Popular Woodworking Editors' Blog

When my son was in Cub Scouts, we went on field trips on Saturday mornings. One week we went to the woodshop of one of the kid’s grandfathers. It was a nice two-car-garage-sized building behind his real garage; in other words, a dedicated well-equipped shop. The boys went to work on a simple shelf, and after herding the group from the band saw to the oscillating spindle sander, Grandpa decided it was time to impart some wisdom. “If you want to get anything done, use power tools. There isn’t any reason to use hand tools any more. It will take you longer, and won’t turn out as good.” I didn’t say anything at the time, but on the way home I said to my son “you realize that man is a fool don’t you?” Hunter replied, “I was wondering when you were going to say something.”

When he was four or five we started making stuff together: toy guns and rubber-band powered boats for the bathtub. Our main tools were a coping saw and a spokeshave – tools he could handle safely without scaring his mother half to death. One of my proudest moments as a father came when we were at a festival watching a guy build a canoe. When the demonstrator held up a spokeshave and asked if anyone knew what it was called, Hunter shouted out the name and asked the guy if he wanted him to show him how to use it. He stepped up to the bench and, reaching up almost over his head, thrilled the crowd by quickly producing a pile of shavings and a fair curve.

For the first time in months, I got a chance to get back into my shop over the weekend. Boy was it nice. I had a piece to build for a customer, a piece that was promised some time back. (Thank you very much for patient, understanding customers.)

I selected the rough lumber for my project, chopped the piece into workable sizes and rolled the cart to the jointer. As I pushed my first piece over the three-knife cutterhead, I was amazed at how loud the operation sounded. I was caught off guard and wondered if the machine was not properly tuned to work.

Then I realized that the sound was loud because over the past few months, all my woodworking has been in the shop at Popular Woodworking. The magazine's jointer has a helical head. It seems noticeably quieter.

Is that why both Jet and Powermatic added helical cutterheads to a few new machines? I went back to watch the videos from our AWFS Coverage page. Powermatic installed this type of cutterhead on many of its new jointers and planers (click to watch the video), while Jet added a helical cutterhead on the jointer/planer combination machine (click to watch the video). Now my curiosity was piqued and I decided to see if helical cutterheads were best.

The loud sound is what garnered my attention. I decided to start there. The next day I grabbed the sound-level meter and took two readings at the 12" Bridgewood jointer in the PW shop. While running idle, the reading reached 86dBAs on the meter. The next reading was while cutting a piece of 4/4 mahogany. That number was 94dBAs. The difference between running idle and at full work with a helical cutterhead equipped machine was only 8dBA.

After work I loaded the meter and the mahogany board into the truck and headed straight to my shop. There I have a 12" Delta jointer. I repeated the same tests. This time the three-knife head moved the sound level meter to 89dBAs. That’s only a difference of three decibels over the helical head, big deal. But when I jointed that piece of mahogany, that’s when the difference appeared – big time. While cutting the 4/4 material, the decibels jumped to 112dBAs. That’s a significant increase. A helical cutterhead is quieter.

The surface that’s jointed is the telltale sign of a good set of knives. I studied each jointed surface under a magnifying-glass light only to discover no significant difference between the two resulting cuts. Yes the three-knife head left small almost indiscernible ridges in the surface that are easily sanded smooth. But the helical knives left ridges as well. They also were very small and easily smoothed with a sander.

So far, the only difference I've found is the sound level. And with hearing protection, is that an issue? On Wednesday, I’ll look into the costs differences – we know going in that out-of-pocket expenses are higher for the helical – and reveal if I found that one cutterhead is better than the other. (Care to make a guess?)

Today folks representing Ridgid stopped by the Popular Woodworking shop. Techtronic Industries North America, Inc. (TTI) Product Manager Jon Van Bergen and Paul Fitzmaurice of Imre Communications visited and they brought tools.

TTI is the manufacturer of Ridgid-branded power tools, a full line of power tools available at Home Depot. This morning the guys unveiled for us a 12" dual-bevel miter saw, a 13" thickness planer and a 3" x 18" belt sander (timing couldn’t have been better after the results of the recent blog posting on belt sanders).

We started with the newest thickness planer (R4330). The 13", 15-amp machine is a new four-post design; the head travels up and down on four posts whereas the older version traveled on just two posts, so now it's beefier. This new design also increases the knife count from two to three, so it makes 30,000 cuts per minute and  runs 26 feet of stock during that same amount of time.

New features abound in the new planer. Ridgid has added the "Ind-I-Cut" depth-measurement system for accuracy in cuts. This feature allows you to predetermine the amount of cut for the stock. Nudge the material under the front edge of the machine, then lower the head until the indicator registers the exact depth of cut you select. The planer is at the stores now, but here’s a hint. It has the same SKU number as the older unit, so make sure you buy the new version (check the packaging for the knife count, and look for "three").
The cost? $349.

In addition, Ridgid included the "Repeat-A-Cut" depth-stop setting. Use this to achieve equal thicknesses anytime by setting the depth stop and working the material to your selected thickness. The selection is determined by sliding a lever to one of eight stops.

The 12" dual-bevel miter saw features a new "Exactline Adjustable Laser" that can be set according to your method of work. If you like the laser set to the left, right or dead center of the cut, all you need to do is position the beam accordingly.

What caught my eye was the 90º-crosscutting capacity for the saw. This bad boy cuts a 2 x 10 clean. That, for anyone not familiar with the home-construction industry, translates to 9-1/4" of cut. That exceeds most of the competition by 2" of cut or more. Do you really need a sliding miter saw? This 12" miter saw should start shipping in the next few weeks. The price is $349.

A new variable-speed belt sander is due out in October of this year. It’s a compact unit that takes a standard 3" x 18" belt (no looking for special sizes). It feels good in your hand and the smaller size allows it to do more than just sand flat – think sculpting and rounding. A new feature brought to the table by Ridgid is onboard twin fans. One fan is directed at cooling the motor while the second fan facilitates dust collection. In older designs, the single fan does double duty and neither job is done to the best ability.

I noticed the rear roller is slightly larger than the front roller. Does this add to the ability of the sander? I was told it just looked good. Since you bloggers have issued a new directive on bringing belt sanders into the shop for review purposes, I cannot wait to get a hold this one. Look for this sander to cost just under a C-note.

We have the miter saw and thickness planer in the shop, so as we get time to put the tools through their paces, we’ll report back. They look good out of the box, but that’s the easy part. Keep an eye out for further information. And if you have anything specific you would like for us to address, send a comment our way or contact me via e-mail.

– Glen D. Huey

In the hardwood forests of western Pennsylvania several years ago (hence the short hair and shave).

Editor's Note: The following excerpt is from Issue 8 of Woodworking Magazine, our sister publication to Popular Woodworking. The latest issue of this advertising-free magazine is now available. You can buy a printed copy or download a digital version directly from us. If you like Popular Woodworking, I think you'll also enjoy Woodworking Magazine, which takes conventional woodworking wisdom to task. You can learn more about how this magazine is different on its web site.

No one told my elder daughter that it would be difficult to make clothing by hand and by eye – without a pattern, a machine or even a lesson.

And perhaps because no one told Maddy that it would be hard, it wasn’t. During the last three years she has made more than a hundred garments for her stuffed animals, from jogging suits to sequined disco pants to chain mail. She works entirely by instinct. Never measuring. Just cutting, stitching and improving.

Now, every parent will tell you that their child is remarkable, but I don’t think that’s the case here. I don’t think Maddy is a stitching savant. I think that she simply is acting on an impulse and without fear of failure.

It would be easy (read: lazy) for me to now end this column with that same advice about woodworking: Don’t be afraid; just get to it. But I know that the fear of failure can be crippling.

For example, last week I taught Maddy how to pump gasoline. Learning that common task was so stressful that by the end of the lesson, her hands were trembling a bit as she yanked the receipt from the pump. At first I was bemused by her trepidation. But then I realized the difference between pumping gas and pushing a sewing needle. It was the raw material.

Maddy has a lifetime supply of cloth in our basement, thanks to the women in my life who buy it for her. And when she needs more sequined fabric to make a disco jacket and floppy hat to match the pants, it will cost her a dollar or two for a supply that will last many years.

Now consider gasoline: It’s precious, poisonous and explosive. So here’s my real point: I think that wood is a lot more like cloth than it is like gasoline.

This statement might be hard for some of us to swallow at first. It was for me. I’m a conservationist at heart, and saving the trees always seemed like a good idea when I was growing up.

But home woodworkers aren’t really the source of the problem when you talk about deforestation, which I know is a critical problem in some places on the globe. Several years ago I toured the hardwood forests of Pennsylvania with a group of journalists and watched loggers cut down enough cherry trees in an hour to last me more than 100 lifetimes of building furniture.

It was that trip that changed my view of the raw material we work with. Before that moment, I would squeeze every single part of a project out of the fewest number of rough boards, even if that meant compromising the design or aesthetics. I would allow myself to use a board with a less-than-ideal grain pattern in a face frame or door stile or stretcher. This, I argued to myself, was being a good steward of the forest.

Now I see things differently. I get only one chance to make each project. And the fate of that project – kicked to the curb or cherished by my grandchildren – depends on the choices I make today with regard to its design, grain, joints and finish.

I don’t throw away tons of wood, but I’m not afraid to plow through lots of it to find the right board. I’m not afraid to make a lot of test cuts to get a tight joint. And I’m not afraid to make a lot of sample boards to get the right finish. My leftover pieces end up as interior parts for a future project, as kindling or as compost at the dump. So here’s my confession: I now throw away more wood than I ever did before.

But here’s how I rationalize that choice: The more wood I go through, the better my end result is. And wood is a renewable resource. We can get it almost anywhere, even rescuing it from the city dump if we so desire. Furthermore, wood is inexpensive when compared to the hours of labor invested in any piece of fine workmanship.

All this makes me bristle when I see companies hawking virgin plastic products under the guise of “saving a tree.” Where do they think plastic comes from? It comes from petroleum.

So consider this: We can (and should) always plant more trees (or make more sequined cloth). Compressing dinosaur poop for a million years, however, is another matter.

— Christopher Schwarz