Popular Woodworking Editors' Blog

Procrastination isn't always a bad thing. When we last looked at my pile of 2 x 4s it was just over a month ago, and the readings from my moisture meter ranged from 10% to 18%. My reason for using this stuff was price – a "precut" (almost 8' long piece) cost $2.38 at our local home center. Good price, but if I tried to work with it in that condition, my finished benches would have twisted as the wood reached equilibrium with our shop environment. Cutting them to rough length and putting stickers in between helped to speed the process. Late last week I was getting consistent readings of 9-10% at the middle and the ends of my boards and decided it was time to proceed.

Without a meter, you're left to guess about how wet the stuff is. One way to judge is by weight; drier pieces are lighter. Wet material will also feel cold and damp to the touch. Comparing new lumber to some that has been around for a year or so will also help you judge.

The lumber did twist and cup a bit as it dried, so I ran all the parts over the jointer and through the planer. The finished size is 1-1/4" X 3-1/4". I came up with this process for building benches and stands for tools about 15 years ago when I was setting up a shop from scratch. Every nickel I could save on shop fixtures was another nickel I could spend on power tools or disposable diapers. Here is the same stack of wood after milling.

From June 2006 Popular Woodworking

Wenzloff & Sons Backsaws Make the Cut

The hand-tool crowd lives and dies by the hand saw. But even for the rest of us, no matter how many electrons we consume in our shops (and I consume my fair share) we all need a couple decent hand saws for the all-too-common tricky cut.

Now we have one more choice when selecting the right saw. Veteran cabinetmaker Mike Wenzloff of Forest Grove, Ore., has recently taken up custom sawmaking as his primary business and his early offerings are excellent. Thanks to his long career as a professional woodworker, Wenzloff’s backsaws are exceptionally functional and a joy to use – the wood, split brass nuts and brass back are expertly finished to a high degree.
I test drove two of his adaptations of the now-vanished Disston No. 9 backsaw – one saw was filed with rip teeth and the other with crosscut teeth. The saws are surprisingly large (201⁄2" long) and heavy (11⁄2 pounds) – both attributes are assets to cutting fast and true. The saws are hand-sharpened and track a line quite well.
The crosscut saw had 14 points per inch; the rip saw had 11 ppi. If you need something different, just ask. Wenzloff makes this saw in a variety of lengths and with 9 to 15 ppi. There also are a variety of wood species you can choose for the handle.

And if the price of the No. 9 is too much, Wenzloff also sells the saw as a nearly finished kit for $110 – you essentially finish shaping the handle and fit it to the blade.In addition to the No. 9 saw, Wenzloff also makes pure custom saws and a halfback saw –  a smallish panel saw with a short brass back. Wenzloff was tweaking the handle of that saw at press time; we’ll give you an update on that saw and its performance in a future issue.
The Wenzloff saws rank up there with other premium makers, including Lie-Nielsen, Adria and Gramercy Tools. And, as a bonus, you can get your saw easily customized to your liking. I think you’ll be as impressed with these saws as I was.

— Christopher Schwarz

More information on these saws from Wenzloff & Sons

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From June 2006 Popular Woodworking

Grizzly’s Baby Drum Sander Rocks

Early in my career I was spoiled forever by a 42"-wide, three-head wide-belt sander. I can’t keep from comparing other sanders to that, and this new drum sander from Grizzly isn’t that kind of machine. But it is, without a doubt, the best value in a thicknessing sander suitable for small-shop use that I have seen. Many small-scale sanders use lightweight materials and leave one end of the machine open to gain  width capacity.  Grizzly has taken a different approach – keep it simple and solid. It has some limitations in capacity and precision, but considering performance and price, this is the machine I want in my shop.

It won’t sand a wide tabletop or a wide assembled door, but it can sand the parts before you put things together. I’d rather put together good parts than risk making more work with an unpredictable machine. I found no sniping or variation across the width from the pieces I sanded with the G0459. It was hard to hit a precise thickness due to the flexibility in the hook-and-loop abrasives, but this flexibility eliminates many of the problems found in rigid drums. It’s a trade-off I’m willing to make.

Setup was minimal; I needed only to attach the crank handle and dust port. The drum and drive motors had plenty of power and changing the abrasives was simple and painless. The conveyor belt is the same rubber found on industrial machines, and the gear-driven four-post height adjustment operated smoothly.

The pluses outweigh the minuses, but it isn’t a perfect machine. I’d move the speed control to the same side as the other controls, and change the knob that holds the lid down. If the hood were extended down, the dust collection would be improved, and the requirement to tape the ends of the abrasive rolls doesn’t seem right. I can easily live with these shortcomings to gain the performance, ease of use and predictability of this machine.

— Robert Lang

More information on the drum sander from Grizzly

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From June 2006 Popular Woodworking

Dead-on accuracy from a drill press table isn’t necessary for woodworkers. But it sure is nice to be able to hold your work securely, and have a fence that guides the work with convenient stops for repeated cuts. Drill-press manufacturers haven’t bothered to provide such an animal with their machines, so it’s up to us to add it after the fact.

Aftermarket drill press tables either go too far or not far enough. The Quick-Stop LP from Woodpeckers is just about right. Priced at $129 (which is a little higher than we’d prefer, but acceptable) you get a good-sized table with four T-track inserts (two with scales). The tracks support the included two hold-downs (nice, convenient and solid) and a just-right fence.

The fence is a good length for woodworking needs and isn’t so tall that it interferes with the drill press chuck or handles. While the fence provides the necessary height for most drill press activities, there are applications where a taller fence would be advantageous, such as mortising. In those instances an auxilliary fence can be added. The fence is easily adjusted to the left or right with quick-release cam locks and from front to back with knurled knobs. But my favorite features are the two 1"-wide flip stops  – there when you need them, and out of the way easily when you don’t.

Every woodworking drill press should come from the manufacturer complete with a table like this. But until that happens, it’s nice to know that the Woodpeckers Quick-Stop table is there for us.   

— David Thiel

More information on the drill press table from Woodpeckers

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From June 2006 Popular Woodworking

A Bright Addition to the Category

This is the first true router to bear the Ridgid name. A trim router was introduced about one year ago, but this is the one we’ve been waiting for. And for a first router this dual-base model, well … shines! First off, this router performs well. The 12-amp motor with electronic feedback provides plenty of power. I tested edge profiles and  3⁄4"- x 1⁄2"-deep groove cuts in a single pass in white oak with no problems. The motor’s soft start provides a pleasant and safe experience, and the noise level isn’t unpleasant, either.

Both bases have clear baseplates that provide a good view of the work. Even better, a pair of L.E.D. lights mounted to the motor wash the work area in illumination.  Though the motor has a collet lock, Ridgid also included two wrenches. I appreciate this little extra as I find uses for both methods during different routing operations. The plunge base was smooth during use, but I thought the plunge lock flipped too far to the center of the router, making it a reach for my hands to grab while I was  holding on to the handles. I appreciated the addition of a dust-collection-attachment accessory for the plunge base, but with shorter bits the hole in the accessory was too small to allow the collet to reach far enough to make the cut. The depth adjustment was decent, but nothing special. I’d still like to see a micro adjust that works on one of these two-base plunge router kits.

The fixed base comes with a useful centering cone. The base is set up for use in a router table and includes a through-the-base adjustment mechanism. One upgrade might be to have indicator marks on the wrench and the base to gauge the changes in bit height in a router table. This feature is offered when using the router freehand. The quick bypass on the depth adjustment is nice, allowing fast adjustments with or without the fine-adjust mechanism in play.

The Ridgid R2930 is a good addition to the dual-base router category. It’s priced competitively and with the added bonus of work lights, it stands apart from the crowd. 
 
— David Thiel

More information on this tool from Ridgid

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Why joints fail and why woodworkers fail as scientists

Whenever my late Uncle Archie came to visit, he would drive my mother crazy with where he chose to sit. He was a big man, weighing over 350 pounds and he invariably would choose a small, delicate Queen Anne reproduction from the 1890s with a needlepoint seat. Maybe he enjoyed making my mom gasp with fear or maybe he just liked sitting in a chair that he sat in as a kid. In any case, that little chair never complained, never creaked and never failed. It was made by a man who knew his trade. Luckily for the chair, my mom's peace of mind and my uncle's pride, the chair maker didn't rely on information he read in a magazine somewhere.

One of the most frequent questions we are asked is what's the best/strongest/correct joint to use in woodworking? The answer usually starts with several other questions. What's the application? What wood? What are your skills? What tools do you have available? With those variables in mind, you can make an intelligent choice, but there will be several options that are all "more than strong enough." It's a multiple choice question with multiple correct answers.

Most woodworking joints have evolved over thousands of years. Woodworkers learned to make them based on their own experience, and the experience of the people who taught them. To make successful joints you need a little experience, a basic knowledge of the workings of wood and glue, and a bit of common sense. But in the 21st century we want a definitive answer. We want numbers and we want proof. We want something in writing we can point to when we're not sure of ourselves.

Like other magazines, we have tested joints to destruction.

The last time we did it was in December 2005, and our weapon of choice was the anvil. It was a silly notion, and the point of the tomfoolery was that pseudo-scientific testing in a magazine is a rather pointless endeavor. There are so many variables in material, techniques and proportions of joints that gathering meaningful data would require thousands of samples and take months if not years to complete. If you only break a few joints, you might well be measuring the quality of the raw material, the skill of the guy who put things together, or several other variables that have nothing to do with what you want to learn.

Which doesn't mean the anvil test was meaningless. It did show us some surprising things, notably how good today's glues are, and how important it is to consider proportions of joints in the context of the pieces being joined. We knew going into the test that a well-made draw-bored mortise-and-tenon joint is incredibly strong, and that dowel joints almost always fail eventually. We now know a bit more about how and why and we had some fun doing it. But it bothers us when we see a test that takes itself too seriously, or when joints are labeled as "not so good" when the flaw is in the size and placement of the components, or of the wood rather than the joint.

If woodworking were more science than art, it wouldn’t be as much fun. If you want to read the “Anvil Test” click here. Keep in mind that it was written by a woodworker, not an engineer in destructive testing. It contains a lot of good information about different joints, but it doesn’t reveal which is the best/strongest/correct joint. I hope it makes you smile and make you think about how you approach the craft. That’s the whole idea.

— Bob Lang