals, nada. From here it's just a matter of playing with the aperture until you get the image you want.

I find that having a white background for the subject is much easier than a colored background. The reason why is apparent when I move into the post processing.

For post processing, I use Adobe Photoshop. The most recent version I own is CS3 (thanks work!). Any version of Photoshop should be able to do what I'm going to show you, as well as most other image processing applications. But I've been using Photoshop since v3 so long ago passed the learning curve.

When shooting the image, try to fill your frame with the background. As you can see from the photo on the left, I got some extraneous stuff in the image. That's OK though because I was going for a detail shot of the clip. It will be cropped anyway.

I load the image in Photoshop, and define my final image crop. As I said, I was doing a detail shot of the clip, so that's what I cropped to.

Once I'm happy with the cropping, I open the Levels tool (Image - Adjust - Levels in Photoshop CS3). As you can see, the white levels are maxed out. They're "outside the gamut". That means there is no information other than "white" there. So I can move the light colored caret to the left to essentially remove that section.

Doing that may provide an apparent washed out look. So the gray and black carets must be moved to compensate. Tiny adjustments are usually all that is needed. The background stays true white, while the subject gets darkened as you adjust.

Once you're happy, resize the image (for web use I do no more than 600 pixels for the longest side), sharpen if desired, and save.

It sounds a lot harder than it really is. And with digital cameras, there's no film cost, no processing cost, no delay while you wait for your pictures. You get instant gratification, and can keep trying over and over until you get an image you like.

Drop me a note over at the IAC (username DurocShark), the Woodnet forums (same username), or leave a comment if you have any questions.

Pentel Mandrel Properly Mounted

2009-03-16T04:13:00.004-07:00

Here's a photo of the mandrel being used correctly. I had it between centers in the previous article and using the drill stop instead of using a brass nut.

I'm unsure of the wood being used there, probably a rosewood of some kind. But here's the completed Pentel based pencil.

And finally, an action shot of the HF 2" Scroll Chuck I reviewed here. It runs absolutely true and was a great purchase.

I have some segmented blanks lined up for these pencils that I'll get to next weekend.

Turning a Pentel Pencil

2009-03-15T08:53:00.004-07:00

One of the things I've wanted to do ever since I started turning pens was make a Pentel mechanical pencil. The kits out there for making pencils are crap. I've tried a bunch and they've all had serious problems. Some break the lead. Others use a twist mechanism that is too weak to handle a heavy body. And so on.

The reliable Pentel pencils I've had over the years have none of those problems. They just work. Repeatedly. For years.

Examining the barrel of a Pentel shows it's a pretty simple design. A plastic tube with a narrow bit at the tip. So why couldn't I make my own barrel?

The problem is the narrow opening at the tip. Every time I've tried to make that I've screwed it up. Misalignment, damage during turning, etc. Then I found a seller over on penturners.org who sold a kit. (NOTE: He's not ready to sell bulk yet. I'll put his info here when he is.)

The kit included a stepped drill bit. The need for the stepped bit is obvious when you look at the stock Pentel barrel. The narrow opening is only at the tip, to allow the nib to be screwed onto the mechanism and bind the barrel in between. That solves the drilling alignment problem.

The kit also included a mandrel with a step matching the drill bit. This solves the problem of damaging the blank during turning and allows it to be securely mounted and aligned.

I also got steel bushings for turning to match the hardware, matching delrin bushings for mounted finishing (CA in particular), a nut for the narrow side of the mandrel, and a brass stop bushing for the drill bit.

I selected a curly maple blank for my first attempt since I have a bunch. I drilled the blank with the step drill and trimmed the nib end until the nib mounted well. See the photo above for a test fitting. I was half tempted to leave it like that just to be odd!

After the test fitting was successful, I mounted everything on the mandrel and mounted that between centers on my lathe. It should be chuck mounted, but I was afraid to screw up the threads on my first use. (After talking to the seller, I found I was supposed to use the brass stop bushing on the drill bit, not the mandrel. I should have read his directions more closely... The info was in there!)

I turned it down to a comfortable shape, if a little heavy. I could have taken it much thinner, but was a bit nervous for my first time.

After sanding to 800 grit I removed it and did a test fit. Ahhh... Nice.

I applied several coats of rattle-can lacquer (I didn't realize the black bushings were delrin, so I didn't do a CA finish.) After letting it cure overnight I hit it with the buffer and assembled.

The pics that follow are how it looked after assembly. Placing the clip was a bit hairy. I was worried about scratching the finish. So I used a drill bit that was a bit larger than the wood barrel to slip the clip on from the top. That worked great!

I love how it looks, and that I can now use a mechanical pencil I'm proud to say I made, instead of some plastic (or stainless steel, in the case of my Parker pencil) thing.

I will be doing many more I think!

Leather Fishers Of Men Pen

2009-03-02T09:04:00.003-08:00

After seeing a beautiful example of using leather for a pen blank over on IAP, I decided to give it a go.

It turned nice enough, and sanded well, at least as long as I kept the leather saturated with thin CA. I thought I'd give it a thin CA finish as well to at least preserve the illusion of the leather's texture.

I think it came out too thin and the ends of the leather blank are visible and lighter. I'll be refinishing it tonight to see if some medium CA will take care of things.

Harbor Freight 2" Mini Scroll Chuck Review

2009-02-19T06:54:00.014-08:00

Vendor: Harbor Freight
Item Number: 65723-1VGA
List Price: $89.99
Link: http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=65723

I've been turning without a chuck and have been very limited on what I can accomplish with just centers and a face plate. So I decided to see what was out there for my MT#1 lathes (Harbor Freight mini, Craftsman tube). The chucks were all around $100 for a basic small chuck. Harbor Freights, being $90, had no price difference worth bothering with.

Until I got a 20% off coupon. Now the price difference was VERY workable.

This chuck arrived yesterday. Here's how it looked when it arrived:

As usual, the parts were covered in a smelly brown oil to protect the parts from rust during shipping and storage. Once the parts were removed from the baggies and wiped clean, here's what I ended up with:

Included in the box:

Chuck Body
Round Jaws
Pin Jaws
Stepped Jaws
1" x8tpi to 3/4" x 16tpi adapter
Screw Chuck
Allen Wrench
Tightening Levers
Pack of screws

First Impressions
The chuck body appears nicely made. The nickel plating is well done, and the machining is decent. It has a good heft to it as well, a bit heavier than I expected (a good thing). The blackened parts: jaws, tools, etc; are rougher. The jaws where they would actually touch the workpiece are smooth, but anyplace that doesn't impact functionality is roughly machined.

Note that the faces that rub against other parts, or must be square for alignment, are done well.

The parts are square to each other and fit tightly. There is no apparent issue with things being concentric or out of balance.

I screwed the adapter to the chuck and the chuck to my Harbor Freight mini lathe using only hand pressure, no tools. I spun the lathe on its lowest setting and got no vibrations. I then moved all the way to the lathe's fastest setting and still no vibrations. Good.

I chucked up my spur center just to have something protrude and see if the chuck spins true. Yep. Nice.

Here's a shot with the round jaws opened fully:

And mounted with my spur center sticking its rear out:

I haven't turned anything with it yet since, as you can see by the mess, my lathe really isn't ready to be used. I'm building a new dining room table and that's taking up all my available garage space. I'll be sure to post when I do use it though!

"New" Craftsman Lathe

2009-02-10T04:13:00.004-08:00

Craftsman 12" Wood Lathe
Model: 113.228160
Made by Emerson Electric

I picked this up yesterday thanks to a swap for some Legos.

It needs a lot of attention and some parts, but looks promising. Conveniently it's a #1 Morse Taper so I can use the stuff I've collected for my mini.

I'll get post updates here when I have them.

Craftsman Bandsaw Tensioning with Flutter

2009-01-12T08:41:00.005-08:00

I subscribe to Wood Magazine's email newsletter. The most recent one talked about using bandsaw blade "flutter" to properly set tension. (Article) While I love my Craftsman 10" bandsaw to death, one irritant is the lack of a gauge for blade tension.

So here's my walkthrough of using the flutter technique to adjust my blade tension.

Clean
This isn't a joke. Every bandsaw that actually gets used is going to have dust built up in some strange places. Start off as clean as possible. I used my shop vac and a brush.
Loosen Bearings
I opened up the blade bearings as much as possible. With the top set I was actually able to slide the while head back off the blade!
Remove the Insert
Push the insert up out of the table from underneath. It will get in the way at best, and chewed up by the floppy blade at worst.
Remove the Miter Gauge and Fence
Get them off the table.
Button Up
Close the doors and ensure everything is in place. Visually inspect that nothing is loose or could get in the way of a spinning and floppy blade.
Test Run
Fire it up for a minute to make sure everything is working correctly.
Last Inspection
Shut it off and do a final visual inspection.
Loosen Blade Tension
This is where the article linked above comes in. As stated in the article: "With the saw running, slowly release the tension—about 1/2 turn of the tensioning wheel at a time—until the blade starts to flutter, as shown below." Obviously I don't have the pics they do. But the brighter photo I have is the fluttering blade. The thinner one is the properly tensioned blade.
Adjust Blade Tension
Again, to the article: "Gradually increase tension until the fluttering just stops, then turn the tensionwheel another 1/4 - 1/2 turn tighter." WARNING: That article was written for 14" and larger bandsaws. Our little 10" saws cannot handle tension like those can. Do *not* go more than 1/4 turn. I actually did somewhat less than that on mine. And that's with my higher quality Lenox 3/8" blade.
Reset Bearings
If everything went well in step 9, you should now reset your bearings. Side bearings: a folded dollar bill's thickness from the blade. Rear bearing: As close as you can get, or the same thickness from the rear of the blade if your adjustment allows (only my bottom bearing can do that).
Test Cuts
Now is the moment of truth. Make some test cuts! Adjust the saw as you would if you were making the most important cut in the world and cut some wood. Myself, I tested on varying thicknesses of scrap pine and maple, then resawed some 3 1/2" mahogany.

I don't know that the blade is cutting any smoother than with my previous pinkie pressure adjustment. But this "flutter" adjustment seems more reliable and repeatable. After all, your pinkie is going to get stronger the more you use it like this! So your adjustments will get tighter as your finger gets stronger (or looser if you're aging like me).

A couple of notes here.

If your bandsaw is vibrating, either your wheels are out of balance (unlikely) or your blade has been tensioned too long without running. This puts some "memory" in the blade so it is like a bump every rotation. Replace the blade and release the tension on the blade when not in use. A good way to do this is by counting the number of turns you loosen the knob, then do the same number of turns to re-tension it.
Always, always, ALWAYS work on your saw with it powered off AND unplugged. There are sharp spinny things that would love to grab a finger or sleeve.
Don't expect miracles. With proper care and a sharp blade you can get good cuts from this saw. But it's only a 1/3hp motor. It can only do so much.

Segmented Turning Stave Thickness Calculator

2009-01-07T06:22:00.002-08:00

I spend some time (a lot of time) (too much time) on the Woodnet forums. But I've learned so much from the guys there.

One guy, Joe Fisher, is a regular. A few months ago I bought a hook hollowing tool from him (videos here). I haven't written it up yet because I've only used it a few times and don't have my technique down yet.

Apparently he's also better at JavaScript than I am. He has recently published a calculator to figure out how thick staves need to be at glue-up time to get a desired thickness after turning. It calculates this based on the number of staves you plan to use, and how thick the final turning will be. It even includes a bit of fudge factor because most of us can't turn to super tight tolerances.

I have yet to do a staved turning (and the couple of segmented turnings I've done were laughable) but I've added this site to the ole toolbox.

Enjoy!

http://www.fisherwoodcraft.com/tips.php?TIP=calc

The BEST pgrade to my Craftsman 10" band saw!

2009-01-07T06:05:00.003-08:00

Sorry, no pics. I've been getting lazy with my camera.

Back in January of 08 I posted about buying a Craftsman Band Saw and even then I mentioned the cut quality was kinda crap.

Then a few days later, after much research online and some trial and error I talked about how to tune the thing. Again, I got the cut quality better, but still not perfect.

I used that band saw a lot. For resawing, pen turning, and so on. It's been a workhorse! And the 1/3hp motor hasn't been any kind of limitation either. But the cut quality still left a lot to be desired.

Last October I realized the blade that came with the band saw was pretty tired.

Pooped out.

Dull.

So I ordered a new one. The one I bought was a 3/8" "flexback" blade from Cyber Woodworking Depot. Total cost including shipping was under $20.

Product number: 80467-FLB5-1790
Manufacturer: Lenox
Description: (70-1/2 in.) 5 ft. 10-1/2 in. x 3/8 in. x .025 x 3TPI, Hook, Wood Cutting, FLEX BACK

This blade is much stiffer and sharper than the stock Craftsman blade ever was. It also (after following my tuning process again) cuts a whole lot nicer! And faster! Resawing 4" cherry while doable, was pretty slow. Even when the blade was still sharp. With this Lenox blade I can't push the wood fast enough to bog it down.

Now, keep in mind that tuning the saw is important to get good results. Just slapping the blade on isn't gonna get you the quality of cut possible after dialing in the weels and guide blocks or bearings. But on a tuned saw, the difference between a crap blade and a quality blade are huge.

Give it a shot. It's only $20 (shipped) and you'll be amazed.

A mahogany candleholder

2008-12-26T11:10:00.004-08:00

A little over a month ago I was commissioned by a coworker to make a candleholder for him to give his wife for Christmas. After some color discussions (to make it match his dining room table), we settled on lacquered mahogany.

I found some 8/4 slabs of mahogany and realized it would be great if I could make the entire thing out of a single slab of wood.

From the scraps I made a pair of endgrain mahogany and copper pens.

The base of the candlehoder is solid mahogany. The angled sides were cut on the bandsaw with the table tilted. I drew the oval with a pencil and two nails and a string and cut close to the line, finishing with hand sanding to remove the saw marks.

The center I routed out with a straight bit on my handheld PC 690 router. The candlestick holders were turned on the lathe and 5/8" holes drilled to hold the candles. The dishes in the base are epoxied into 7/8" holes. A drum sander added the detail underneath.

The candleholder was finished with Deft lacquer while the pens were finished with CA.

Turning Burl

2008-11-28T09:05:00.003-08:00

I know, it's been a while since I posted. But life gets in the way sometimes.

Here's my first successful shot at turning a burl pen. The one in the photos is box elder burl with an imperfect but cool green dye job.

I started with three burl blanks. I tried to use them for Sierra pens. Big mistake. The wood is too thin on the tubes for my ham-handed tool control. So the other two blanks, one purple and one blue, were destroyed. I figured out the bad choice a Sierra is for me, so I switched to a euro for the last one.

I also changed my technique. Instead of my 1" gouge like I usually use and finishing with a skew, I used strictly a round nose scraper once the blank was turned round. The finishing cuts were made using the scraper as a skew. It took the finest threads of material I've seen and didn't catch at all. With a skew I have to get at least one catch per pen. That usually keeps my heart rate nice and high.

I also soaked CA into the pen after every few passes to help hold it together. I finished with 4 coats of medium CA and polished it up.

The burl took longer to turn than a "normal" pen, but the results are worth it!

Drill Bits

2008-10-27T06:54:00.003-07:00

If you've been turning pens, you'll have begun collecting odd sized drill bits. 27/64, 15/32, etc. Even the cheapie ones are $5 or more each.

Ugh.

Last week I purchased a Navigator rollerball kit from Woodcraft. $10 for the kit, $6 for the bushings, and $35 for the two drill bits! $51 just to make a $10 kit.

So I was standing there in front of the rack of expensive drill bits at Woodcraft when I noticed a box at the bottom. Drill bits in 64ths. A whole set. $25.

I opened it to ensure it had the sizes I needed, and it did! I put the $35 pair of bits back on the rack and grabbed this bad boy.

It's the Wood River 29 Piece Fractional Inch Brad Point Set. (Link here but it's $31.99 online.) I've been using them like mad this past week and loving it! Having all the odd sizes is great! For example, I was doing one of PSI's penlight kits that calls for a 1/2" hole. Well, 1/2" was a sloppy fit, so I went down to the next smaller size and the tube was a great fit!

Grab one of these kits if you can. I'll be getting the metric one next.

Herringbone Pattern Pen In Red Oak

2008-10-15T07:27:00.003-07:00

Today I have a walk-through of making a herringbone pen.

The creation of this pen isn't difficult or complex, as long as these things are kept in mind:

Your table saw or band saw can make glueline quality cuts.
You are patient.
Your turning tools are sharp.

I don't know that a band saw can make these cuts, but I'm certainly not a band saw expert. I do know that I can't get flat, smooth cuts from mine.

Start with a thin board 1" wide or wider.
Make it as thick or thin as you like, but remember that the thinner the board, the more glue joints you'll have to make.
Cut the board in 1" sections.
I use my Rockwell table saw with a 64 tooth carbide tipped blade. It makes absolutely smooth cuts, perfect for gluing. (Photo of the saw is in this post: November Shop Tour ) I also use my Small Crosscut Sled because it is safer to use for small piece cutting.
Glue up in an alternating pattern.
The pattern itself isn't really critical. As long as you used good tools, the faces will all be square to each other and the glue up will be easy. The glue you use isn't terribly important, as long as it is strong enough to handle the torque of being turned on the lathe. I used Titebond II for this particular one, but I've used CA glue as well. If you have woods that bleed, such as padauk, CA may be a better option because it will seal the wood surface.
Clip its "wings".
Square the blank. If the glue-up went well, the sides will still be straight and square, so you can use a crosscut sled or miter gauge to square the ends. Once the ends are square you can CAREFULLY trim the sides lengthwise. I again used my sled, holding the blank against the rear fence with a scrap piece of wood long enough to keep my hands well away from the blade.
Cut to length and drill, just like any other blank.
Well, not completely. Because of the changing grain direction, and possible glue joint weakness, you need to be extra careful when cutting and drilling. VERY light cuts with the drill bit, inspecting for glue joint separation, and being aware that heat can weaken glue are all necessary. Particularly with denser woods that are prone to heating up anyway.
Mount and turn!
I use my 1" gouge to rough the blanks. Light cuts and frequent inspections are needed. Make a pass, turn off the lathe, and look for cracking or separating of the glue joints. If a bit of the blank starts to look fishy, soak it in CA. Thin CA is great for this. Let it set for a minute or two and spray it with some accelerator, or let it cure longer naturally. Make sure your tool is VERY sharp. Hone it frequently, or if you're like me and have cheap "High Carbon Steel" tools, keep the grinder running and touch the tool to it frequently.
Finishing
Generally, you can use whatever finish you like. If you are using a brittle or open pored wood, I would soak the pen in thin CA first. That will stabilize the wood and harden it to some extent. The one in the pics is finished with BLO and shellac. This rustic looking pen needed the texture of the wood to come through, so my usual thick CA finish was out of the question.

As you see, it's not "difficult", but it does require some patience and care.

Enjoy!

More Corian

2008-09-28T16:59:00.002-07:00

I'm getting into production mode with these. I'm able to make them consistently of high quality in a relatively short amount of time. The most time consuming part is having to keep sharpening my gouge. Corian is hard on carbon steel tools. I really need to invest in some higher quality tools.

But in the meantime...

Purse Pen - Acorn and Gold
My wife needed a pen she could toss in her purse. I thought about getting one of the small pen kits made for wallets/pockets/purses but I hate those tiny things. So I made her one from Acorn Corian with a 24k gold slimline kit. I left the clip off since they just get in the way when in a purse. She loves it.

Slimline in Sahara and Gold
Another one made from the same kit as the above purse pen. I have settled on this profile for the bulk of my slimline pens because it seems to be easiest to write with. The gentle swell of the barrel from the waistband gives enough weight to the pen to balance it nicely. The weight of the Corian, significantly heavier than wood, helps with that too.

If you've never written with a weighty pen, give one a shot. You'll find that your cursive flows much easier, and even if you're a block letter writer like me you will find your writing to be more legible and easier on the hand.

Finally...

Euro / Designer in Storm Blue and Black Titanium

I really like this color Corian. Corian describes it this way:

Deep denim blue tone with small particles in brown, blue and white

I couldn't have said it better myself.

These pens, and their clones, will be for sale soon at http://www.donimages.com.

Working with Corian

2008-09-26T23:15:00.003-07:00

Today I received some blanks from another penturner. They were Corian and Formica.

I decided to spin up one just to see what it was like to work.

It cut reasonably well on the table saw, so I squared up one end and cut blanks for a common 7mm slim pen kit. Drilling was about like a typical acrylic blank. Noisy and needs small bites to keep the blank and/or the bit from overheating.

I glued the bare brass blanks in with 5 minute epoxy and let them set for an hour or so.

Turning made a bigger mess than the acrylic blanks usually do. It looks like it snowed on my lathe! I did take very fine cuts initially until I got the hang of the material. I'm glad I did! At one point the gouge slipped and nicked the blank I wasn't working on. The momentary contact at around 1500 rpm took a series of gouges out of the blank. Luckily they were in the waste portion of the blank, so I didn't have to repair it or do a redesign to cover it up.

I sanded starting at 400 grit through 2000 grit using automotive wet and dry sandpaper with KleenStrip's KS Pro Paint Thinner as lubricant. I like that stuff because it's odorless and doesn't attack your skin like regular mineral spirits can. I just wear a face shield to keep it out of my eyes and mouth.

After sanding I polished the barrels with Meguiar's Plast-X plastic polish.

As you can see, the end result looks terrific! I have many other colors that came in that package, so I'm going to have a little bit of fun!

Herringbone Pen in Maple and Padauk

2008-09-25T20:54:00.003-07:00

NO PEEKING DAVE!!!

(Inside joke. Please ignore if your name isn't DAVE and you're not home playing hooky.)

I didn't take any pics of the process (I'm a dummy) but here's the final result. I think the padauk and maple is too gaudy. But it was a good test of the concept!

First Fountain Pen

2008-09-23T04:31:00.003-07:00

This is based on the Penn State Industries Designer 24kt Gold Fountain Pen Kit. I turned the barrels from tulipwood.

The pen kit was a challenge because it needed more than just a 7mm hole and some bushings to make. I needed to use a pair of step drills and drill to a very precise depth. Then I had to cut a tenon in the cap to hold the center band. I have not needed to do that much yet with a pen kit.

It was fun!

The finish was done with CA. I used the Gel this time and it worked great. Being so thick I was able to get nice thick coats on the barrels easily. Sanded and polished it looks like glass. Outstanding finish.

I'm taking it to work today and see how it is to write with. The nib is a bit bigger than the ones I'm used to with the dip pen in my Blue Mahoe Dolphin set, so we'll have to see. I can purchase different nibs for these, though it's a bit difficult to swap them.

Definitely a beautiful pen that should get some oohs and aahs.

Small Notebooks in Cherry and Blue Mahoe

2008-09-16T04:24:00.003-07:00

Shown in the photos with a Parker stainless steel mechanical pencil.

The paper is 3x5" index card. I found some with a graph print so it can be written on in either direction.

These will soon be for sale with a matching chrome and cherrywood pen for around $50 to help launch my sales business.

The notebooks are bookmatched cherry. Some will have trim of various woods such as this blue mahoe (I'm out of BM though, so maybe not unless I can get my hands on some more).

As usual, the discs are from Rollabind, in this case they're chrome plated. I'm not a fan of the plating, but I've gotta get rid of this bag of the things I have.

About Shellac

2008-09-04T06:22:00.002-07:00

Many of my projects use shellac in at least some part of the finish. It was the first finish I was able to apply well, it's a natural and renewable product (at least, when mixed yourself... Off the shelf stuff may not be fully natural), and it looks great.

The only downsides are low abrasion resistance and low liquid resistance. That's it. Not so good for table tops, great for pens!

The pencil shown in the photo at right is made from kingwood finished with several coats of 1# shellac. This was my first penturning attempt and I still use it every day. The finish is still great.

Shellac.net has some good info on shellac. Their "Why Shellac" article is good:

Shellac is a good choice for
furniture, smal craft, and wood instruments because it is ..

Beautiful, Lustrous
Easy to apply
Dries within minutes
Sticks to almost anything!
Seals in minutes
Can be recoated within 15-20 minutes if wiped
Can be recoated within 2 hours if brushed
Infinitely easier to rub out
Easily repaired
Has good clarity
Completely reversible
Feels well in the hand
Offers a wide range of colors without sacrificing clarity
Environmentally safe
Healthier
Compatible with most other finishes
Once you shellac, ain't no going back!

And they missed one of the most important reasons: It's a renewable resource and fully natural!

Shellac is made from secretions of the Lac bug. It is sold either prepared or in flake form that you mix yourself with denatured alcohol. Shellac is used for more than just wood finishes. It can be found in medicines as a pill coating and packaged foods to add a shine to glazes or candies. It's completely edible when cured and safe around children.

If you haven't tried shellac yet, get a small can of prepared shellac and play with it. If you like it, buy some flakes and alcohol and start mixin' yer own.

My son pwns j00

2008-08-31T10:40:00.004-07:00

Can you believe he's only 17?

Black acrylic with red traces, copper slim pen kit.

Sanded to 2000 then polished with Meguiar's Plast-X.

He's awesome!

Several Firsts in this Project

2008-08-29T04:08:00.002-07:00

I was home sick yesterday, but it was nothing to prevent me from working in the garage. So off I went!

I did 4 things for the first time here.

My first time working with Lyptus-
I've never tried this wood before. Woodcraft had a bowl full of figured lyptus blanks for $2 so i bought one. Here's a good article about lyptus: Woodweb. For me, it worked much like maple. Small chipouts in the figure, nice and hard, looks great. The pen above was finished with BLO and several coats of a three pound cut of shellac.
My first time making a "euro" pen-
I've only been working with the slimline kits. I thought I'd give the euro kit a shot. This was a Woodcraft $4.99 kit in 24k gold and a black cap. I've never seen the black cap before. Kinda cool.

Turning this is a bit different because of the diameter changes required. The middle of the pen is a bit thicker than the ends. Most folks turn these with a gentle curve between the ends. I went for a bit straighter blank to avoid the "chunky" look. I need to turn a few more and decide what I like better.
My first time successfully making a band in the blank-
The band is cocobolo. In the lyptus blank I used my table saw to cut a kerf, not quite cutting all the way through. I cut a slice of cocobolo just a bit smaller and glued aluminum foil (Reynold's if you care) to both sides with CA glue. I then set the whole sandwich into the lyptus blank with more CA glue. I let it cure for a couple hours to prevent separation later.

The foil adds a very thin border between the lyptus and the coco. I couldn't go much thicker because of the gold hardware, but it serves its purpose nicely. Wood to wood doesn't look quite right in all the pens I've attempted it with. Using the foil to separate them did the trick.
My first time trying to make a satin finish on a pen-
Because this was intended to be a "user" pen, I didn't want a glossy finish. I wanted a smooth, but satin finish to make it more comfortable in my hand.

I achieved this by applying several coats of 3# cut blonde shellac. Before the last coat fully dried, I applied some Butcher's Wax with a 0000 steel wool. This gives the pen a durable finish that isn't too glossy or slick.

Overall I'd call this a success!

Cocobolo Candlestick Holder

2008-08-28T08:02:00.003-07:00

I had a chunk of cocobolo left over from my other projects. Too short for a pen, too nice for the trash, I was determined to find a use for it.

As I was digging through the "box'o'candles" (everybody's wife has one of those, right?) I found a seriously fugly rocking horse candlestick holder. It was plated pot metal, with a screwed on candle cup sticking out of the top. It was plated with a gold color that was partly worn. It really looked crappy.

I removed the cup from the rocking horse and chucked it in my lathe. The cup was pressed steel, and had pressure ridges, scratches, etc. I sanded it to 2000 grit paper to get it smooth, then hit it with the buffer and white diamond compound. Polished steel looks much better than cheap "gold" plating.

I chucked the chunk of cocobolo and turned the simple shape shown in the photo. Sanded to 800 grit and applied two coats of thin (1# cut) shellac followed by a couple coats of Hut's Crystal Coat.

A note about Crystal Coat. It's crap. It can add a nice deep shine to your turning, but durable it isn't. Just removing the piece from the lathe can dull the finish! I left this piece on the lathe for an hour before removing it to drill the hole for the steel cup's mounting screw. I still ended up marring the finish. Once I had the hole drilled and the screw run through a couple times so it would go easy later, I re-mounted it on the lathe and applied another coat of the finish.

I left it on the lathe overnight before taking it off and mounting the cup. I then immediately placed it on the shelf in the living room where it sat for a week before I had the courage to take it down again to photograph it.

I have no experience with other friction polishes, but Hut's Crystal Coat isn't worth the bottle it's sold in, unless all you're going to do is take pictures of your work.

99c Store Turning Kit

2008-08-25T04:16:00.003-07:00

This pickup tool was purchased at the 99c store several years ago. Over time, the end and pocket clip have fallen off and been lost. The telescoping tube and magnet on the end are just fine however, so I never tossed it.

Last night I decided to see if I could turn a nice handle for it.

I mic'd the fat end of the telescoping tube and got 7.98mm inner diameter. I then loaded up a kingwood pen blank and turned a handle with an 8mm tip, 1/4" long. Finished with shellac and friction polish, the kingwood handle was inserted into the pickup tool with a few drops of CA glue.

The handle is in VERY snug and the glue will keep it from coming loose.

I may have to buy a few more of these things from the 99c store and see what else I can do with them!

Sneak Peek

2008-08-14T19:59:00.003-07:00

Playing with inlays. This is powdered copper in walnut with 4 coats of lacquer.

Son's First Pen Turning

2008-08-13T11:30:00.002-07:00

My 17 year old son, the one I built the black desk for, completed his first project on the lathe.

Using my Harbor Freight Mini Lathe he turned a mechanical pencil using a Rockler kit. The wood is some scrap padauk I had, and the finish is shellac.

While he had some guidance from me, the work was all him.

He's excited and wants to turn many more!

Harbor Freight Mini Lathe

2008-07-31T18:09:00.003-07:00

I was so excited I couldn't wait to try it. So no pics of the lathe in a "pristine" state.

=D

This is Harbor Freight's "8" x 12" Benchtop Wood Lathe", item number 95607-7VGA.

It came today. I unboxed it and had a 1x2 of some really light and soft pine chucked in 10 minutes.

The variable speed is awesome. It's huge to be able to change speeds on the fly while cutting instead of having to stop, move the belt, start again and hope you still have your groove.

In this horribly soft wood I used a 1/2" skew chisel and cut it down into a cylinder, then cut a captive ring. My first! The old 40" HF lathe wasn't stable enough to let me achieve this in any wood, let alone something as soft as this.

Yay!

I can't wait to see what else I can make!

The Trend RoutaSketch

2008-07-27T15:17:00.003-07:00

Trend doesn't seem to sell this any more. It's the "RoutaSketch" and I picked one up on clearance at Rockler for $25.

It was when they had the coupons 50% off any clearance item. They had two of these RoutaSketches, original price $99, clearance price $50, with my coupon $25.

I figured for $25 it was worth checking out. I was intrigued by the concept, that's for sure.

Inboxed, it's clear the thing was made as cheaply as possible. All plastic except for a pair of brass thread inserts in the base and the steel bars to hold up the template and the tracing stylus.

I assembled according to the directions. The steel bars were a REALLY tight fit in the plastic bases. Tight enough I feared I'd break the plastic before even getting to try it. But they survived. The plastic may be tougher than I initially thought!

After assembling the stands I looked at the instructions to determine which holes in the base to use for my Porter Cable router. But, alas, there were no PCs listed in the table!

No Porter Cable support? How can this be?!?!?!

I suspect that maybe PC isn't as big in Europe as it is here in the US. Trend seems to be based in the UK. That might explain it.

I tried to line up the holes in my PC with the myriad holes in the base of the Routa Sketch. No luck. None at all. Bleh.

I decided to grab the Harbor Freight plunge router that's been pretty much setting on the shelf. Sure enough, the template holder screws were a match. In fact, Trend was nice enough to include long screws that fit! A good thing since the ones that came with the router were far too short to mount the RoutaSketch base with.

After some dry runs making sure I had the motions down and was comfortable controlling the router with this big thing attached (really it isn't that bad, things moved quite smoothly) I picked one of the designs that came with the RoutaSketch.

The RoutaSketch comes with a good assortment of line art to use. Oddly enough (or maybe not), at least a few of those are public domain line art. My wife saw one of them at the local library for the kiddies to color!

With the paper on the tracing platform, my plunge router dialed in to make a very light cut, and my daughter and I wearing goggles, I started cutting.

The reason I wanted to use the PC router is I hate plunge routers. I understand the need for them, which is why I own one, but I prefer a straightforward simple router without the plunge feature. During this trial, the biggest reason I hate plunge routers showed itself. If I concentrate on the work, I'll relax my arms, causing the router to "de-plunge". The router keeps making the right motions, but the bit is no longer cutting. Grr...

Another thing that was irritating me was the stylus would grab the paper causing the paper to move. Well this screws up the pattern being cut into the wood. It turns out that the package came with a sheet of acetate to lay over the paper so the stylus moves more smoothly.

Whoops!

Even so, I thought it came out pretty decent!

I just carved into the mini-bench top. Don't worry, I'm not damaging my work surface. I had enough damage to it already that I need to resurface it with my jack plane.

I didn't carve any of the details. This was more a test of the tool. It's not a project. The outline looks good, but you can see where the aper shifted. it shoved the sea horse's forehead into it's ears. The acetate should prevent that from happening next time.

Yes. There is going to be a next time...

Acrylic Acetate Pen

2008-07-26T21:01:00.003-07:00

So, during one of my recent trips to Rockler, I picked up a blank labeled "acrylic acetate". The outside looked like white plastic with some black spray paint on it. Meh. I wasn't impressed, but I wanted to try turning this stuff.

It turned easily until the vibrations set in on my craptastic Harbor Freight lathe. I had a blowout. Hence the purpleheart patch. ;-)

I've got two pics trying to show the pearlescent effect. Neither does a great job. You have to see it in person to really appreciate the beauty.

After turning I sanded to 600 grit W/D paper (wet) and polished with Meguiar's PlastX plastic polish. No need for fancy polishing pads or any crap like that. 600 grit and the polish got it shiny and smooth.

I'm going to pick up some more of this stuff once my new mini lathe arrives. Hopefully it'll be more stable than the one I have now.

Update on the Craftsman 8" Drill Press

2008-07-21T08:16:00.005-07:00

In this entry I talked about the Craftsman 8" Drill Press model 315.11970 that I had purchased off eBay.

Since I've been doing some turnings, I've needed to use a drill press to make accurate holes in the workpieces.

Too bad I don't have a press capable of drilling accurate holes!

I mentioned that it was "unstable as hell". I recently took it apart to determine why it was so unstable. After all, who would sell a drill press that's unstable when new?

Craftsman would. That's who.

I found that the red plastic housing is the entire framework. There is no metal to metal connection between the drill motor and the post.

Note to engineers: Cheap plastic does NOT provide rigid connectivity in a power tool!

I made a slight improvement by wedging a piece of wood scrap into the tool between the post bearings and the plastic housing. It helped, but not much.

As far as I'm concerned, this thing is completely useless. I get more accurate holes using a hand drill.

If anybody wants to donate something that ISN'T a complete piece of crap, I'd be more than happy to accept!

First Turned Screwdriver

2008-07-20T09:44:00.004-07:00

Rockler currently has their 4-in-1 screwdriver kit on sale for $5.99 so I grabbed a couple. I needed some screwdrivers for work anyway, and thought this would be a great chance to try turning one myself.

The handle is cherry, and the black lines were done by wire burning, a technique where a stiff piece of steel wire is held in a groove cut into the spinning workpiece. Hold the wire in the groove until it starts to smoke.

The hole for the shaft is made with a 5/8 spade bit on my craptastic drill press. The hole isn't perfectly straight, unfortunately. I really need a new drill press! The head of the unit shifts when pressed down into the cut causing an angled hole.

The finish is a 3# cut of amber shellac applied over some BLO (boiled linseed oil). I rubbed the shellac into the spinning handle on the lathe. Gave it a wonderful hand rubbed look.

If you get a chance, give one of these screwdrivers a try. Lots of fun and useful too!

The Mini Pencil Project

2008-07-13T07:56:00.006-07:00

I've begun creating "mini" pencils. 4 1/4" (including eraser) it is quite a bit smaller than the original PaperMate Write Bros pencil.

The mechanical pencil was disassembled and the barrel tossed. Using a very sharp bench chisel and just hand pressure I cut the mechanism down to 2 7/8". This also required shortening the leads by approx 1/4".

The barrel is made from purpleheart. I drilled a 1/4" hole through it and turned it on a standard pen turning mandrel. (1/4" hole fits the mandrels made to be used with 7mm brass tubes.) The barrel is 2 5/8" long.

The mechanism from most click-type mechanical pencils requires a small lip at the tip end of the barrel. I created that lip by gluing a tiny piece of 1/4" brass tubing into the tip. It is around 1/8" long, the longest I could make it and still have the threads of the mechanism protrude enough to catch the plastic tip from the original pencil.

The close up shows the piece of tubing used. Note that I used 1/4" tube NOT the standard 7mm tubing. 7mm tubing isn't narrow enough to stop the mechanism.

The finish on this one is just some CA glue slapped on with a small plastic baggie wrapped around my finger. No effort at properly finishing this pencil was made because I was in a hurry.

So no comments on the poor finish, OK?

The Write Bros pencils make perfect practice parts for experimentation because they are inexpensive and easily modified. They are not terribly durable since they're all plastic, but are still useful. And at approx 30c a piece, if one breaks, or I screw it up, I'm not going to cry.

The one pictured here was given to my 5 year old daughter. She loves it and has been using it heavily since I gave it to her. So far it's holding up well.

Better Pic of the Kingwood Pencil and the Shark photo studio!

2008-07-12T20:36:00.004-07:00

Now that I got my lighting back and functional, here's a better pic of the pencil shown in the previous post.

I've been asked about how I photograph my projects. When I think of it/am not too lazy/have batteries I use this rig.

It's a portable small item studio purchased at WalMart for $50. It includes two color corrected incandescent "hot" lights, the tent, blue and gray backgrounds, a little tripod, and a carrying case.

I also have a handheld strobe attached to the PC socket in my Kodak Z7590 digicam. The camera is held by a really REALLY old Graflex tripod.

In the photo is a roll of shipping tape. I use that as a lint catcher because there's always dust and lint and crap that settles on the background cloth. Adhesive tape is the easiest way to remove it on the spot.

Kingwood Pencil

2008-07-10T17:39:00.005-07:00

The second and third pens I've turned. On the left is a "learning experience". It started out as ebony, but I had such trouble turning it I ended up with a huge blowout. I repaired it by cutting off the blown out part and gluing a block of padauk onto the barrel.

It worked OK but I had real issues with the CA glue finish. On the padauk it went wonderfully. On this ebony/padauk pen it bunched and blobbed and did things that didn't happen to me the first time.

Sigh.

For the kingwood pencil, however, I changed my finish. Instead of the CA glue, I used 10 coats of shellac. A 1 lb cut applied to the spinning blanks with an old cotton sock gave an amazing finish. No ridges, no bumps, no blobs, nothing but smooth shine.

The hardware kit is a click pencil in black enamel. I'm curious about the durability of the black finish. I love how it looks right now, so I'm hoping it wears well.

We'll see.

I just picked up some 1/4" (7mm nearly) brass tubes from Hobby Lobby. Two 12" tubes for $3.47. I also picked up some other goodies I'll talk about later.

The tubes are for me to make my own barrels for some existing mechanical pencils I have. Classic Pentel drafting pencils, and some inexpensive all plastic pencils. I'd also like to make replacements for the housings of some of my favorite gel pens. I haven't decided how to do that yet, so stay tuned!

First Pen Turning

2008-07-06T12:52:00.005-07:00

I finally got my hands on the tool accessories needed to turn a pen(cil). So using a scrap cutoff of padauk, I went to town and made this beautiful padauk mechanical pencil, with gold plated trim and a black stripe on the clip.

Wait, what accessories were needed?

Aside from the obvious (lathe, turning chisels, drill press, wood), the following are absolutely necessary:

Pen mandrel to fit your lathe.
Pen kit.

Yep. That's it. The mandrel is $9.99 at Woodcraft Item 141469. Pen kits are around $5 at all the usual vendors. I got a pencil kit at Woodcraft.

Another thing you may find useful is a barrel trimmer. this squares the end of the turning blank to the newly inserted brass tube. Keeps things neat and tidy. Mine was $20 at Woodcraft. All that is left is to make the pencil!

I took a scrap piece of padauk and cut it into 4" sections. Two of those sections I put into the drill press and put a 7mm hole through them to hold the brass tubes. I then pressed the tubes into the wood with a drop of CA glue ("super glue") to hold it together.

Then I mounted the whole thing on the turning mandrel with a bushing on either end, and one in the middle between the blanks.

After tightening things up and mounting the mandrel to the lathe I was ready to turn.

Too bad my craptastic Harbor Freight lathe wasn't compatible with the mandrel! I knew it had a "morse taper #2" fitting. But it didn't occur to me to check that the fitting was in the headstock... The part that turns. The fitting is only in the tailstock in the cheap 40" lathe. The tailstock doesn't turn, so the mandrel wouldn't turn. I had to find a way to get the mandrel MT2 base into the headstock.

I had a faceplate that was separated from a mug I made that I hadn't cleaned up yet. There was enough meat on the wood there to carve out a MT2 hole for my mandrel to rest in.

Once it was carved out, the arbor fit nicely. My live tailstock (a MT2 spinner) was tightened snugly into the dimple on the end of the mandrel and I fired up the lathe.

It worked perfectly!

All that was left was to start cutting the wood! I started off gently removing wood because of the thin diameter of the mandrel. I was afraid it would start bowing under any pressure. It turns out that my fears were unfounded. It's very rigid and does not bow under normal cutting pressure.

The pen blanks were turned with a 5/8" spindle gouge and finished with a 3/4" skew chisel. I got such a great finish I was able to sand starting at 600 grit! A pass at 600 and a pass at 2000 got me a nearly mirror finish all by themselves. I then applied some thick CA glue for a finish.

If you're applying super glue for a finish, don't worry about slopping it on the bushings and such. The pieces will pop right apart and the CA glue will be removed the next turning session.

I got the blanks out and started assembling the pencil. The package for the pencil kit didn't explain what parts went where. It took some trial and error to get things where they belonged. I'm sure once I've done a few of these the positioning will make sense. Until then, I'll have to pay extra attention to the order the pieces are assembled.

As you can see, the results were awesome! I'm really happy and want to make more! Lots more! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Better Turning?

2008-06-21T20:42:00.007-07:00

Time to be fair. Harbor Freight's turning chisels probably wouldn't have bent and broken as shown in the previous entry if I had the experience to know that:

They were not sharpened properly- The tools had several angles ground into them creating a convex shape. Properly sharpened tools are straight or concave (slightly hollow). This allows proper use of the bevel when cutting.
I was applying the tool incorrectly- I did not use the tools properly because from the beginning they were not ground properly (see above). So when I was attempting to sharpen them, I was not achieving anything other than to duplicate the way they arrived. This led to me failing to "ride the bevel". I was using all the tools as scrapers instead of cutting tools. That led to catches, shattering handles, bent tools, etc.

I really wish I had taken pics of the tool tips as they arrived. But these being my first set of tools, I had no idea they were anything other than acceptable.

Watching some video and reading some books led me to my first revelation: Sharpening. I was sharpening the tools very poorly, adding facets and a convex shape to the bevel. A very quick and dirty jig for my grinder changed that.

It's made from 3/4 MDF, glue and screws. The angle of the bed is easily adjustable by loosening a screw and moving the bed. A protractor of some kind is still needed to get any repeatability, but I find that setting the bed with the tool against the stone works as long as the bevel angle is trustworthy.

Light touches, and a cup of water nearby keep from blueing the carbon steel. I have in my budget to buy proper tools soon made from HSS and much more substantial than these flimsy little guys.

My second revelation came when I discovered cutting angles. Having the tool at right angles to the spinning workpiece is rarely the proper orientation. I found that cutting from side to side makes a world of difference. As does riding the bevel. The wood practically just falls off the workpiece when I find the sweet angle for that cut.

I'm still learning and making mistakes. That's cool. I'm having a blast anyway!

Here are a couple things that have come off my lathe:

The mug in the rear is made of laminated maple. That was done purely with my poor sharpening and tool control techniques. Good results, but took way longer than it should have.

The mug in the front is padauk and some kind of yellow wood veneer between the laminated layers. I started it with the poor technique, with it taking even longer than the maple one due to padauk's toughness. But the lessons learned were applied to it at the end, and even the padauk came slicing off with ease using properly sharpened tools and good technique.

The tool handle is cocobolo. Talk about a difficult wood to cut. I was at the grinder ever 2 minutes or so. The coco would dull the tools faster than anything I've cut so far. But it has an amazing grain and looks outstanding.

The play between the sapwood and heartwood is beautiful. The photos don't really do it justice, which is too bad. It is finished with just beeswax applied on the lathe. The ferrule is just a copper 3/4" plumbing coupler from Lowe's. 75c each. I ground it down a bit shorter than it was originally. I still need to polish it. The thing is just stuck on there for now to get a feel for how it will look completed. I added the little details at the front of the handle to give me a tactile warning when I'm choking up really high. Keeps me from having to look at my hands when turning, I know exactly where they are now.

I haven't decided which turning chisel to award this beauty to.

Dangerous Harbor Freight Tools

2008-05-27T05:30:00.002-07:00

No, this won't be a comprehensive list, or even an attempt at one. Instead, I'm going to show you some photos of Harbor Freights least expensive turning chisels. I grabbed a set of these because they were $10. I figured: carbon steel, poor grinding. I can regrind the chisels, as well as hone frequently because of the carbon steel.

Little did I know just how dangerous these are.

The chisels bent under normal use. Yes, bent. Right at the tool rest. Especially if because of the turning I can't get the rest right up against the workpiece. The tang that goes into the handle is just a thin, pointed bit of steel. (Sorry, forgot to snap a pic of that. If you want to see it, ask.) It bent easily on the large roughing gouge because the body of the tool was too substantial to bend at the rest.

The more dangerous item was the shattering handle. It shattered and sent the parting tool that was mounted into it flying across the garage. I still haven't found it, though I heard it wizzing past my ear when it launched.

Avoid the HF cheap turning tools if you value your life and health!

My First Handtool Project!

2008-05-22T11:21:00.002-07:00

I'd been playing around with my Stanley Bailey #5 plane but never really did anything with it. Power tools are so convenient there was no real "need" to use anything else.

Last weekend I decided I needed a small assembly/finishing table made from a spare kitchen cabinet I had. I used scrap 2" thick pine from other projects to make the top. I used the jointer on the edges, glued 'em up, then looked at it closely. The wood was all different thicknesses (from different sources), and needed flattening. I initially reached for my belt sander then realized this was an ideal time to try hand tools on a real project.

I sharpened the blade on my #5 and went to town. The process was actually really fast, only taking an hour or so to level the top. Which was good because my shoulders couldn't have taken much more, heh. The pile of curly shavings around my feet was substantial! But nothing was in the air as with a sander, and I was able to work when the family was asleep upstairs.

The first few minutes was spent tweaking the blade to get a smooth cut without leaving gouges in the wood. Easily done, and no other issues except those ugly knots you see in the photos. They were brutal when planing into them. I had to move *very* slowly when I got to them which killed the groove I was in each time I got to one. But even the knots succumbed eventually!

I cleaned up the tool marks (mostly) with a card scraper. That tool I use frequently, so it only took a couple minutes to get the surface smooth to the touch.

I love working with the plane, and will be looking for more planes so I can do more without power tools.

Small Crosscut Sled

2008-05-18T09:47:00.005-07:00

A crosscut sled is an improvement to the design of the typical table saw. It allows the "table" to slide over the spinning blade, taking the workpiece with it, rather than sliding the workpiece itself over the blade. It also provides a convenient place to mount stop blocks, T-track, and other gadgets, if so desired.

This allows for a safer and more accurate cut, especially on small pieces. No more needing to hold your hands close to the sharp blade, trying to control kickback, or needing a Rube Goldberg-esque configuration of blocks, clamps, featherboards, and fences.

First I cut a scrap of 3/4" birch cabinet ply from the BORG. It is only 5 ply, but works fine for many uses. I didn't measure the base of the sled, but it is around 30" x 18". For a sled the exact measurements aren't as important as squaring it to the blade is.

I next cut some 1/2"x4" reclaimed oak boards to make the front and rear fences. I like to use reclaimed wood whenever possible. Partly for cost and partly to preserve the good wood on the market for a little longer. These boards had some embedded nails that could not be removed. So I cut them out on the table saw, leaving several shorter boards. Two were more than long enough so I cut them to match the base.

I jointed them on my 4" Rockwell jointer, making sure the unfinished face and the bottom were exactly 90*. The bottom will be glued to the base, and the face will control the workpieces. I used a homemade pushblock for the face jointing. It is just a scrap of plywood with some rubber shelf liner stuff attached with spray adhesive. No fancy handles. Just enough to keep control of the workpiece.

Once the oak boards were jointed, I checked for square on the sled. My digital angle gauge is perfectly square, and makes for a convenient square when I'm too lazy to walk across the garage to get a "real" square. If the fence on the jointer is square, the workpiece will be too. And this jointer is perfectly square.

I cut some thin strips of oak 3/4" wide to use as rails. I placed these in the slots on the table saw and used shims to raise them just proud of the table saw surface. I then set my fence to fit the sled base so the blade is centered. A square table saw fence will also ensure the front and rear edges of the base are also square to the blade. This is critical because those edges will set the alignment of the fences!

I applied glue to the rails and clamped the base down to the table saw. I was unable to get a clamp on the front left corner so I piled a bunch of weight on that corner. Surprisingly it worked well!

After the glue dried I trimmed the rails to fit and tested the glide. As is normal, the glide is too tight. I used a cabinet scraper to pare down the rails until they would slide in the slots on the table saw with just a medium amount of force. I want the fit tight because once the rails are waxed it's perfect.

I had debated about using mechanical fasteners to hold the fences on, as I have for my previous sleds. I decided against them because they would add complexity without much strength. For a sled this size there is no need for screws.

I set the boards on the sled base again and drew lines so I could easily tell how wide to make the glue on the base. I then applied a nice even layer of glue to both the sled base and the rail, one rail at a time. Several clamps hold it together to dry.

Check the square several times throughout the process. The clamps will often draw the fence one way or another (a good argument for "parallel clamps" that don't do this) and require adjusting. Small position adjustments will usually resolve any angle issues.

Once both rails have been glued and allowed to fully dry, use a card scraper to clean up any glue. Especially on the inside of the sled. Bumps of glue squeeze-out will throw off the perfect square you are going for!

Now is the time to apply wax to the rails. If you haven't waxed your table saw lately, this would be a good excuse to get that done too.

Smear the wax on liberally and allow to dry 5 minutes. Then buff with a clean cloth. I prefer microfiber cloths for both tasks, but any soft cloth will work just fine.

Check the glide again on the table saw. There should be zero side to side play, yet the sled should move smoothly the entire length of the saw surface with just a push from your pinkie finger. Feel free to scrape the rails a bit more and re-wax if needed.

Check your saw blade is a good one for plywood or laminate so you don't get any tearout when cutting the initial kerf. I forgot to check when building this sled, so I got some tearout from using a 24 tooth ripping blade. It may not be critical, depending on the location of the tearout. Luckily for me the tearout was in the middle of the sled, not at the fence.

Sneak up on the cut, moving the blade up just 1/8" of an inch at a time until the kerf is exposed in the sled bottom. Don't worry about making kerf cuts up into the fences. You'll do that automatically when you start cutting workpieces with the sled. Right now you just want a clean kerf to begin with.

Take your time, moving the sled over the blade slowly. There are no awards for speed, and you will just risk tearout of the plywood or fences.

Check that the rear fence is square to the blade. Use your square (a real one this time) and hold the edge to the face of the blade, not the cutting tips. If it is not square you'll have to cut it apart and start over. But if you followed these instructions, you should have a rear fence that is perfectly square to the blade. Do some test cuts to confirm.

At this point you can either be done and call it good, or apply a finish. For small "throwaway" sleds like this it really doesn't matter. the bed of the sled will be chewed up before the wood surface shows any signs of wear. So a finish will be just for appearances. My reclaimed oak boards had a poly finish on one side, I didn't apply one. And I saw no need to remove it either. On some of my sleds I apply two coats of shellac, especially if they're made from MDF to provide some moisture protection. Like, in case I spill coffee/tea/kool-aid on it.

But I'm perfect and would NEVER do THAT!

The Carver's Mallet Part 2

2008-05-13T11:52:00.002-07:00

The Carver's Mallet Part 1

In Part 1 I talked about making the handle from curly maple and fastening it to 3 layers of cross grain laminated wood.

Now I'm adding the rest of the laminated layers to the mallet and turning the assembly on the router.

As mentioned before, the head of the mallet is made from laminated 1/4" wood, oak and padauk. I had enough scrap 1/4" wood to make it a total of 14 layers. 10 oak and 4 padauk. The bottom three layers attached to the handle and then I stacked the rest on that, gluing up 3 at a time because even that many gets squirrelly when clamping the freshly glued wood together.

The photo above is the final clamping of the entire assembly. Those Harbor Freight bar clamps fit perfectly into the 3/4" holes in my clamping table.

I quickly made a jig from particle board to hold the mallet at an angle over my router. This idea came from an article in one of the wood magazines (I forget which one). The idea is to be able to rotate the mallet over the router bit to give it a smooth face at the correct angle. I wasn't confident enough in my turning skills to use the lathe on end grain oak, so I wanted to use the router.

It was a mistake.

Several times the router grabbed the piece out of my hands, chewed it up, and spit it back at me. I'm glad I was wearing goggles!

I finally gave up on the router and put it on the lathe. I gave my turning chisels a fresh hone, held my breath and started cutting.

Not bad! Not bad at all! Some tearout on the oak end grain, but overall a good turn. I'm very comfortable with the end result. Too bad I had done so much damage to the head already with the router. Otherwise I'd be able to say it was perfect. As it its, the mallet is just ok. There is no finish on the mallet. Just 2 coats of Butcher's wax. The photos were taken before the wax was applied. That shine is from good cuts alone!

Not really. It's from sanding down to 2000 grit. =D

This is a small mallet. I am planning to take what I've learned and turn a larger one with maple for the head.

The photos here show the damage, the turning on the lathe, and the final finish photos.

I hope this helps inspire you to try your hand at crafting your own mallets! It's satisfying picking up a tool that I've made myself!

The Carver's Mallet Part 1

2008-05-12T19:29:00.004-07:00

I decided to do something semi-serious on the lathe for once, instead of turning 2x4 pine into a pile of shavings.

I got tired of using a rubber mallet to strike my chisels when I needed to use them. The balance was horrible, and the thing had too much weight and mass to be easily controlled.

What a perfect project then, to make a carver's mallet from the scraps I had around the garage/shop.

First I face jointed a pair of 1x3" (3/4 x 2 1/2") scraps of curly maple. Beautiful figure on this wood! I glued and clamped them into a 2 1/2" x 9" turning blank.

On the lathe I roughed out the shape with my Harbor Freight turning tools. I had a good idea in my head of what shape I wanted, and as I was turning I kept grabbing the handle to fit it to my hand.

Once done, I mounted it into 3 laminated pieces of 1/4" wood: one of padauk and 2 of oak, all with alternating grain directions. I mounted it by cutting a hole in the laminated wood so the handle taper is a press-fit. I cut a kerf in the end of the maple handle so it could be wedged into place. I used a scrap of purpleheart I had for the wedge.

I flush cut the wedge, jointed the face of the laminated wood/handle assembly and moved on to building up the rest of the head.

More next time!

(The Carver's Mallet Part 2)

The Crapstone

2008-05-11T11:18:00.004-07:00

Chisels, turning tools, etc, all need sharpening. Usually fresh out of the box.

To completely remake an edge, my bench grinder gets the right shape going, and for repeated honing I have a fine diamond tool. But what about in-between? What to use after the grinder, but before the diamond hone?
I picked up a cheap "Sharpening Stone" from Harbor Freight. This thing is NOT one of their "gems". At 99c (with a coupon) it was still too expensive.

The stone, Item #07345, is labeled as "Superior Wear-Resistant Stone Sharpens Quickly, Evenly And Efficiently To Give You Sharper, Safer Edges" (poor capitalization theirs). It's crap.

The sharpening material dissolves with sharpening oil! Running a tool across it quickly removes the gray material exposing the white core sandstone.

Yes, sandstone.

The gray material is just a thin coating on top of a sandstone brick. Ugh.

I got one use out of this tool, sharpening my 3 chisels, before I had to toss it.

So a word to the wise: Spend the money and get a quality stone. Oilstone, waterstone, whatever. Just avoid this useless waste of space.

Card Scrapers - Why you want to use 'em!

2008-05-03T12:16:00.003-07:00

A while back I was going nuts. I usually love sanding as part of woodworking, but I was extremely frustrated trying to sand a purpleheart inlay flush with a maple binder. The purpleheart was just so dense it was taking forever!

A post over on Woodnet got someone suggesting getting a card scraper to get that purpleheart flush. I'd been wanting one, but never had a need for it. Until that day.

I bought a set for $20 with 4 different scrapers, and dropped another $20 on a burnishing rod.

After playing with them and learning how to sharpen a card scraper, I discovered something: They make the wood SMOOOOOOOOTH!!!

Not just dense woods, but even pine is given a nice treatment with the scrapers!

I'm not going to give step-by-step instructions on how to sharpen or use a card scraper. There are plenty of sites out there for that. Google it up.

What I will tell you is that this is absolutely something you want to learn. Properly sharpened and used, a card scraper will create a smoother surface than most power tools, and smoother than you can get wood with sandpaper (without burnishing it and hurting the woods ability to absorb stain).

Plus you have much more control over the tool than you do with a thickness or surface planer. You can remove material in a very precise manner, getting just the area you want, and leaving the rest untouched.

The photos attached to this post are of some edge glued purpleheart I'm using to make a coffee grinder using one of the Rockler Coffee Mill mechanisms and the free plans they provide. I am scraping the glue as well as bringing the two pieces into a more perfect alignment. The second photo is of the shavings after just a few passes with a scraper. You want tiny fluffy curly shavings. Not dust. The scraper is more like a micro-planer and cuts instead of scrapes.

Using a card scraper will improve your woodworking and ease up on your use of sandpaper. Give one a shot! You don't have to buy the stuff I did either. Any bit of hardened steel can act as a burnishing rod, and individual cards are around $5.

Try one and see!

Black Desk, Part 3

2008-04-20T10:21:00.003-07:00

Black Desk, Part 1
Black Desk, Part 2

Now I get to start on the top of the desk. The original plan was to use the same plywood and maple as the bottom shelf, however plans change. Especially when I get my hands on a 7ft oak ply desktop!

The church I work at had torn down a desk made by the in-house cabinetmaker. The top was made from 3/4" oak ply with solid oak edging and birch ply reinforcement underneath. It's heavy, sturdy, and best of all: Pre made!

I trimmed it to the 74" length I needed for the desk with a circular saw. I then spread CitruStrip on to remove the varnish. Scraped with a plastic scraper an hour or so later, then wiped down with mineral spirits to remove any trace of the stripper.

I let it dry overnight then started applying the Minwax Water Based Wood Stain in Onyx. On the underside I only applied one coat. Just enough to darken the bright bare wood.

One note about this stain. It dries FAST! In 3 minutes or less here in Colorado. I was unable to stain the entire top in one pass because the stuff would dry before I could wipe it off. I had to do it in sections. I found stripes the length of the top to be most effective in masking the overlapping sections.

I applied the stain in 6 coats over the course of several days, as time permitted. Because the oak ply had been stained and varnished before, the stain didn't penetrate the same as fresh wood would have. It took 6 coats to get the ebonized look I was shooting for. There is some small amount of the original color showing through under just the right light, which adds to the look.

After the stain fully dried (read: when I finally got some more time to work on this), I began applying the varnish. I chose Deft Semi-Gloss Brushing Lacquer because I'm addicted to the smell of lacquer. NOT! The stuff is brutal! I had to open the garage door all the way and use a respirator to put the stuff on. And the smell still permeated the house.

But it gave me the finish I wanted. Because I was going for a satin look over a solid black desk I wanted the look a solid semi-gloss finish would give. It was the closest to the dresser I had already purchased for him that I could get. Normally I would use a gloss finish for all coats except the final one, only then applying a semi-gloss. That does the best job of preserving the color and beauty of wood. But this wood is black. There is no color.

I've gotta say that I really like the way this stuff flows out when it's brushed on. Hardly a trace of brush marks throughout the desk. And with 6 coats (yep, six!), I expected to need to sand it down pretty heavily. But it was unnecessary since there were no brush marks to have to sand down!

My box fan with a furnace filter did a terrific job keeping the dust from landing on the wet finish. No bits or bumps to deal with.

The finish also flowed nicely into the oak's grain, allowing the texture of the wood to show.

I'm happy with the results. I just wish I could keep the odor from getting into my house. I think I'm going to have to stick with the less nasty finishes like shellac and poly in the future.

After the 6 coats were applied over a full Saturday, I let it cure overnight in case there were any thick areas that needed extra time to harden. I doubt it, but better safe than sorry.

So this morning I got my son to help me carry it into his bedroom and install it under his bunk bed. The layout of his room precluded a full shot of the bed with the desk underneath. And, honestly, it's a teenager's room. You really don't want to see any more than I'm showing!!

I had drilled pocket holes in the leg frames with a Kreg drill bit, and these were used with Kreg 1" Fine pocket hole screws to fasten the top to the legs. I also put some felt pads at the top of the legs to keep the top from loosening and rattling on the legs over time.

Once everything was installed and tested by my son and I laying on it (I'm not skinny either), I put his lamp on the end and took some final pics.
My son is really happy with the results, as am I. I love how everything turned out and suspect he'll be using this desk for a long time.

Soon he'll have his computer, some shelves, and piles of crap all over the thing.

He is a teenager, after all.

Black Desk, Part 2

2008-04-03T17:57:00.004-07:00

Black Desk, Part 1
Black Desk, Part 3

Just a minor update here.

I got a detail shot of the leg "carving" with the two coats of Minwax Waterbased Stain in Onyx. I didn't realize there was so much dust on there when I took the photo, sorry.

The white wood is some 3/4" x 1 1/2" curly maple. I found that maple at Lowe's in the common maple rack. I need to go back and find another one for trimming the top of the desk. They only had one in the entire rack.

It is attached with 8 1/4" dowels, and a small bead of glue along the length along with the glue in the dowel holes.

I have found that the use of dowels signifigantly improves the strength of the joint, in addition to making alignment much simpler. While I don't doubt that a biscuit joiner would also make the alignment simple, there is a massive price difference.

Dowel Centers: $2 for 10
1/4" dowel: Free if I cut my own with a plug cutter, or 40c for two feet.
1/4" drill bit: Comes in every set of drill bits I've ever purchased. So I have plenty.

This last photo is the maple clamped to the bottom shelf. The clamps were more for drawing the dowels into the holes than for actual clamping. But I'll take the clamping as a bonus!

Once this is dry, I'll put some pieces on the sides of the shelves, then I'll apply the finish.

Black Desk, Part 1

2008-03-30T20:11:00.005-07:00

Black Desk, Part 2
Black Desk, Part 3

"Emo"? "Goth"? "Death Rocker"? What name do the kids with pale skin and black clothes go by now? Bleh. Can't keep it straight.

My 16 year old son, however, just likes black stuff. Especially with an asian twist. Can't help with the asian thing (I bought his dresser because of the asian styling), but I can go with black.

We picked up a bunkbed for him from AFW. It came with a little desk underneath. The desk was a piece of crap that broke during assembly. It was too small anyway, so we decided to make a desk the full length of the bed. So basically the bed and desk are the same size, bed on top, desk on the bottom.

We needed to do this on the cheap, so dimensional lumber from Lowe's is the material. $1.80 2x4's for the legs, and 1x2's for the framing. I usually like working with construction lumber, but not this time. I don't know if I didn't wait long enough to use it (I jointed and planed the 2x4's 3 weeks before milling for the legs) or if it was just craptacular wood. In addition to this, the 1x2's were made of friggin styrofoam or something. They virtually disintegrated when machined in any fashion. They splintered, chipped, cracked, etc, to the point where I gave up trying to improve the crap. It'll all be hidden anyway, so I've just got it as nice as possible then left it alone.

Whatever the reason, this became more of a challenge than I am used to.

Because of the expected abuse this desk will take (it is going into a teen's room, remember?) I wanted mass in the legs. So I doubled up the jointed and planed 2x4's. Rolled on the glue and used lots of clamps. This took forever because I only have enough clamps for one leg at a time. Glue, clamp, wait 2 hours. Glue, clamp, wait 2 hours.Glue, clamp, wait 2 hours.Glue, clamp, wait 2 hours.

The problem was I got some checking while the glue was drying. I couldn't believe it! I was furious. Stupid construction lumber.

Sigh.

Luckily, the ends of the legs will be hidden by the desk top and the floor. As long as the checks stay within the end grain, I'll be OK!

I trimmed to final length (29") and started on the design. First I used a 1/8" kerf saw blade to cut two lines around the bottom of the leg. This was a simple task with the crosscut sled. I just clamped a block at the distance to the first line, cut the kerf on all four sides of the leg, and repeated for all four legs. I then moved the block a little over an inch and repeated. Sanding was accomplished with 150 grit paper folded over a ruler.

I also wanted some vertical designs on just the front legs. So, thanks to the inspiration I received from a member of Woodnet's forums, I slapped together a jig to guide my router in cutting some tapered coves in the front of the two visible legs.

I basically used a strip of plywood, cut it in half, then cut a 3/8" piece off each half. Those acted to separate the two halves when glued together, creating a template for my router.

I used a 1/2" cove bit with a 1/4" shaft, and my 1/4" Porter Cable guide bushing.

A note about the PC bushings. If they're nickel plated, they're crap. The @#$%%^ nut will NOT stay locked in place. I bought a Woodcraft branded brass 1/2" one that stays tight with no problems. Porter Cable really REALLY needs to address this. I'm not the only one with problems with the silver bushing sets. In fact, it seems to be nearly common knowledge among the more experienced woodworkers online.

I made one cove shorter than the other by clamping a wrench across the opening to the jig, causing the router to stop sooner. This gave a little variety to the otherwise geometric designs in the legs.

When routing the coves, I had to fill in the middle because the coves were larger than my bit. But the 1/2" one was all that I could fit in the opening of the jig. So the effort was spent cleaning out the bottom of the cove with multiple router passes instead of coming up with a mickey mouse method of getting a larger bit into the jig, or redesigning the jig.

The taper was accomplished by sticking a piece of wood under one end of the jig, raising it up 3/8" or so. I set the bit depth so it took out less than 1/8" of the leg at the top, but a full 1/2" at the bottom. Because the cove bit cuts deeper, it also cuts wider at the bottom, giving even more interest to the design. This is the first time I've tried varying the depth of a cove like this, and I'm happy with the results.

The legs were attached with 1x2's using glue and pocket screws. The construction grade 1x2's were complete crap. Splintered and cracked at any opportunity. And it considered dirty looks opportunity enough!

I only attached 3 sides because the desk top and shelf will hold them together much better than these shitty 1x2's.

Once glued and screwed, and the glue scraped off I cleaned up the garage to make room to finish the legs. Because I'm going to have to make this a knock-down piece of furniture, I needed to make sure the normally hidden surfaces were stained. So the bottom got stained first. I used Minwax's water based stain in Onyx.

We did lots of tests with different "black" or "ebonizing" stains on pine and birch along with different final finishes. We ended up with the Minwax stain applied in two long-soaking coats, followed by 3 coats of water based poly. For the appearance checks I just used some rattle-can Minwax crap I happened to have. I'll find a better WB poly to use for the final finish next weekend.

The last photo was after the first coat of the onyx. It shows grain and even knots nicely, while keeping the feeling of a naturally black wood. The depth of the color will really come out when the second coat is shown and the poly applied. But before the poly, there will be an added detail that I'll show in the next installment.

Buying Tools Online - Craigslist, etc.

2008-03-19T09:50:00.002-07:00

Yesterday I picked up a bench grinder for dirt cheap from CL. The seller said it worked fine, and the price was right. When I went to pick it up the only thing I checked was bearing play. I was pretty unconcerned with electrical issues since I can repair most of those. No play was detectable to my hand so I took it.

I got it home and discovered there was no way the seller could have used the thing. Probably ever. The crimp on the spade connector to the switch wasn't tight, and the grinder would not turn on. No biggie, new connector properly crimped, and it works beautifully.

At the end of this minor adventure, I realized I should document the thought process I went through.

I knew going in that a cheap tool WILL have flaws. Regardless of the story given by the seller. So how to minimize the risk is the real challenge.

For the above mentioned grinder, I decided before going in that the most difficult thing to repair FOR ME would be bearings. Wheels are cheap (and would probably be replaced anyway), electrical is easy to me, even a motor can be replaced if absolutely necessary. But bearings would be the hardest thing to me and absolutely a deal breaker. Grinders are cheap enough new that I wouldn't even take a free one with bad bearings.

So when I got there, and the seller wasn't in a hurry to plug it in and show me that it worked, I just did a wiggle check and spin check on the bearings. They felt good so I paid and left.

When I bought the tablesaw and jointer combo last year, bearings and gears were my main concerns. I knew it was rusty, but surface rust repair was within my reach. The guts were nice, only the bare cast iron surfaces were rusty.

So pick the 'deal breaker' problem(s) and stick to your guns. If you can press bearings all day long, but electrical wiring is a mystery to you, find the stuff with good electrics and bad bearings. If all you are comfortable with is painting, then find the uglies with layers of klown paint and make them purdy.

There are deals out there, but what's a deal to me may not be a deal to you.

Taming the Wild Remotes

2008-03-08T21:11:00.013-08:00

When I was writing my review of the Harbor Freight Cen-Tech Digital Angle Gauge I realized I hadn't really used it for anything other than setting my tools to 90 degrees. So I took a quick survey of what wood supplies I had in the garage.

Hmmm... I have a few boards of purpleheart, some "hobby wood" curly maple boards from Lowes, some scraps of poplar, a bunch of redwood... I got nuttin'.

As I walked into my bathroom I found my wife had used some fugly light blue plastic drinking cups to put Q-tips in. *MY* bathroom! The horror! I realized then I had to make me a Q-tip holder that would look nice in my bathroom on my redwood shelving. But I really didn't want to make it out of redwood. That wood is so brittle I cringed at the thought of getting accurate angles without splintering.

But 1/4" maple with some purpleheart strips would be nice! And a perfect use for my angle gauge!

I decided on a hexagon shape, using six strips of purpleheart cut with a pair of 60* angles on the long sides and 1 1/2" strips of curly maple.

I first cut the purpleheart using a scrap of wood for a pushblock and the blade set to 60*. I got that 60* setting by dividing the number of degrees in a circle, 360, by the number of sides in my project, 6. 360 / 6 = 60. The cuts were made with my Delta/Leitz 24 tooth rip blade. That blade leaves such beautiful cuts...

That was easy enough. But the maple cuts weren't. I have a large crosscut sled I made for making some table miters when I first got this saw. But it is really unwieldy when using for small parts. So I had to make a small 48" x 24" crosscut sled. No construction pics, but it's 3/4 MDF with doubled up 1/2" birch ply for the handles. Simple, sturdy, and accurate. It also makes me feel MUCH more comfortable cutting small parts on the table saw. Especially using the David Marks trick of a pencil eraser as a hold down.

NOTE: When using a stop block with a crosscut sled, you MUST hold down the piece between the block and the saw blade. Kickbacks are fierce when a piece gets wedged in there. Ask me how I know...

Back to the original project. I cut the maple so the curls ran vertical and the grain horizontal. This gave me less splintering in the curly maple when using a card scraper. But it also increased the risk of grain separation because I was scraping across the grain. I don't know that either orientation would be easy. But I liked the appearance of the vertical ripples.

The maple was 3 x 2 1/2". I cut six identical pieces with the crosscut sled and a stop block. (This is where I learned about holding down the piece between the blade and the stop block!)

I set up my router table with a 1/4" straight bit, set 1/8" high with the fence 1/4" from the front of the cut. This gave me a 1/4" x 1/8" rabbet to set the bottom of the cup into. I ran all the maple as well as the purpleheart through the router.

I placed two strips of blue masking tape, sticky side up, on my bench. I then clamped a straight edge to the bench a little ways below. The straight edge was the register for my parts to keep them aligned and give me a cup that is square to the world.

Once I was happy with the alignment, lack of gaps, and the test fit went well, I brushed Titebond II on all the joints and rolled it up. The overlaps of tape held it together and acted as a clamp. No strap clamp needed on such a small piece. I left it to dry overnight.

The next day I set up my sled again to trim the proud bits of purpleheart. The sled really came into its own for this part since I needed to make 6 identical cuts.

I used my cabinet scraper to clean up the outside of the cup and ease the edges, gently rounding the joints between the maple and purpleheart.

To fit the bottom I used a scrap of 1/4" poplar with the outside of the cup traced to it. I rough cut it on the bandsaw then used 60 grit sandpaper to fit in the rabbet around the bottom of the cut. Once it fit I used a cabinetmaker's triangle to mark the correct orientation then set it aside.

I sealed the inside of the cup and the bottom as separate pieces with some Zissner SealCoat. I'm trying to use this stuff up before it goes bad. It's the same stuff I put on the crosscut sled I made during this project. I don't like how it looks compared to "real" shellac, so I use it in places that aren't seen, or I don't care how it looks. I have started mixing my own shellac from flakes distributed by Hock Finishes and denatured alcohol. The lensing effect of the home mixed shellac is far superior to that of any of the canned finishes I've tried so far!

After two coats of the Seal Coat had been applied and dry, I applied self adhesive felt to the inside surface of the bottom and the inside of the cup.

Yes. It's red. So sue me.

This self adhesive felt is available at WalMart for around a buck for an 8x10" sheet. It took about 3/4 of a sheet for this project. And it was my last sheet of any color (that's why I used red). I need to stock up again.

Once the adhesive had a chance to become permanent, I trimmed around the rabbet and lip of the cup with an X-Acto knife. I double checked the fit of the bottom. It fit a bit proud, as I expected because of the felt. I brushed on the glue and clamped it for an hour.

Finally, I hit the bottom with my belt sander to make the bottom flush with the sides and applied 2 coats (so far... more to come tomorrow) of my home mixed shellac in a 3 pound cut. I brought it inside to hopefully harden completely before tomorrow morning so I can smooth the finish with some 400 grit paper and apply 2 more coats.

While I was sitting in my chair holding it and admiring (we all do that right? I'm not crazy? Hello? Anybody?), I realized I had made it too big for Q-tips. I'd have to have a full package in there all the time. Ugh. So I set it on my purpleheart and maple side table (noticing a trend?) and picked up a Lee Valley catalog to let my mind wander for a few minutes.

My 4 year old daughter came up and dropped a remote in it. "Nice, Daddy! A new remote holder!" She ran off to do whatever 4 year old girls do when they run off.

I, on the other hand, was stunned. Why the !@#%@$^# hadn't I thought of that? The wife had been kvetching about the remotes for months. Somehow she thought getting Dish would mean only one remote.

I know, I know. What can I say? Don't your wives hate the remotes too?

Anyway, it now has a permanent place in the living room on my maple and purpleheart side table. At least it matches.

And I still have an ugly light blue plastic drinking cup in my bathroom. But now its mate has come down to hold Neosporin tubes.

Why can't she just stay out of the Guy's bathroom?

Harbor Freight Cen-Tech Digital Angle Gauge

2008-03-07T12:44:00.003-08:00

Cen-Tech Digital Angle Gauge
From Harbor Freight. Regular price $29.99, at the time of this writing it is on sale for $24.95!

I know, Wixey has the name for these little digital angle gauges. But the HF version works just fine.

It ships with the angle finder and an instruction sheet (I hesitate to call it a pamphlet) in a small white paper box.

It's pretty straightforward to use. Set it on your horizontal surface and turn it on. Give it a few seconds to settle on an angle then push the "Calibrate" button. The trick here is not to move the device while pushing the button. If you move it too much it will either be inaccurate or you'll get an "Err" on the display. Once you've calibrated it and it reads zero, put it on your blade or fence (my Rockwell 4" Jointer is in the photo). Give it a few seconds to settle then adjust your device a bit at a time. You have to let it catch up to your adjustments, so adjust slowly. Once you think you are set, wait a few more seconds to let the reading settle down. You may have to make another tiny adjustment at this point to nail your desired angle.

Once you're done, or you've got an "Err" on the display, press and hold the "On/Off" button for 5 seconds to turn the device off.

Not having owned a Wixey or other Digital Angle Gauge, I can't do a direct comparison. But the HF one is very accurate. It is sensitive to being picked up or moved too suddenly while it is turned on, resulting in the "Err" display, but rebooting the device takes care of the error.

It was definitely worth the $$.

Tips On Working with Redwood

2008-02-23T09:30:00.003-08:00

Now that I've completed a couple of projects with redwood, I thought I'd share what I've learned.

Power tools don't work
Especially if you choose redwood with any figure, planers and jointers will introduce chipping and tearout. Redwood is a brittle softwood, and does not respond well to high speed tools. Instead of a planer, use a hand plane. Instead of a jointer, use a table saw with a sharp blade.
Sanding Challenges
Redwood grain lines are much harder and denser than the wood in between. If you sand with a typical finish sander with a padded base, you will find the wood between the grain lines to sand down much more quickly than the grain lines themselves. After discovering this while making my floating shelves I had a decision to make. Do I want to try to get the shelves perfectly smooth or work with the grain. A test board smoothed out nicely with sandpaper attached to a shop made wooden sanding block. But I rather liked the slight raised pattern caused by the softer wood sanding down between the grain lines. So I ran with it.
Flat? Whassat?
I found that even BORG "S4S" (Surfaced Four Sides) redwood wasn't perfectly flat and straight. I chose my boards for figure and color first, then by what was flattest. Using a straight line ripping method (use Google, or wait for my write up sometime in the future on this technique) will get you one jointed edge. From there you'll have to decide whether to risk the tearout in a planer or use hand tools. I went the hand tool route...
Color
Redwood color can vary widely from a deep maroon to a light tan. While all heartwood will darken with age or exposure to sunlight, the pale sapwood will not. If you leave sapwood in your workpiece be mindful of the fact that it will stay pretty much the same color while the red heartwood darkens over time. Also, there are wide variations in the color of the heartwood. The wood at your store is usually adequately aged so you have a good idea of the color the wood is capable of and where it will end up after aging. Working the wood removes the darker aged color, and it can then be difficult to determine what the color will be. Choose your wood by color, and if you are purchasing different shades of heartwood at the same time, save working the wood until right before your project, and somehow mark the wood after it's been worked to keep the colors separate.
Finishing
I'll finish with finishing. I use shellac on redwood whenever possible. Shellac provides a better "lensing" of the highlights in redwood than poly. Many coats, sanding with 400 grit paper after every second coat, gives the best finish. On the floating shelves I had planned to use polyurethane because of the wet environment of a bathroom. But after seeing the results from the small shelf, making a test piece with the poly, and comparing them, I found the shellac to be MUCH nicer. Six coats, a couple coats of paste wax, and the shelves were ready.

I hope this helps you to explore redwood. The warm colors, distinctive grain, and specular highlights under shellac, all combine to provide you with a beautiful material for your next project.