Popular Woodworking Editors' Blog

• Router Essentials In this seven-article series we cover all the basics of router use. From choosing and setting up a tool, to selecting the right bit for the job, to making complex joints, you'll get the router foundations and advanced techniques you need.
• 32 All-time Best Router Tricks Here you'll find the most ingenious time- and money-saving tricks from Popular Woodworking readers.
• 18 Shop-made Jigs From cutting sliding dovetails to perfect circles to precise dados, you'll discover basic and advanced jigs you can easily make to get the most from your routers. Plus, we include complete plans for several workhorse router tables.

Tuesday, June 02, 2009 10:54:10 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0] 

I built a customer-ordered Shaker chest of drawers that I planned to deliver over the holiday weekend. Because this project is a future Popular Woodworking article, I had to get an "opener" shot before I left (that's what we call the pretty picture at the start of an article).

Once again I relied on my "Just in time" inventory system. Two days before the shoot I came into the shop to dye the chest. I mixed the dye and was ready to pour the mixture into my spray gun...but I could not find my gun. I seem to have lost my HVLP gun while moving between Marc Adams School of Woodworking (where I taught a class on finishing) and my shop.

I rooted around my shop like a pig hunting for truffles (probably not the best self-description to use). I found nothing. The Apollo Atomizer (A7500QT) spray gun I ordinarily use is on the injured reserve list and is out of the lineup until it's repaired. The older back-up gun I have is missing a few crucial parts that were scavenged to rehab the gun I misplaced. It turns out that I left the gun at the school in Franklin, Ind.

With my back to the wall, I purchased a new Earlex 5000 system for my shop. Popular Woodworking Editor Chris Schwarz has used the Earlex 5000 system and told me it did the job, but it's not the same as the more expensive HVLP units we’ve used. It was my turn to experience any differences.

Here's my take. The Earlex 5000 Spray Station is a two-stage turbine with a bleeder-type gun. I generally use an Apollo 1025 turbine (four-stage unit) with a non-bleeder spray gun. The Earlex is priced just below $300; the Apollo just tops $1,000.

The more stages in your system, the better the power coming from your turbine. The increased power allows the materials (aniline dye, shellac and lacquer, in my case) to be better atomized thus laying down a smoother coat of finish; to offset the lower power you simply thin the materials, but not too much.

A bigger difference is the bleeder gun vs. the non-bleeder gun. A bleeder gun blows air through the gun continuously. Whenever the turbine is turned on, the air blows. A non-bleeder gun allows the air to start and stop with the trigger action. Pull the trigger a little and the air flows.  Pull the trigger a lot to get the material to flow with the air. When you let go of the trigger, it all stops. All my guns are or have been non-bleeder types, so the idea of constant airflow always makes me wonder – I worry about blowing dust into the air and into my finish.

In using the Earlex unit, no junk found its way into my finish. The two-stage turbine worked fine after I thinned my lacquer (the viscosity of the water-based dye and the shellac thinned to a 1-1/2 pound cut was plenty to spray). I did have to work the spray pattern a bit differently than when I use the more expensive HVLP setup. I noticed the fan spray pattern on the Earlex gun was a little "dry" at the center of the fan, or more fluid was being pushed to the outside of the pattern. I had to keep the spray of the fan at a tighter overlap to get even coverage. If I moved as aggressively, as I do with the Apollo setup, a distinct streak would appear. (This is also why I change the fan-spray direction with each coat – spray one coat moving horizontally then the next coat with a vertical movement.)

I’m impressed with the Earlex 5000 system. It is a perfect starter unit and certainly a candidate for the woodworker who desires to spray finish, but doesn’t want the cost of the unit to equal that of a new 8" jointer. I would have no issues working with this system. However, due to the number of projects I finish each year, I think I’ll dedicate my Earlex HVLP unit to aniline dye and I’ll stick with my Apollo unit for my topcoat finishes.

I have to get that gun fixed!

— Glen D. Huey

Friday, May 29, 2009 1:17:02 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2] 

Hand tools and power tools – or should it read hand tools vs. power tools. Look at it this way: When the power goes out, you can keep going with your hand tools – either in the moonlight or the sunlight. Of course we now have battery-powered tools...

Jim Tolpin is an interesting fellow. He began his woodworking career in Maine building wooden boats. For those of you that have built wooden boats, helped to build a boat or have just read books about building boats, you'll understand that there isn't a straight line to be found. Hand tools were used almost exclusively, so Jim says this experience was invaluable to his woodworking education, and that good old hand-on experience is certainly the best teacher – if you can learn quickly and not make too many big mistakes, you can keep your job.

Then Jim moved to the West coast in the early 1970s to seek more boat-building opportunities. He found them, plus the chance to start his own cabinetmaking business. That's where the power tools came into use. Making lots of the same thing (say, cabinet sides) is best done using a table saw, where you can set a fence and let 'er rip, so to speak.

After a few years of running his own, mostly one-man shop. Jim came up with ways to streamline his woodworking business – from getting clients, keeping the money flowing, organizing his shop, building the projects and delivering and installing the cabinets. He decided that he would write this all down, which he did. It became his first book, "Working at Woodworking." Jim said that he wrote this book as a way of getting himself organized, then thought, "Why not help others to avoid all the mistakes he had made?"

When I had my own woodworking business, I bought his book. I didn't know who Jim Tolpin was, but as I stood in the bookstore thumbing through the pages of "Working at Woodworking," I knew this was the book that would help me get organized (19 years later, I'm still trying to "get organized", but that's another story). I was struggling to keep things afloat, the work wasn't getting done as efficiently as it could, and I was working too many hours for  too little pay.

Fast forward a few years. To give it the new life it deserved, "Working at Woodworking" was retitled, revised and updated by Jim with color photos, new illustrations and even more information. Jim Tolpin's Guide to Becoming a Professional Cabinetmaker was born. It's now the go-to book for all woodworkers who want to start their own successful businesses.

One of the power tools Jim recommends woodworkers to buy first is a table saw. In his book, Table Saw Magic, 2nd Edition, Jim shows you why. The table saw can take the place of a shaper and, in most cases, the band saw. Yes, the table saw can cut circles, make mouldings, cut crisp miters, hack through rough lumber, make raised panels, mortise-and-tenon joints (yes, even the mortises), sand boards – and it has been known to slice bread. "Table Saw Magic" gives you all the information needed to keep your table saw running smoothly and doing all kinds of tricks you didn't think it knew how to do.

Woodworker's BookShop is featuring both of these books right now, so purchase them while the sale lasts. You'll be glad you did.

Jim decided that writing could be way to make a living without having to lift tons of wood every day. It was a good decision, both for him and all us who have purchased and read his books. Jim has gone on to write a dozen books about woodworking, which have sold over 750,000 copies combined.

A couple years ago, Jim and some of his buddies started a The Port Townsend School of Woodworking, in Port Townsend, Wash. Jim teaches classes on how to care for and use woodworking hand tools. He knows what he's talking about, having learned from all those years of boat building.

One thing I should mention about Jim – he reads every book he can find about woodworking – from 100-year old texts to books on the latest new tool or technique. Name a title and he's probably read it – and more than likely has it in his personal library.

It's been a pleasure for us here at Popular Woodworking Books to work with Jim. We have two more books from him in the works (one about why cottages are so warm and inviting as homes, and the other about the care, feeding and how-tos of woodworking hand tools.) Both books are due out in 2010.

If you attend Woodworking in America: Furniture Construction and Design (Aug 14-16 in Pheasant Run, Ill.), you'll have the chance to meet Jim and learn how the design of your projects drives the construction techniques – and how the choice of power tools or hand tools can change the process.

— Jim Stack, Senior Editor, Popular Woodworking books

Tuesday, May 19, 2009 9:19:32 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1] 

Franklin International stock is not publicly traded – a crying shame ’cause I could use a no-fail get-rich-quick plan. Editor Christopher Schwarz is building another bench; Franklin International makes TiteBond Glue.

In theory, I’m building a bench. When I first began dabbling in woodworking a few years ago, Chris gifted me what I think was his first bench (maybe it was his second; it’s hard to keep them all straight). Since then, I’ve gravitated toward hand tools, but often struggle with workholding on my bench that’s better-suited to power tools. So when he’s not in the middle of a project (and sometimes when he is), I sneak over to Chris’s Roubo where the surface is long and level, and the workholding is easy.

This new bench, which Chris has written about on the Woodworking Magazine blog, is being made from LVL (laminated veneer lumber). Chris has never worked with the product before, and that’s just too much temptation for him to resist. And I’m happy to let him lift, joint and rip these heavy, splintery, 8'-long behemoths – I seriously doubt I could do the work. I’m content to serve as an outfeed table, clamp-getter, glue carrier…What I didn’t count on was having to wipe up a gallon of glue from the floor. Seriously. A gallon. After ripping the LVL, we laminated it back together in four-piece chunks with the plies facing up (and down) – in large part because it looks cool that way. Chris poured the glue, and I spread it with a 4" roller.

Chris admits he’s often been accused of having a glue problem. But in his defense, he says he’s experienced only one de-lamination in all his years of building benches – and that one de-lam was because he was young and foolish…and took the poor advice of a more experienced but parsimonious woodworker. So now, he pours on the glue. Lots of glue. You know how when you glue up a panel and you look for tiny beads of squeeze-out along the seam? Apparently, when making a benchtop, what you’re looking for is Angel Falls.

— Megan Fitzpatrick

Thursday, May 14, 2009 4:56:06 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [7] 

For an upcoming article, I was researching turpentine when I followed a trail to a Valdosta State University web site. The web site is titled  “Faces” in the Piney Woods: Traditions of Turpentine in South Georgia. It is an oral history project of the South Georgia Folklife Project at the University. The term faces originated from the process that “turpentiners” went through to get the gum (tar) from the Slash Pine and Longleaf Pine trees. Cuts and scrapes in the bark resulted in a simplified “cat face” appearing on the trunk.

At one time, Georgia was the leader in extracting turpentine and rosin from the collected gum. It was a large industry that was especially important from the late 1800s through the mid-1900s. In 2001 on August 9th, Major Phillips collected the last commercial bucket of gum in Georgia – it marked the end of domestic turpentining in the United States.

If the process of making turpentine is not something you’ve seen or studied – it’s new to me – then here’s a short lesson. (Sorry for the fuzzy photos. They were taken from video on the Valdosta State University web site.)
 
Turpentine (and rosin) is distilled from gum that’s collected from trees. To collect the gum, workers would begin by “pushing down” the bark of the tree. The work began in late winter, sometime in February or March. Pushing down involved a worker using a bush axe to clean the bark off a tree and provide an area to set up and collect the gum.

After the trunk was clean, a set of tins was nailed to the trunk. The tins were made up of an apron and a gutter. The apron was positioned level and the gutter angled into the apron. Five nails held everything in place. A cup – a collector that looked more like a pan for baking bread than a cup – was held just under the apron, again with nails. (Ever wonder why you find odd pieces of metal in some of your lumber!)

Next the tree would be “Streaked.” Done in late March or early April, a cut was made just above the tins. A little farther up the trunk, workers would use a hack to form a v-shaped notch across the cleaned area. The scraped cut is where the gum would ooze out of the tree. Each week a new scrape was added to the tree. Each scrape moved up the trunk. At the start of each year, the tins were placed higher up the tree, marking the trunk year by year. Each tree produced gum for five years.



“Dipping” a tree was when the cup was emptied into a bucket. The gum was scraped into a bucket with a paddle. The cleaned cup would then be re-positioned for the next amount of gum.The amount of gum from the tree would vary depending on the season, but once the cup was filled, the setup would have to be dipped. Two streaks would produce about a 1/2 gallon of gum in the summertime.

Buckets (recycled nail kegs) held about 20 cups (not a liquid measurement) of gum. The buckets were then dumped into barrels. The barrels, at least those shown in the video, were painted a specific color for identification purposes and held eight buckets of gum, or 435 pounds of crude tar. (Before the advent of steel barrels, oak barrels were used. The wooden barrels were stored in a waterhole to keep the staves tight.)

The gum was then heated in a still (remember Granny Clampet’s still). The heat would produce steam. As the steam moved through a length of coil, it would condensate and fill barrels with a water/turpentine mixture. Because turpentine is lighter than water, the solvent would reside at the top of a barrel and be drained off the water. We have turpentine.

I’ll bet you think differently the next time you pour turpentine.

Thursday, May 14, 2009 1:23:48 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [3] 

The keynote speaker for the Woodworking in American Design conference is Thomas Moser of Thos. Moser Cabinetmakers. Most of us were first introduced to Moser as we read his books. In fact, I remember in my early teens thumbing through my Dad’s copy of Moser's “How to Build Shaker Furniture”. Throughout the years I’ve returned to that book many times.

Like most of us who dabble in woodworking, Moser is good with his hands. He learned the skill by watching and working with his father. As a hobbyist, Moser decided to supplement his income by rehabbing old furniture – a great way to learn and understand furniture design, and to recognize what methods of construction work and what methods don’t. He purchased pieces, then cleaned, repaired and refinished those pieces in his home shop before selling them for profit.

Later, Moser returned to school where he earned a bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York and began a high school teaching career in Michigan. After that, it was on to universities and colleges to earn a master’s degree and a doctorate in Speech Communications. (You know he’ll be an excellent speaker!) All the while, he kept a home workshop up and running to enjoy woodworking.

In the early 1970s, while teaching at Bates College in Maine, Thomas decided it was time to walk away from teaching and begin a new career. In 1973, the Mosers (Thomas and his wife, Mary) opened Thos. Moser Cabinetmakers. The idea was to build one-of-a-kind furniture in Maine. He transformed his hobby into a business. A big business.

At the beginning, his furniture looked similar to the many designs and styles he had worked with and studied throughout the years: Shaker, Queen Anne and others. But that wasn’t the only work Thos. Moser Cabinetmakers did. The company's motto was, "If it's made of wood, we can do it."

During the past 35 years, some of Moser’s designs veered from those early influences and he began to develop a distinct style with a more contemporary look.  Also, the company has grown from a one-man enterprise to employ nearly 100 people. In and amongst that family of employees are three of his four sons – the one son who has moved on is also involved in a woodworking-related business. Today, Thos. Moser Cabinetmakers operates seven showrooms located in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago and Freeport, Maine.

He’ll be joining us at Woodworking in America to talk about his journey. Not only will he share experiences found while building his business, but also his path along the design spectrum. For more information and to get a look at his company’s designs, visit thosmoser.com.

— Glen D. Huey

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 11:39:49 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0] 

With measuring devices, you don’t often find a wholly new tool. And this one is so complete a departure in both design and use from that which it improves on. When I first saw the Galbert Caliper its use was not even apparent at first. Let’s face it – most “new” tools are simply evolved from their predecessors. It’s rare that you find an entirely new species. But such is the case with this remarkable new spindle turning measuring tool.

With a traditional turning caliper, you set the opening by measuring, or with a comparative gauging device such as a mating part. The Galbert Caliper doesn’t require a pre-measured size. The user can simply read the current cutting diameter right on the caliper, by following the built-in scale. Want 1"? With the parting tool cutting and the caliper riding in the kerf of the cut, you simply stop cutting when the scale indicator reads 1". Done.

What’s truly remarkable about this tool is that you can move continuously along a turning to cut varied-diameter dimensions using just this one tool. You never need to stop and change caliper dimensions, or have several calipers already set to the dimensions you need, so your work speeds along quickly. You can see this tool in action here.

The inventor, Peter Galbert, is a Windsor chairmaker and his need for speed as a production spindle turner led him to create this clever device. He calls it “the turner’s tape measure” and that’s an apt description. With the tool engaged in the spinning work, it can measure in the 2-1/2" to 3/4" range. To measure between 1/2" and 3/4", you have to remove the parting tool from the work.

The tool is very well made and can be easily calibrated should it come out of register. The Galbert Caliper is currently available at an introductory price of $79.50 plus shipping. According to the Galbert web site, that price will change to $124.99 on July 1, 2009. I was frankly shocked at the introductory price. The soon-to-be-regular price is in the neighborhood of what I expected – and it’s worth it.

— Steve Shanesy

Steve Shanesy is the publisher and editorial director of Popular Woodworking and Woodworking Magazine, and an avid and accomplished turner. His new DVD, “Turning Basics for Furniture Makers,” will be available in June.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 11:32:42 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0] 

So this was supposed to be an at least vaguely amusing post about Woodworker's Safety Week. You see, Kari Hultman (a.k.a. The Village Carpenter), posted a funny blog entry in honor of Safety Week with pictures of her dogs.

Now, you could say that I'm a bit of an ailurophile – so I came up with an idea (in retrospect, it was an idea doomed from the start), to use one of my cats' paws as if it were a toothing plane. So just before we left work today, Editor Christopher Schwarz (also a cat lover) took a few passes on a piece of pine with a toothing plane, and I took it home to mock up a picture of my youngest cat scratching furrows in the board, then a picture of her claws with little plastic sleeves (cut from coffee stirrers) to show how to properly store your pawlane (say it fast -- it almost works) when it's not in use.

Yeah, that didn't work so well. I have furrows in my arm instead.

— Megan Fitzpatrick

Friday, May 08, 2009 9:06:52 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [3]