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, September 1st, 2009
I had the pleasure of interviewing a modern day renaissance woman, Carole Rothman, author of Wooden Bowls From the Scroll Saw. We discussed how Carole got into woodworking, and scrollsawing, her challenges and triumphs in perfecting the scrollsawn bowl, jar and vase.
Tags: bandsaw, bowl, Carole Rothman, Fox Chapel Publishing, jar, Rick Waters, scroll saw, splintered board, vase, wood, woodwork, Woodworker
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Friday, August 28th, 2009
I had the opportunity to review one of the best How-To woodworking books I’ve ever read. Carole Rothman makes a seemingly impossible task utterly simplistic through her many step-by-step bowl, jar and vase projects in Wooden Bowls from the Scroll Saw.
I was impressed with how detailed each project in the book was so intricately laid out and explained, but what really made me fall in love with Carole’s how-to writing style, was that she must have her beginner readers’ best interests in mind. In the first chapter she discusses the pro’s and con’s of several species of wood and encourages the woodworker to try other types also.
Carole discusses all of the possible tools needed and how to use them. She even includes templates for how to build your own bowl glue-up clamps.
Tags: book review, bowls, Carole Rothman, crafts, drill press, Fox Chapel Publishing, glue, inflatable ball sander, interview, lamination, laminations, lathe, oscillating spindle sander, Rick Waters, sander, scrollsaw, splintered board podcast, wood, Wooden Bowls From the Scroll Saw, Woodworker, Woodworking
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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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Tuesday, September 30th, 2008
When last we left him, Rick Waters, aka ‘Splintered Board’ the self described ‘Woodworker Un-extraordinaire’ was about to continue his project in completing the most difficult, most dangerous, possibly the most disgusting project of his woodworking career the Baby Diaper Changing Table. Said table has quickly and rightly become Splintered Board’s nemesis.
With such heinous acts against the woodworker as: repeatedly demanding more and more wood; requiring many extra hours of design; consistently jamming up an 18″ thickness planer; having so many pieces that the woodworker can’t possibly keep track of them all; weighing so much that the constant shuttling back and forth to the school woodshop is breaking the woodworker’s back, this table has now resorted to pulling out the big guns.
It has now called in the woodworker’s wife to comment on the lack of progress! Splintered Board has no choice, this table is going down!
Meanwhile, locked away in the bowels of the ‘Mancave of Sawdust’, Splintered Board tackles another project. This first commission (pro bono, naturally) proves to be no challenge for Rick’s fledgling skills.
And if that’s not enough, in this episode, your hero, Splintered Board will share a tip on wood identification, some anecdotal information about a pen-turner, and the possible future of THE SPLINTERED BOARD PODCAST!
Thanks, Greg, for the great intro!!!
Please visit Greg Crites’ website VeinArmor.com
Tags: art, basement workshop, box, chisel, chronicles, furnitology, Furniture, hand tools, Jointer, miter, modern woodshop, planer, Podcast, power tools, Renaissance Woodworker, rough cut, saw, sawdust, Table saw, the wood whisperer, toolmonger, Tools, wood, woodwork, Woodworker
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