Thursday, August 19th, 2010
When I received the package containing the Back to Basics series, I had had a particularly rough day at work. I came home and found it on the kitchen table, and my wife giving me one of those “So, what did you buy for your shop now?” looks. I usually just have to say, these are books from Fox Chapel, and she understands. So that crisis was averted.
I was really excited, because I wasn’t expecting a new book, or books. I opened the package, pulled out the books and was overjoyed! Then a little bit of the mood of the day took over and I was saddened again. Just something about the cover art on the books made me think sarcastically ‘Boy, these are going to be joy to read. And I still have the Missing Shop Manual series to review.’
After looking over the covers of each book, I set them aside until late at night. After the kids were in bed I picked up Woodworker’s Guide to Wood and began leafing through it. Normally when I leaf through a book, I do just that. I look at the pictures, read a few captions, skip a few pages, jump to the index and see what I might have missed. Twenty minutes later, I found that I was reading more than leafing. I had read quite a bit of several pages and actually learned some things about wood that haven’t really been explained all that well in other texts and podcasts that I have learned from in the past.
I was surprised that this book had captured my attention so well. Pleasantly surprised. So much so that I decided to bring the Joinery book with me to work the next day. By lunchtime I had already experienced much the same delight with it.
As someone who really enjoys trying (and usually failing) to cut all kinds of joinery using hand tools and power tools, just for fun, I found this book to be a fresh look at joinery. While there are dovetails on the cover, the book doesn’t over emphasize the use, importance or play to the reputation that the various dovetail joints have garnered. What this book does do is fairly and accurately detail what joints are suitable for which applications, with which woods, and how to go about implementing them. Various tools are used for each joint, and the book doesn’t assume that you have every specialty tool possible for each joint. So, when necessary, jigs, and how to build and use them, are detailed also.
The next day I decided to continue this trend and bring the Setting Up Your Workshop book to work. I ended up getting so much out of it in so little time that I decided to rearrange my shop (1/2 of a 2-car garage) as it was depicted in the book.
I generally regard workbench and workshop books as pretty boring. I get enough advice about how to organize my shop from my wife and father-in-law. The last thing I voluntarily want to do is read about someone’s idea of how I should organize something that they have never seen. But, I was pleasantly surprised with this book, and plan on returning to it in the next couple of years as my shop evolves.
The Woodworking Machines book was next, and while I had already been through other books that gloss over the fine points of every machine you could possibly have in your shop, and probably act as a replacement for Ambien in the process… I was happy with the way this book shows how to setup each machine, describe the most common and best uses for each machine, how to tune and align them, and general maintenance. All-in-all, this one is staying in my shop so I don’t have to keep running inside and down to the basement where I keep my other woodworking books.
Other books in the Back to Basics series are Constructing Kitchen Cabinets, Fundamentals of Sharpening (available to Ship Dec 1st, 2010), Woodworker’s Guide to Carving (available to ship Sept 30th, 2010), and Woodworker’s Guide to Turning (available to ship January 1st, 2011).
It’s funny how these books struck such a chord with me. I was happy to actually read them instead of weeding information out of them. And you know what, that’s what it seems like I end up doing with most of my woodworking books these days. I feel like I need to set aside major chunks of time (because I’m a slow slow reader), just to get one little bit of information from them. With the Back to Basics series, everything you need to know is spelled out plain as day and ready for you in easy to read English.
Like I’ve tried to explain through 2 years of podcasting, I have learned, what I consider, to be a great deal about woodworking over the internet and by reading books. It’s great to see that these new books from Fox Chapel are not just regurgitating the same information that many podcasters, books and web sites continue to cover. These books are finding new ways to impart the same information, but supplement that with new ideas (at least to me), methods and non-mainstream information that may either be new to us all, or forgotten through the ages.
This sentiment doesn’t just end with the Back To Basics series. When I read the Joinery book this morning, I realized that this collection perfectly complements the Missing Shop Manual series, also published by Fox Chapel. The two collections even look similar. While the Missing Shop Manuals books are much smaller, they are all trade paperbacks with rounded outside corners and minimalist artwork on the cover. Both collections are full, and I mean full of charts, diagrams, drawings, and instructional illustrations.
And sturdy? Let me tell you about these… I usually ride around with a book or two in my laptop bag for about a week or two. By the time I take the books out, usually because I haven’t read them yet, they are mangled. I’ve done the same with the Missing Shop Manuals books, but they are still in great shape. The sturdy trade paperback covers have kept them mostly unmolested – except for a few dents on the covers from spiral notebooks.
Probably the most useful book of the Missing Shop Manuals series is an unassuming title Glue and Clamps. Seriously, this book is worth it’s weight… It solves the ever frustrating adage that you can never have enough clamps.
Well, it doesn’t solve it in that it supplies you with enchanted clamp racks that magically fill themselves, but it does show you how to improvise and build your own, new, clamps out of the clamps you already own. Specialty clamps, clamping jigs, frame clamps, carcass clamps, improvised vises, clamp extenders, you name it, it’s probably in there.
The Drill Press and Table Saw books are also extremely helpful, in that there are tons of simply made jigs documented that you could easily pay for down at the local (or not so local) woodworking store. They also go over the machines, and the different categories of each machine in pretty fine detail. Even that’s not too boring 
The lathe is still a small mystery to me, so I can’t really comment on that book right now, but it available also. So, you can imagine, if I’m as happy as this with the other books, then if you are really into turning, you might do well to pick up the Missing Shop Manual on the Lathe.
The final book in the Missing Shop Manual Series that I have, but haven’t mentioned is Circular Saws and Jig Saws. I don’t really have a comment about this book. I looked it over a few months ago, and it didn’t leave a lasting impression. That’s not to say it was terrible, it’s just that I wasn’t jumping around saying ‘I’ve got to get into the shop right now!’ I’d bet that if you do a fair amount of circ and jig saw work, this book might do you some good too.
I think what I like most about these collections, and I think Fox Chapel has hit on a veritable gold mine here, is that I like my information in personable – meaning, in plain English – relatively small chunks with examples that I can see, and accurately explained. I’m a hard sell when it comes to books. At least informational books. And I have to admit that I probably would not have even picked these unassuming books off of the bookstore shelf to thumb through, but that would be my loss. These are exactly the types of books that I have needed since I took up woodworking.
Though the Missing Shop Manuals can, and should, find a place in every woodworker’s shop library (I’ll be building a special bookshelf for mine inside the shop), I can see the immense value of having the Back to Basics collection in every new and intermediate woodworker’s shop. Some of the information may be a review, but there are definitely caches of knowledge in the books that most people haven’t seen before.
Tags: book review, Fox Chapel Publishing, Rick Waters, Tools, wood, Woodworking
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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, October 6th, 2009
I opened up my email the other day expecting to see an important message that I have been anxiously awaiting. Instead of receiving my personal invitation to the Playboy Mansion, I received an ad for another boutique tool.
Most woodworkers have received these ads in one way or another. And I would bet that we’ve all thought, if only for a moment, ‘That’s one sweet tool,’ or even ‘I’ve gotta have it.’ But, reality soon sets in…right about the time we see the price tag.
Though our eyes continue to caress the shining bronze and stainless steel, the smooth mahogany, fiddleback makore or rich cocobolo, we know that this picture is as close as we will ever get to owning such tools (barring, of course, fondling them at trade shows). Some brave souls have given in to temptation, only to invite the unforgiving and inevitable wrath of their significant other.
Even for well-funded woodworkers (or tool collectors), with tricked out shops and tool collections, there are always going to be gorgeous tools that are way out of even their price range.
I started my tool collection with a $7 block plane from a home store, added a few low-end power tools, received a few second-hand tools from friends, then rescued a ton of old hand tools from a friend’s basement. Though some of the old hand tools are in such good shape that they are worth many more times that of their brand new mid-range brothers, these cannot, in my opinion, be considered boutique tools. Those are antiques.
Yesterday I read an old article in the New York Times about hand tools which mentioned that Garrett Wade and Woodcraft were ‘high-end tool catalogue businesses’ and grouped them with Lie-Nielsen and Bridge City Toolworks.
I wasn’t into woodworking in 1998 when this article was published, so maybe things have changed in the past 11 years, but in my opinion, Woodcraft is not a retailer that I associate with high-end tools. I associate it with overpriced tools, but not high-end tools. I’m just now becoming familiar with Garrett Wade and, contrary to the article’s statement that Garrett Wade was ‘the first of the ”boutique” woodworking catalogue businesses’, I would say they are an outlet for higher-end tools than Woodcraft, but still not high-end ’boutique’ tools.
No, rather, I classify a Boutique Tool as one whose competition consists of a few alternatives that range in their accuracy and price, from low-priced poorly made ‘junk’ tools that, normally, only new woodworkers would buy from their hardware stores or discount tools outlets, through to high priced 100% accurate and precise tools that, if used correctly, will return excellent results every time.
What sets Boutique Tools apart from these high-end tools that work perfectly? Mainly, price. To me, a $48 well-made, accurate, and comfortable to use marking gauge is high end. A $145 marking gauge with nickel plated body, stainless steel knobs, and electro polished beam, or a $180 solid ebony gauge are both examples of boutique tools.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t condemn either of these tool makers. I’ve purchased items from both companies. In fact, the owner of one of these companies is a friend of mine. And no, his name is not John.
Take, for instance, a couple of automotive comparisons.
What’s the difference between buying a Geo Metro and a Toyota Prius? Both are tiny little cars that get great mileage. One screams ‘LOOK AT ME, I’M SAVING THE ENVIRONMENT!’ while the other says politely ‘I know my car doesn’t accelerate that quickly, please pass me while I burn half the gas that your car does.’
I used to own a Chrysler PT Cruiser, what’s the difference between that and the Porsche Cayenne? Both are vehicles that offer seating for 5, are SUV-like, and plenty of storage. The Porsche also offers much more comfort, style, and power, while the Cruiser offers affordable maintenance.
In both examples, what is the main difference between the mid-to-low-end cars and the high-end cars (yes, I understand the Prius is not a boutique car and the Porsche is, but work with me here)? #1. Price. #2. The statement.
I understand the sociological differences between owning an $100k car versus a $20k car and a $250 hand plane versus a $2500 hand plane. I also understand that the expensive handplane in a tool collection may only ever be seen by a handful of people, while an expensive car is seen by everyone in the community.
I guess when you compare a boutique tool to a boutique car, the answer to the ‘why does this tool even exist?’ question ends up being ‘because someone, somewhere, is going to buy it.’
Anyway, to drive home how ridiculous some of these tools’ price tags are, I’m going to site some specific tools. And I already know that Bridge City Toolworks is going to come up quite a bit. I don’t want to be misunderstood. I don’t believe their entire line of tools are boutique. Some of their tools have no equal. This actually makes BCT one of the toolmakers I respect the most. They are the only ones coming up with truly NEW tools.
Boutique Tools:
Bridge City Toolworks:
MG-5, CT-4, CT-15, CS-6, Dead Blow Mallet, SS-2×4 Aluminum Saddle Square, HG-1, CS-2, DSS-6, KM-1
Blue Spruce Toolworks:
Mallet
Grand Slam Tools:
Ebony Marking Gauge
EC Emmerich:
All of their tools
Tags: Boutique tools, Bridge city toolworks, ec emmerich, garrett wade, Geo Metro, grand slam tools, handplane, handtool, harbor freight, high price tools, jig saw, lie-nielsen, new york times, Podcast, Porsche Cayanne, PT Cruiser, steel city tools, Table saw, Tommy MacDonald, Tools, Toyota Prius, woodcraft
Posted in Design, Podcast, Tools, Woodworking | 1 Comment »
Friday, September 18th, 2009
Take a look at This new blog – Spudwood
‘Garage Sale’ at Designed Stairs in Sandwich, IL
* 24 bdft pink Lyptus (in 7 boards)
* 13”x1”x8’ Hemlock
* 6 short boards of 14”wx1”t yellow pine stairs
* 40 4” C clamps for about $20
* 3 6’x1”dia acrylic rods
* 50’ electrical cord autoreel
* 5’ level
Jim Birch (flooracle) from Erickson Decorating in Chicago, and Barry Gork from Timbermate – Timbermate products
* Used the Walnut on my railing
Jim Birch (flooracle) – free flooring samples
* Somewhere around 200bdft of S. American hardwood flooring samples
* 20 bdft of Oak hardwood flooring
Projects
* Magnetic board project – Finished
* Shop table
* Toy Chest
* Wine Cabinet Door
New Tools
* Adze
* Chisel
* Bench Vise
* Calipers (Free from Rockler )
* Folding rule (Free from Charles Neil)
* Abrasive wheels (free from Dremel)
* Scroll Saw
* Flexible sanding pads (Klingspor)
* Tons of sandpaper (Klingspor)
* Abrasive lathe pads (As seen on RWW)
Tags: barry gork, chisels, flooracle, Furniture, hemlock, jim birch, lyptus, miter, oak, projects, spudwood, stairs, timbermate, Tools, wood
Posted in Furniture, Games and Hobbies, Podcast, Woodworking | No Comments »