Thursday, May 27th, 2010
Link to the MP3 File
Well, it was my birthday this week, so that means it’s also Splintered Board’s birthday. If you’re not following me, the original Splintered Board podcast began at the end of May, in 2008. I was very new to woodworking and was eager to show everyone my progress. I wanted to join the ranks of the Toolmonger podcast – my first ‘manly’ podcast subscription, Tommy MacDonald’s Rough Cut Show – my first woodworking podcast subscription, Marc Spagnuolo’s The Wood Whisperer, and Matt Vanderlist’s Matt’s basement workshop.
The show didn’t really catch on too quickly, and I still don’t see the number of subscribers/downloads that The Sawdust Chronicles has… In the first few months I received a lot of mail that I regarded as ‘hate mail’. It was very critical – to this day I still believe the emails to have been pretty critical – but I believe that these critics had my best interests at heart. Through social networking online, I’ve actually ended up cultivated pretty nice relationships with some of these guys.
And that’s probably one of the most reinforced lessons that I’ve learned about the online woodworking community, and even some of those that are never, and probably will never be, online – it’s that they are generally just really nice people. Sure, there are bad eggs in every group of people you meet, but even in the woodworking arena, the bad eggs are still pretty good.
Now, I’ve been getting a few correspondences about Splintered Board succumbing to the phenomenon that is now known as ‘pod fade’ . Hopefully every time I released a new episode, after being silent for a while, squashed those rumors or concerns. It turns out that I’ve been unbearably busy. So busy, in fact, that I’ve been doing very little woodworking. And, a low turnout of woodworking means a low turnout of woodworking podcasts. Sorry about that, but that’s just what happens when life gets in the way.
Again, addressing pod fade. I mentioned, on Twitter I believe, a few months ago that I might turn Splintered Board into a blog, but continue doing The Sawdust Chronicles. Well, The Sawdust Chronicles is definitely not going anywhere – in fact there are some great new surprises coming soon. The blog thing is still up in the air, but I think, for the most part, the podcast – Splintered Board – will remain silent except for the necessary podcasts.
What does that mean??? Well, it means that I have handshake obligations with Fox Chapel Publishing to review books, Micro Jig and Total Saw Solutions to demonstrate and use their products, and of course I’ll be involved in Woodworkers Safety Week each May. Plus, I’ll be podcasting about each woodworking project I complete, as they are completed.
The vast majority of shows will be video episodes from now on. I hope that gets people excited, I know I love doing video shows… But that also means that the post production time is longer, the episodes are shorter, and the time between podcasts will remain extended (especially since my output has been very sporadic over the past 12 months).
Another change is that I’m not going to promise to do one project per season. I think that was ambitious of me, and doable too, but things just aren’t working out with that, so I’m just going to fall back on doing things as I’m able to get to them.
Projects I have in mind are going to include another iteration of the X-Leg table, a possible weekend commission project, a bent lamination coat hanger, and a stack lamination Pizza Pie table. So there will be plenty of material to podcast to you in the future.
What have I learned in two years of woodworking podcasting? It’s a pretty tall order to list everything that I’ve learned, but I’ll give you some topics in no specific order: Microphones, Audio/Video Editing, Lighting for Videos, Tool and Shop Safety, Sharpening, Hand Tool Use and Maintenance, Power Tool Use and Selection, Dust Collection, Shop Layout, Scavenging for Materials, Relational Dimensioning, a little about Finishing, Versatility of the Tools You Own, Bargain Tool Hunting, Furniture Design, Period Furniture History, Lathe Use, Scraper Importance, Inlaying, Wood Bending, Wood Grain, Wood Figure, and much, much more.
Tags: birthday, fox chapel, marc spagnuolo, Matt Vanderlist, Micro Jig, projects, Rick Waters, tables, Tommy MacDonald, toolmonger, Tools, total saw solutions, wood, Woodworking
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Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
Hey everybody it’s Rick Waters for the Splintered Board Podcast. This 3rd annual Wood Workers’ Safety Week was organized by the ubiquitous Marc ‘The Wood Whisperer’ Spagnuolo.
In this episode I want to demonstrate something that MicroJig sent me last Fall. It’s their safety tool called the GRR-Ripper. I think the GRR-Ripper is one of the most safety-centric tools on the market today. Now everybody has push sticks or push blocks, but the GRR-Ripper protects your hands and give you a place to guard your fingers just by holding something that grabs your stock and pushes it through your tablesaw, jointer or router table. So in this safety video I’m going to be demonstrating a little bit on the use of the GRR-Ripper, but also, I wanna do a little bit of Where’s Waldo. I want you to be able to identify all of the safety hazards that you see in the different clips of me cutting the stock for a project that I’ll be doing this summer.
So here I’m frozen on a picture of the face of the GRR-Ripper and I’m showing you that because I want you to be able to see that there are 2 channels and 3 legs. What you see is the leg on the left which will grab the stock and provide balance for the tool; a leg in the middle which will stabilize the GRR-Ripper, and also grab the stock; finall the leg on the right serves as a thin wall that is attached to a handheld outside fence that also provides stabilization because it rides on the top of the table saw bed.
So, the reason you have these channels is so that the table saw blade itself can pass between two of the legs. If that’s confusing, it gets easier to understand when you see it in action. So, let’s go ahead and take a look at how this works.
OK, so hopefully you can see from this little demonstration that from my actions, I’m acting like I kind of don’t really know what I’m about to do, but I really want to cut something. So I turn on the table saw, I get the wood in place, but I don’t know where to put my hands… So, indecision is what I’m trying to show is a very unsafe thing to have around spinning or rotating blades. If you don’t have a plan ahead of time on what you are going to do with a tool, Stop, Turn the tool off, Sit down and come up with a clear plan. Come back to the tool and Execute. Never turn on a tool without clearly knowing what you are going to do.
OK, here’s another. You can see that the stock is giving me some trouble moving across the bed of the table saw. There are 2 really good reasons for that: The wood is a little damp – it’s been sitting in the garage after a particularly humid few days; Also, the table saw bed is not lubricated well – it hasn’t been used in months and is dry as a bone with dirt and debris all over it. Clear off your tablesaw top and lubricate it, hopefully with wax. The next segment will show that the table saw top is waxed and the stock glides very well. I just want you to know that the GRR-Rippers have nothing to do with this inability to move the stock, they are definitely doing their jobs as best they can.
Hopefully you noticed that when I first put the stock on the table, that it wasn’t being supported behind me. You’ll see that again at the end of the clip because it won’t be supported on the outfeed side either. Both of these are safety problems for heavy boards (which these are).
OK, here you see me forcing the board, just pouncing on it to get it moving. This is NEVER a good thing, please don’t ever do this. Even if you do have GRR-Rippers, what if the board suddenly gave way and as you pounced on it it flew forward? If you didn’t have very sure fotting, your arm or even your chest could land on the spinning blade. Never pounce on a board to get it to move. If anything, turn the tablesaw off, take off the stock, and lubricate the bed of the saw.
At least with this clip and the entire video, I have a couple of good things going for me: I’m wearing hearing protection and the dust collector is going.
The last criticism I have for this clip is something very basic to the procedures of using a table saw, and that is to push your stock completely free of the blade before turning it off. This is a habit that I’m trying to break, but haven’t completely gotten rid of yet.
One of the great elements of the Micro Jig GRR-Ripper is that you can adjust the position of the handle. They did this (I assume) because your center of balance should mainly be centered over the table saw blade itself. This makes moving the stock much easier too – and here I demonstrate that. All it takes is a few seconds, a short twist of a philips head screw driver and the handle slides very easily. Another twist and the handle is locked down.
See how much of a difference a waxed table saw table can make?
Here I’m visually check to make sure that the table saw blade is going to pass through one of the channels of the GRR-Ripper. The table saw blade should not be digging into the GRR-Ripper. This isn’t a problem if it does – some people do it on purpose. The components of the GRR-Ripper are replaceable, so there’s no problem there, but for my intentions, there’s no reason to damage the tool.
Has anybody pointed out the fact that I’m not wearing safety glasses yet?
Now that was quick, did you miss it? I locked down the fence again just to make sure that it wouldn’t move while I was cutting and pushing against it with the stock. This is very important, I posted something on it last year that my fence’s locking mechanism is loose and will mess up my cuts if I don’t put a lot of weight on it when I lock it down. Those people who say you can’t make a curved cut on a table saw have never used a table saw with a loose fence.
Now, if you’re about to point out that I vary the speed at which I rip, there’s actually a good reason for that. I was trying to determine the best speed to feed Lyptus into the saw to avoid burning. It turns out you have to go pretty slow to burn Lyptus.
Right there, did you catch that? As I was putting down one of the off cuts, I got a couple of big splinters. One of the dangers of using a dull blade, which this is, is that the cuts aren’t the cleanest and you have to be careful with handling all of the stock.
Learning from my mistakes, I’m double checking to make sure that the board was seated fully up against the fence and that the GRR-Ripper’s channel will go fully over the blade.
It was pretty quick, but did you catch that? I pulled up my sleeves once again to make sure that they didn’t get caught in the blade. I just published a safety podcast on that, so if you haven’t seen the dangers of getting your sleeve caught in a table saw blade, check it out.
No what just happened there was that the wax on the table saw bed has worn away. What I acutally need to do is put down a nice spray lubricant for the table, but when I was shooting this I was counting on the wax holding out for the entire video. The jumping of the stock actually serves to proved the point that pouncing on a board to get it to go through the blade is a bad bad idea.
What am I doing here? I’m checking the GRR-Rippers to see if they actually did hit the table saw blade. It turns out that when I was removing one of the GRR-Rippers from a board at the end of a cut, I twisted the GRR-Ripper instead of lifting it off. That resulted in a minor cut taken out of the bottom of the green foam material that grabs the stock. So, remember that whether you use a push block or push stick, or even a GRR-Ripper – which I very highly suggest – keep it fully engaged with your stock and lift it straight off and back as opposed to twisting it.
Here I’m just showing off a little bit. I wanted to show everyone what figured Liptus looks like once it’s been planed, and before it has been card scraped. This stuff is extraordinary! I couldn’t believe the flame figure on these boards. I have 7 or 8 of them and only 2 didn’t have any figure at all. Stay tuned this summer so you can watch me turn these boards into another X-Leg Table.
So that’s it everybody! Please stay safe working wood this year, and I hope to be talking to you all again real soon!
Tags: grr-ripper, Micro Jig, Safety, Tools, wood, Woodworker, Woodworking
Posted in Garage, Podcast, Safety, Tools, Woodworking | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
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So, I’ve taken a couple of months off of the Splintered Board Podcast. I’m sorry about that, but sometimes you just need a break.
In this episode I:
Links for this show:
Tags: brace, delta | porter-cable, Dewalt DW735, Dust collector, general finishes, grand slam tools, Greg Crites, hand tools, Jointer, Lumberjocks, Maloof, Micro Jig, neil lamens, Pete Bretzke, plane, Podcast, Renaissance Woodworker, Rigid, rockler, router, sander, Shannon Rogers, splintered board, SRICKS, Table saw, the sawdust chronicles, Thickness planer, Tommy MacDonald, veinarmor, Woodworker, Woodworking, Woodworking in America
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