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 Monday, September 24, 2007
Bosch Visits Popular Woodworking
There aren't many things better than free food, new power tools, and a friendly bunch of woodworkers. Last Wednesday evening that's what things were like here at the Popular Woodworking shop. Bosch tools sent several crates and boxes on Tuesday. Wednesday afternoon, Jim Stevens, Group Product Manager-Benchtop & Cutting Tools, Jason Feldner, Product Manager-Benchtop Tools, and Jon Howell, Product Manager-Circular Saw Blades arrived to unpack and set things up. Over in our cafeteria the caterers arrived with an enticing spread of barbecue beef, cold cuts and potato salad.  Close to 60 readers arrived, and after dinner the Bosch reps spoke about and demonstrated new tools and saw blades. In the corner of the picture is the new jobsite table saw, the Bosch 4100DG-09. We were impressed with this saw in Las Vegas particularly with the user-friendly guard system. We've had one in the shop for a couple months, and like it a lot. If you don't have space for a cabinet saw, or work in a garage where you have to put your tools away, it's worth taking a look at this one. It has a "gravity rise stand" that folds up easily and rolls, and a digital measuring system is available for the rip fence. Jason Feldner, Bosch's product manager for this tool showed the features after dinner. Jim Stevens gave the group a quick look at some hand-held tools; the Colt palm router and a new random-orbit sander. We promised not to show the sander yet, but as soon as we get the OK, we'll share some pictures and first impressions with you. Jon Howell wrapped up the formal presentations with a discussion of carbide and saw-blade technology.  With our appetites for food satisfied, and our appetites for tools properly whetted, it was off to the shop to take a closer look and to try the tools in action. In the picture above, Jason is explaining some of the fine points of the saw. We also had routers, sanders, a compound miter saw you can see sitting on the corner of Glen's new bench over Jason's shoulder, and cordless drills. To close out the evening, we drew names and the Bosch reps gave away two of the table saws, equipped with the gravity rise stands and digital rip fences. Bosch also gave everyone who attended a free 10" table saw blade.  Here's a picture of Jason Feldner, Popular Woodworking Publisher Steve Shanesy, and the two table-saw winners. If you look back at the first picture in this post, both of the winners were sitting together at the front table at dinner. Is it good luck to grab the table closest to the presentation, or is there some sort of conspiracy? If you show up at our next get together (which will happen this fall) you can enjoy the free eats and the camaraderie, and find out for yourself. Watch the blog for the announcement, or sign up for our free e-mail newsletter (link is in the lower left hand corner of the home page) to get on the guest list. — Robert W. Lang
Read other entries by Robert W. Lang
Monday, September 24, 2007 3:09:09 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) 
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Friday, September 21, 2007
Rosewood Studio Reopens
Back in June, we reported on the closing of the Canadian woodworking school, Rosewood Studio. We're happy to follow that up with this report on the reopening and reorganization of Rosewood.  Ron Barter, a long-time instructor at the school purchased the assets in July, and the school resumed classes in mid-August. Many classes are scheduled through December, including two taught by Garret Hack. The current schedule is available at the Rosewood web site, and more will be scheduled in the near future. Barter said that any deposits paid before the June closing will be honored. Welcome back Rosewood Studio. — Robert W. Lang
Read other entries by Robert W. Lang
Friday, September 21, 2007 3:33:01 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Monday, September 17, 2007
Now Shipping: Woodworking Magazine, the Hardbound Edition
Our warehouse in Wisconsin reported today that our shipment of Woodworking Magazine hardbound editions
have arrived and will ship out immediately. So for all of you who have
ordered the book already, you should be receiving it shortly in the
mail.
And if you are still considering ordering the book,
you should know that we sold out more than half of the press run
already and don’t have plans for a second printing. There's no
pressure, of course. We’ll sell them all, regardless. Also good to
know: Our special offer of free shipping on this book ends on Sept. 21.
Until that date, you can order it for $30 from our back issues store. After that, it's $34.95.
In case you missed our announcement about the book, check out the earlier blog entry
I posted. I think you’ll find that the printing quality of this book is
first-rate. The typography and photo reproduction looks even crisper
than the original issues; plus the paper is brighter and the binding is
quite secure.
Work has begun on issue nine of Woodworking Magazine.
The theme of the issue? Sawing of all sorts (no surprises here). But
what might be surprising are the conclusions we’re reaching and some of
the tricks we’ve dug up. Not all sawing has to be done with saws….
— Christopher Schwarz
Read other entries by Christopher Schwarz
Monday, September 17, 2007 7:28:10 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Tool Review: Two Better Beaters
I enjoy a good beating. Chopping dovetails or mortises is almost as
pleasurable as sawing or planing. So, as you can imagine, I'm picky
about my mallet.
For years I tried to make myself like the
traditional round mallet used in carving and cabinetmaking. But I
couldn't grow to enjoy using it. I'd be more likely to pick up a hammer
than a round mallet when it came to chopping time.
So I
abandoned the round one and have since been trying out a variety of
mallets that are wooden or both wood and metal. I bought a couple
English mallets that have a brass head that's filled with wooden
striking surfaces. These are good, but replacing the wood when it
expired was no fun.
So I've settled on two mallets that I really like. One is the Veritas Cabinetmaker's Mallet,
which I've had since the company started making them. It's
well-balanced and heavy enough (1 lb. 5 oz.) to get the job done. The
head is brass and the wooden inserts are 1-1/2" in diameter, so you can
cut them using a hole saw and pop them in (I'm about to replace one of
my faces with a synthetic material that toolmaker Paul Hamler sent me.
Don't know what it is, but he swears by it).
The handle is, I
believe, ash. I stripped the finish off of it and applied a little oil
and wax so it suits my hand better. This was the only mallet I used –
until May.
That's when one of my students, Dante DiIanni, handed
me one of the mallets he was developing for sale through his
woodworking supplies store, Di Legno Woodshop Supply.
It looks like a smallish beech carpenter's mallet you might see in a
typical woodworking catalog. I've never cared much for this form
because they were so lightweight that I ended up getting a sore forearm.
But
Dante's mallets are different. He soaks them in linseed oil for a long
time. This greatly increases the weight of the mallets, and gives them a
nice feel in the hand. The mallet I tried is listed as approximately 22
oz., but mine weighs 19 oz., according to our postal scale. The mallet
is 13" long overall with a 2-3/8" x 4-5/8" head. So it's a nice small
size – you're in not going to smack yourself in the head and you can
get into fairly tight places.
All the right edges are chamfered
(I like chamfers), and there's a nice leather wrist strap, which is
great for hanging the mallet over the bench (or keeping it on your
wrist should your palm become separated from the handle during a wild
swing).
I like this mallet. And so does Senior Editor Glen D. Huey,
who has been chopping out about 100 dovetails for the cabinet base on
his workbench. The mallet packs a ton of punch for its size and is a good fit
in your hand. The mallet comes in four sizes between 18 oz. ($22.95) up
to 32 oz. ($29.95). The 22 oz. model we tested is $24.95. you can order
one from the Di Legno web site or by calling 877-208-4298.
— Christopher Schwarz 
Read other entries by Christopher Schwarz
Monday, September 17, 2007 1:48:13 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Friday, September 14, 2007
Stickley Poppy Table-Living on the Edge(s)
In every project, there is at least one process that takes much longer than expected. It doesn’t matter if it’s the first piece of furniture you’ve made or the five hundredth, somewhere between rough lumber and finished furniture is the point I call “hitting the wall.” When I estimated commercial millwork projects and people asked how I figured labor hours, I told them it was simple. First, you figure out how many days something will take. Then you change days to weeks and multiply by three.
Work on the reproduction of the Gustav Stickley poppy table was moving right along when Christopher Schwarz and I had a Friday-afternoon conversation about how little tables were great projects. They don’t use much material, there aren’t any doors to fit or drawers to fuss with and they don’t take long at all. Then he left town for a week. On Monday morning, I hit the wall.
 I readily admit that I, like most woodworkers I know, am really awful about predicting how long it will take to make something. On Friday, I was on schedule: The parts were all made, the joints were cut, my first dry assembly went smoothly. Over the weekend, the carving on the tops, where I usually get bogged down, took less time than I expected, and on Monday morning, it took less than an hour to handplane and scrape all the flat surfaces to a shimmering smoothness. And then I began to work on the edges. What I neglected to consider was that even though the table is small, the actual length around the perimeter is a long and twisting road. Getting any one area smooth was easy enough. Band saw and router marks were removed with a rasp. Rough rasp marks were removed with a smaller modeler’s rasp, and a cabinet scraper and #240-grit Abranet took care of the rest. The problem was compounded by the shape of the top, shelf and legs. Each turn meant a different direction to the grain. The little buds on the legs, and the cut-outs at the top of each leg went from edge grain to end grain and back again several times in just a few inches.  I planned on a Danish oil and wax finish, and wanted the edges as smooth as the top so that the color and texture would be consistent. Each different type of grain and each transition between grain types meant a slightly different approach, or a different angle of attack. The tools that worked well in some places would not fit in others so I had to improvise with a different tool or work backward or upside down. When I put the first coat of oil on the table, I was happy with how it looked, but at the same time relieved that it was over. The back door of our shop opens to the loading dock for our building. I like to work next to the open door for the fresh air and good light. The loading dock is also the quasi-official smoking area for the building, and the smokers like to peek into the shop to see what’s going on and to shoot the breeze. More than one asked me in the afternoon if I was still working on the same leg I had been working on in the morning. As the table got closer to completion, they became more complimentary, saying it was looking good and that I was really talented to be able to make something like that.  The ego boost felt good, but as the smokers went back to bookkeeping and planning production schedules and making calls, I trudged on around the edges. I had plenty of time to think, and I realized that talent or skill doesn't have much to do with it. What's important is keeping at it and staying consistent. Making an edge smooth is a basic woodworking task. When I was learning the trade, I was put to work making things smooth. When I had my own shop and hired someone, the new helper’s main task was the same chore. It doesn’t take much time or innate ability to learn to hold a tool or abrasive to the surface and push or pull until it is nice and smooth. It takes something else. The nice sounding word for what you need is perseverance. The honest word is stubbornness. I wanted the edges and the curves of this thing to have the same buttery appearance and feel as the flat surfaces of the top and legs. Sometimes it takes a lot of tedious work to get what you want. If I deserve any kind of compliment for this little table, it’s only because I stubbornly kept going long after I became bored and tired. My wife tells me I’m the most stubborn person she’s ever met. I’m inclined to agree with her, after I explain to her that in my family, we identify that character trait with the word nobility. – Robert W. Lang
Read other entries by Robert W. Lang
Friday, September 14, 2007 4:29:49 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Would Shaker Craftsman Freegift Wells Approve?
After joining the ranks as senior editor with Popular Woodworking magazine, I was informed that I needed to build a workbench. It seems the bench that was in the shop upon my arrival was taken to its original home, so that left me with a slab of old door bridged across two rolling carts.
Building a Shaker workbench immediately came to mind – Shaker due to the bank of drawers and cupboard storage below the solid-wood top. Of course, I didn’t need anything near the 12- or 13-foot workbenches from either the Hancock or Mt. Lebanon Shaker villages, but I like the look and feel of Shaker craftsmanship and those workbenches have always been something I wanted to build.
I’m not a huge workbench fanatic. I worked without a workbench for the first eight years of my woodworking career. My table saw outfeed table was where everything came together. Later, I brought in a couple inexpensive benches for a bit of teaching and discovered the concept of a workbench with vises. They’re nice to have.
Also, I’m a power-tool guy so the workbench isn’t the center of my woodworking. I need a bench that will hold my panels while I lay out and cut dovetails, provide a clamping area as I use the router, and provide a large flat surface to assemble pieces (if not just a vast landscape for storing or hiding the tools I’ve used throughout the day).
Knowing that my workbench would not face hard use everyday, I decided I would build a bench that would leave future generations questioning if the workbench was ever really used as a workbench – maybe it was viewed as a piece of furniture. I wanted to have fun but also have the results be useful and look good. I turned to my fondness for tiger maple (just the idea of using this hardwood for a workbench makes most woodworkers shake their collective head) and to achieve the Shaker feel, I decided paint was the answer so poplar provided the substrate.
I am in the process of building this workbench in the Popular Woodworking shop. I have the majority of the framing complete although there are a few details left. I have the beaded poplar panels set in the sides and across the back waiting for paint, after which a tiger maple moulding will hold the panels in position. And, the cupboard area needs to be completed; I guess designed and completed would be more apropos.
The drawers look good, right? They’re drawer fronts only. I have the balance of the drawer materials ready to go, so the only obstacle to completion is the dovetails and drawer bottoms. The tiger maple top is in process too. I decided to use a substantial amount of 4/4 material for the top (material that lacks a great amount of stripe).
The 30-something pieces will be a solid top by weeks' end. It has to be because we need to shoot the opening photograph for the magazine article on Tuesday of next week. And I still have to install the hardware, paint the poplar and add apply the finish on the tiger maple. It’s good to know that my “just-in-time” inventory system is alive and well (I hope?). Check out the December issue to see if I make it.
– Glen D. Huey
Read other entries by Glen D. Huey
Wednesday, September 12, 2007 2:22:03 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Tuesday, September 11, 2007
New : All Popular Woodworking 2001 Issues on one CD
This new, easy-to-navigate and searchable CD gives you instant access to all six 2001 issues of Popular Woodworking magazine – plus seven bonus articles of our favorite workshop articles from the last six years.
In 2001, we spent a lot of energy investigating how to improve
our own shop and yours. We published our first version of the $175
Workbench, a workbench that launched a series of workbenches by
Christopher Schwarz that were designed for different kinds of
woodworkers. David Thiel also built a mobile workbench with storage
cabinets beneath. And Steve Shanesy built a router table (for $50) that
attaches to any Workmate and ingeniously flips up so you can change
bits without stooping.
We also started tearing down some of the silly conventional
wisdom of the tool world, such as the preference for slow-speed
mortisers and the sloppy way people handle biscuit joiners. These
articles are just as relevant today as they were in 2001. (For a list of more highlights of the year, visit our back issues store.)
So if you like Popular Woodworking now but you didn't
subscribe in 2001, we think you'll like this new CD. On it, we've put
all six issues we published in 2001 in pdf format. All of the
advertisements have been removed. It's just 371 pages of pure
woodworking content – and completely text-searchable – for $19.96.
As a bonus, we've included on the CD a complete index of all
the stories in both a spreadsheet and word processing format. Plus,
we've included seven of our favorite workshop articles from the last
six years on this CD, including plans for five different workbenches
and two article on how to adapt your current bench to make it more
versatile.
The CD is in stock now and ready for immediate shipping. The CD
works with both PCs and Macintosh computers running Adobe Reader 6.0 or
later (Reader is a free program). Visit our back issues store to order
your copy of this exclusive disk now, or call 800-258-0929 and mention
item #PW2001
Tuesday, September 11, 2007 10:36:36 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Friday, September 07, 2007
Bosch Tools Visit Full
Bosch Tools will visit the Popular Woodworking shop on Wednesday, Sept. 19, from 6:30-9 p.m. for dinner and tool talk. After dinner, attendees will be able to try out some of the latest tools Bosch has to offer. Bosch representatives will be demonstrating: * Several 4100DG-09 10" benchtop table saws (with a new riving knife and split blade guard) * T4B Gravity Rise Miter Saw Stand equipped with a 10" sliding miter saw * Colt Palm Router * And a variety of 10.8-volt cordless tools Plus, each participant will receive a free 10" Pro Series table saw blade (and there may be a few other surprises as well!). The event is full, but if you're interested in being added to the waiting list, please click on my name below to shoot me an e-mail. — Megan Fitzpatrick
Friday, September 07, 2007 9:42:40 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Tag Teaming Google SketchUp
One of my goals for this year at Popular Woodworking magazine is to become sufficiently adept with a technical drawing program. We have to have simple, accurate line drawings of projects that are sent to artists who turn the plans into the works of art that you’ve come to rely on from the magazine.
Before joining Popular Woodworking I sometimes had plans on a scrap of wood in the shop only to transfer them to paper, or at least a file, prior to sending them to the editors. When necessary, I drew plans in Microsoft Publisher. They looked good to me, but they were “not to scale” (I had to add that phrase to my drawings).
Once inside the magazine publishing operation I discovered how nauseating my plans must have been. After the “not to scale” drawings are passed to the artists, it seems I spend a great deal of time on the phone trying to explain how the parts are assembled. Better plans – maybe even drawn to scale – would make this entire process less of a burden than it is.
A short time back Popular Woodworking Senior Editor Robert W. Lang introduced me to Google SketchUp. I’ve started to play with the free program and my drawings are coming along nicely. My current project (look for it in our December issue) should make at least one of our artists much happier – as well as shorten my phone time.
I was in the middle of working with SketchUp when Martin Sojka, the driving force behind LumberJocks, contacted me looking for Popular Woodworking to sponsor another contest like the Thorsen Project Challenge. After kicking the concept around with Editor Chris Schwarz, I approach Sojka with the idea.
That’s all you need to do with the founder of the LumberJocks. Sojka ran with the idea and just this week announced the newest contest (click here for details) – a contest in part sponsored by Popular Woodworking and the editors within. I say "in part" because Sojka also enlisted the team at Google to provide a free copy of SketchUp Pro (a $495 value) to be awarded randomly to one of the winners.
 
The Popular Woodworking magazine editors will judge the contest and along with that duty, each editor will provide a signed book or DVD as a prize for the top three entries – Bob Lang’s “The Complete Kitchen Cabinetmaker,” Megan Fitzpatrick’s “The Essential Pine Book,” Christopher Schwarz’s “Workbenches from Design & Theory to Construction & Use” (available late October 2007) and my “Fine Furniture for a Lifetime.” That’s four valuable resources of woodworking information awarded to each of the top three entries. In addition, LumberJocks will randomly select three entries to receive a coveted LumberJocks T-shirt.
 
There is no better time to join LumberJocks, if you haven’t already, and learn to draw with Google SketchUp. As the LumberJocks announcement states it’s “a powerful yet easy-to-learn 3D software tool that is currently being discussed in each woodworking forum or group”.
– Glen D. Huey
Read other entries by Glen D. Huey
Wednesday, September 05, 2007 9:40:29 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Stickley Poppy Table-Chisel in One Hand, On/Off Switch in the Other
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.
 I’ve never been able to understand why people try to divide woodworkers into two opposing camps, Normites versus Neanderthals. And I can't understand why anyone would buy into that and only work with one method to the exclusion of the other – power-tool users who will spend hours building jigs and setting up machines to avoid making one simple cut with a backsaw, or hand-tools users who claim some sort of moral superiority by chopping the waste from a dozen mortises by hand. I work with wood because I enjoy making things as well as I can. I don’t have as much time in the shop available as I would like so I want to work efficiently, but I don’t want to compromise the finished product. I consider myself fortunate that the men who taught me how to work with wood had a well-developed sense of when to pick up a router and when to pick up a plane. The project I’m working on, a reproduction of a Gustav Stickley “Poppy” table is an excellent example of what our publisher, Steve Shanesy, calls “blended woodworking” – using power tools and hand tools together. This is a curious little table. It has five legs, which makes it an interesting engineering problem as legs and stretchers, a shelf and a top all need to solidly connect. At the same time it’s an artistic expression. Every edge of the finished piece is curved, and the flat surfaces of the top and shelf are interrupted by sweeping carved curves. One of the parts, a pentagon-shaped hub that connects the legs and supports the top, is very small, but getting it the exact size and shape and fitting the joints is the keystone that holds the whole table together. This little block of wood will make the table straight and solid if it is right – or wobbly and twisted if it is less than perfect.  Because of its small size, I chose to cut the shape on the bandsaw, shoot the edges with a plane, and cut the dovetail sockets by hand. It is just too small to safely cut on the table saw and I couldn’t come up with a way to clamp it down and move a router in. I removed much of the waste in the sockets with a Forstner bit on the drill press. I could safely hold it to the drill-press table, and this made a flat reference surface at the bottom to guide the chisel. There are also dovetail sockets at the top of each leg. There, I used a small router with a fence to establish a straight back and flat bottom, and a few quick chisel cuts defined the acute corners where the circular router bit wouldn’t reach. I spent a few hours over the weekend refining the curves of the top and shelf with some rasps followed by a cabinet scraper. It was a lot of fun. I worked out on the patio, enjoying some fresh air and not annoying the neighbors (at least with my woodworking). The band-saw marks disappeared rather quickly, I recognized that many of the curves matched the profile of the rounded side of the rasp, and the scraper left a very nice surface. I thought about the old man who thought power tools were the answer to everything, and wondered how he would shape this edge. Later today, I’ll be shaping the legs. They’ve been rough cut on the band saw, and I’ll use a template (shaped and refined with my rasps) and a router to make them all symmetrical and identical.  Then, I'll finish carving the top by hand, scrape the flat surfaces smooth and gently round all the edges. I'm still up in the air about that last step; I might use a router and I might use a rasp. Woodworking is like solving a puzzle. Between the raw material and a finished piece, it’s all about choices: how to do this, why do that, what will create the best result in the least amount of time. If you eliminate half the options before you start, you eliminate half the fun. – Robert W. Lang
Read other entries by Robert W. Lang
Tuesday, September 04, 2007 2:18:46 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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