Woodworking

America’s oldest and largest woodworking retailer, Woodcraft Supply, opened a second store in Boston on April 22 at 3 Walpole Park South.  This new 10,000 square foot store is located two miles north of Gillette Stadium, New England’s premier sports, entertainment and event venue which is home to the New England Patriots NFL football team. “In opening this store our goal is to make it more convenient for, and to better service, both the woodworking hobbyist and the professional, in the southern Boston, Cape Cod, and northern Rhode Island market areas,” Gary Lombard, Woodcraft vice president for retail/franchise development, said.  “Our Woburn store currently serves the north side of Boston, so we thought this location would complement its operation and offer easy access to Woodcraft in the greater Boston area.” The new Walpole store offers an extensive display of quality woodworking equipment and supplies for building cabinets and furniture, woodturning, woodcarving — anything involving working wood.  Check out the store’s interior by viewing the video on their store website.  Woodworkers will also be able to take classes at Boston – Walpole as they do at the other Woodcraft stores. Manager Jerry Klevas has an extensive woodworking background that includes building custom furniture in his own shop prior to joining the Rhode Island Woodcraft store, first as assistant manager and then as manager until the store closed after the owners did not renew their franchise.  Some of Jerry’s work includes this Grandfather clock, crib and blanket chest. “The thing I miss the most since the Rhode Island Woodcraft store closed is the interaction I had with the friends I made while working there. I really can’t say they were just customers, because I got to know a great many of them over the 5 1/2 years, helping with tool selection, plans, techniques and such along the way,” Klevas said. “I look forward to seeing these friends again and to making new ones.” Jerry’s assistant manager is Wally Dewey.  Wally is a woodturner and woodworker who likes to build cabinets and furniture.  In addition he owns his own business called Monkey Bars Garage Storage Solutions.  Wally said, “This new Woodcraft store has a warehouse look to it with it’s high ceiling structure that really “wows” the customers.  We’re not sure how we are going to use this extra space yet, but we’ll be sure to come up with something creative.” So be sure to not only check out all that the new store has to offer, but also get to know your knowledgeable Walpole Woodcraft team. Tommy MacDonald, host of the Boston-based public television show Rough Cut –Woodworking with Tommy Mac, showed up soon after the store opened to present Klevas with a “store warming” gift – a laminated coat rack he made for his season two show.  The rack features different species of wood combined using stack lamination.  Tommy also posted a comment on the Rough Cut  Facebook page:  “This sure is awesome!! 10,000 square feet!!  This place is my new home base … Woo-hoo!!!” Let’s take a tour with Aaron Smith, Walpole’s store Social Media Specialist. Now our RFC, Scott Dixon kindly refers to Aaron’s title as the Social Media Store Comedian.  In this video by Aaron you will see why, as he shows you how to get to the new store.  We know you will be in a huge hurry to visit, but please be sure to follow the speed limits! For information about store hours, location or products, contact the Boston – Walpole store at (508) 668-2413 or visit the store website. Be sure to check out, “LIKE” and post on Walpole’s new Facebook page. To learn more about Woodcraft, the industry leader in providing a wide variety of top quality products, educational opportunities and one-on-one guidance to woodworkers of all skill levels, call (800) 535-4482 or visit www.woodcraft.com. For more information abou

When a cutting board gets a little past its use by date.. Resurface it… Oil it… Voile…

This is a pie crust table that sat in my parents living room for as long as I can remember. For the last few years it has sat in my sister’s garage. When she pulled it out, this was its condition. Is there any chance of salvaging it. I’m pretty sure it’s mahogany veneer and core. The veneer on the bottom has come loose but I think I can deal with that. What is making me dubious is that the bottom tier has curled on one side. The other side and the top tier are still flat. My initial thought was to clamp a couple sets of cauls across it and tighten over time. Is that approach going to be effective?

Posted by DaveRichards SketchUp 2013 was released today. You can download the new versions, Pro and SketchUp Make (the free version) from the SketchUp site.  There are many under-the-hood improvements in the new versions...

Foot powered vehicle I made for a Holloween Festival at our church in 2011. It is made with from unused particle board shelving material (16”X3/4” for the sides) that I inherited from the previous owner of our home. I also reinforced the sides with 3/4” pine plywood for the car sides to add strength. The remainder is 3/4” plywood and 2X2’s. The car is put together in a way that I can easily take it apart and store (put in attic space above my garage) using dowels and other “prehistoric joinery”. The kids who came to the event had a blast and lots of pictures were taken, it was fun to hear the kids ask “what is that?” and the parents having to explain what it was and the cartoon etc. Each wheel consists of two circles cut out with a bandsaw with a smaller square glued to the inside and supported together by 1X2” (8) pine slats that are connected to the edges of the square. Then they were covered with the thin paint canvas material used to protect floors when painting walls in the house. I have been tossing the idea around to convert it into a toddle bed as it is now taking up valuable shop space. The photos were taken while prepping for a yard sale at our home. The car alone brought lots of visitors to the yard sale. I may have to keep it around just for that reason alone! :) Just thought it would give a few people some smiles today.

I spend a lot of time pouring over blueprints in my office. I also struggle with some sciatic pain from sitting too long. Thus was born the need to have a standup desktop in my office. I have a short gun safe in the corner that is just the right height but the top is a bumpy powdercoat fiinish. So I built a flat top with a scrap piece of melamine coated particle board leftover from a closet project. Because the surface was a little scratched up, I decided to laminate it with an old blueprint. A good coat of spray adhesive to both surfaces, wrapped the plan around the corners then applied the edging cleats (1x maple). I sprayed on several coats of clear lacquer, and may need to add a few more coats depending on how it holds up under use. Since the safe is already a good height, I did not see the need to tip the surface up, but is always an option I can add later. The size is about 24” wide and 20” deep. Most of the plans I have to analyze are only 8.5” x 11” or 17”. If I need to do full size 24”x36” blueprints, I have plenty of space at my sit down desk.

So I bought a barely used Craftsman jointer recently. Probably the same model this fellow lumberjocker shared. I’ve made sure that the fence is at an exact right angle to the bed, and I’ve made sure that the outfeed table is exactly level with the blade height. Here is my problem. I can’t figure out how to use the stinking thing properly. I’ve watched different videos, including Norm on NYW and TWW, but still not having good results. Here’s the problem. As I run lumber through the jointer, I try to keep even pressure, then once a foot or so passes over blade, I shift my pressure more on the outfeed table side. But when I do that, the wood lifts up a bit and the blade no longer makes any contact with the wood. If I put pressure on the back of the wood, I can still get some contact between the blades and the wood, but that technique seems to be counter to all the instructions I’ve seen. And when I do that, I don’t seem to be getting a very good cut. Is it my technique? the machine? My set up of the machine? Or a bit of all? I’ve ended up just falling back on my hand tools, but that is pretty slow when you’ve got a lot of lumber and I’m not all that great yet at precision hand tool work. Ideas?

My latest project I made for a friend at work.

I got a message from a fellow LJ recently concerning wood lathes. If you cant tell I like mechanical stuff. wood working equipment in particular and at the top of the stack is wood turning equipment. My dad started turning professionally in the late forties. He got involved in other things on the side, case goods, waterbeds, even bar lighting, but wood turning was his niche’. through the years he got many different types of turning equipment cam actuated machines, multi spindle machines small backknife machines, copy lathes and attachments etc. they all went their way but the original atlas conversion lathe is still around. I was doing retrofits on machine tools from NC to CNC and tried to get him to go for CNC on a lathe build he refused and continued on as he always had. When i asked him why he would say “No one else does it the way I do it…it works!” Over the years I have looked for equipment that duplicated his process I have found none. The machine that comes the closest is the Pinnacle from Laguna a well thought out machine. This venue taps into a vast base of exposure. As I mentioned I am a machine nut. If you wouldn’t mind, post pictures of unique, interesting, weird turning machines you have seen, operated, etc.

Recently, a woodworker emailed us looking for a solution to a problem he was having with the alignment and fitment of boxes, drawers and carcass work such as blanket chests, bookcases and chests of drawers, using dovetails for the case and drawer joinery. He also mentioned his interests in small box making and again, enjoys dovetail joinery for those as well. The Long Grain Shooter, shown in left hand. The alignment and fitment issue was, that once the casework was assembled, his carcass or boxes were not square from top to bottom, and the joinery would either bind, go together under extreme stress, sometimes fracturing pins or would not sit square on a flat surface when the box or casework was placed on the edges, even though the dimensional widths of the boards were perfectly the same. All this was due to mis-alignment from un-square ends on the dovetailed boards. He also wanted to make small boxes and trays that use compound dovetail joinery, so as to create tapered sides and ends, but again could not get the angles consistently precise enough for the box to sit flat on the table once assembled, if it would align once assembled. This is a situation that reveals itself during assembly, and exposes the fact that angles are not matching and complimentary to squareness. The last joint will expose the cumulative error if we are off even a little. This process can be deceiving, because each joint when examined separately will assemble and look like it should. The problem comes to light as the box comes together and the last joint will not align. This is all very disheartening, and what makes it worse is that the dovetails themselves are not responsible for this kind of misalignment, nor can they correct it. It is all about having the required matching angles on each end of the board in the first place, and this is necessary before before the joinery is laid out or cut. His questions were, would a shooting board help this, Did we make shooting boards that will address this issue in scale to the size of each project, and is there a fence that can handle angled tapers with repeatability? The answers are Yes, Yes, and Yes. With dovetail Joinery, either perfect squareness or the correct angle needed has to be precisely in place on each end of every board prior to dovetail lay out or cutting. Shooting each board’s end to the correct angle first is essential. The Ultra Shooter, shown in right hand. Our standard sized shooting board line from Basic through Ultra Shooter, and our molding style boards will handle this squaring task out to about 11 inch board widths. For Carcass sized work which only rarely exceeds 18 – 24 inches, our Long Grain Shooter is the go to shooting board. With it you can easily shoot wide end grain in the 24 inch width range and likely to 26 inches with care. Precision joinery on casework is not a problem with the Long Grain Shooter in your tool arsenal. the Any Angle Fence. For shooting tapered or compound dovetails, we have an accessory fence called the Any Angle Fence. It is a three piece fence that will bolt directly to any mounting point on our Basic through Ultra Shooter Style boards, as well as the Long Grain Shooter and Kanna Shooter style boards. What the Any Angle Fence makes possible is the ability to shoot any angle in between the shooting boards standard mount points and it is simply fixtured to the shooting board by the pivot point on the chute end, and to the board and bench on the swing side with an F clamp. The fence comes with a low 1-inch face, and a tall 1-23/32 inch face which allow for shooting thin or thick stock to the full capacity of a 2 inch plane iron on our boards. Each fence face and base are flattened to 0.001 inch, and the fence faces free float between the work piece and the fence base and zero on the chute of the board so as to reduce blowout on the work piece. This fence can be set repeatably and accurately using quality angle measuring tool