Quotulatiousness

April 12, 2017

How to Buy Rough Lumber

Filed under: Technology, Woodworking — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

Uploaded on 17 May 2011

Go to http://www.startwoodworking.com/getting-started for the complete series on how to build a nightstand. In episode one, learn how to buy rough lumber at a lumberyard or hardwood dealer. Visit http://www.FineWoodworking.com for more woodworking technique videos.

April 8, 2017

QotD: “Fake perfection” in woodworking

Filed under: Humour, Media, Politics, Quotations, Woodworking — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

After the 2016 election, I did what every sane American did: I eliminated the annoying people from my social media feeds on both the left and the right who had become singularly obsessed with politics. And then I took another healthy step: I eliminated feeds from the “fake perfectionists.”

Who are the “fake perfectionists?” You probably know them. They are the people who post beautiful photos of their work on social media and never seem to experience a single glitch. And, in the cases of schools with “fake perfectionist” feeds, they crow about the beauty, detail and perfection of the work being taught there.

To which I say: Hogwash.

Woodworking is about failure. In fact, I consider successful projects to be ones that simply endured less failure than usual. Stuff goes awry. Wood chips out. Table legs go into the burn pile. If you aren’t making errors – of the hand or of the mind – you are a robot and need to have your firmware downgraded.

Christopher Schwarz, “Failing Daily Since 1993”, The Christopher Schwarz Blog, 2017-03-16.

April 6, 2017

How to Turn Pulls Without a Lathe

Filed under: Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 11 Jun 2014

Learn how to create custom door and drawer pulls using your drill press.

March 29, 2017

How to set up & tune a tablesaw

Filed under: Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

Uploaded on 29 Jun 2008

Original post on our site with additional information, plans, questions & comments: http://www.thewoodwhisperer.com/videos/tablesaw-setup-tuneup-pt-1/

Our tools are no good to us if they aren’t tuned up properly. As the “heart” of the workshop, its crucial that our tablesaws are configured to perform their best. So whether you are setting up a new saw, or tuning up your current one, this video guide will get you where you need to be. Part 1 covers three different methods for aligning the miter slot to the blade as well as a simple technique for attaching and leveling the extension wings.

March 26, 2017

Woodworking Not So Common Sense

Filed under: Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 2 Sep 2015

As you can imagine in my line of work, I spend a lot of time helping new woodworkers solve problems. This gives me a unique perspective on the potential stumble point that most woodworkers will experience. Eventually, these things become woodworking common sense but until that time, I consider it woodworking not-so-common sense. So here are five tips that most woodworkers eventually figure out on their own.

March 22, 2017

Sue Rhodes – My Workbench

Filed under: Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 25 Feb 2017

Follow Sue on Instagram: @rhodes_woodwork

Workbench made by Sue Rhodes as her masterclass student project at the John McMahon School of Fine Woodworking, Nottinghamshire, UK (http://www.schoolofwoodworking.co.uk).

March 15, 2017

Making a Poor Man’s Mitre Box with Paul Sellers

Filed under: Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 11 Mar 2016

The best way to get hold of a mitre box that suits your needs is to make your own. In this video, Paul shows how he makes one in a matter of minutes that guarantees accuracy, especially when used in combination with a shooting board (link to shooting board video). They can be used for many things such as trim for tool chests, boxes and drawers as well as picture frames and the like.

March 13, 2017

French cleat storage system for hand tools

Filed under: Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 1 Mar 2013

A new method for storing my hand tools and allow me to get rid of my pegboard. I decided on using french cleats to hang screwdrivers, pliers and other items. It’s a really flexible system that lets you get creative customizing it.

March 7, 2017

7 Things To Get You Started Using A Table Saw | WOODWORKING BASICS

Filed under: Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 15 Jan 2016

If you want to make things out of wood, a table saw is one of the most useful tools you can own. If you are new to woodworking, this video will help get you started.

Kickback caught on camera video: https://youtu.be/u7sRrC2Jpp4

March 3, 2017

Sharpening a Chisel with Paul Sellers

Filed under: Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 27 Feb 2017

Chisels come from the manufacturer needing preparing or initialising as well sharpening. How do you check they are flat and get them sharp? Paul shows you the process he follows. This gets them to the level we need for crisp and accurate work.

For more information on these topics, see https://paulsellers.com or https://woodworkingmasterclasses.com

February 28, 2017

How to Make Medieval Stocks – Torture Your Friends and Family With This DIY Pillory

Filed under: History, Randomness, Technology, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 7 Oct 2016

You can make this fun DIY medieval torture device in a weekend! FREE PLANS and full article►► http://woodworking.formeremortals.net/2016/10/how-to-make-medieval-stocks-pillory/

February 1, 2017

Ace and the shitty tools of despair

Filed under: Humour, Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

Ace put up some shelves recently. He was not impressed with some of the tools he used:

I thought I had a drill that could drill (and drive screws) through studs. I did not. What I had was two pieces of shit which, combined together, made up a collection of shit that took up more space in my tool drawer than a single piece of shit would.

The things could not even push past the first eighth inch of drywall. The easiest part.

It’s like, “Hey, thanks Tool. Thanks for getting me past that first easy eighth inch. I’ll take it the rest of the way, now that you’ve gotten me off to such a swell start. You take a well-earned break, and get back to napping in that drawer. I’ll power through the rest of this with my forearms and my dinky little ratchet.”

I literally was just pushing on the drill to make a small starter hole for the screw, like it was a poorly-balanced nail with a pistol grip.

It’s a poor workman who blames his tools, but I think you can all agree I am a poor workman in the first place, and these really are shitty, shitty tools.

January 17, 2017

You might be a woodworker…

Filed under: Humour, Woodworking — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 17 Jan 2013

May 17, 2016

QotD: Iron, steel, and “stainless” steel

Filed under: Quotations, Randomness, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

As my father the industrial designer used to say, “Stainless steel is so called because it stains less than some other steels.” But give me, by preference, wrought iron from a puddling furnace, for I don’t like shiny. Unfortunately it is not made any more except on a small craft scale: but I have, in the kitchen of the High Doganate, a pair of Chinese scissors that I’ve owned nearly forever, which have never rusted and whose blades stay frightfully sharp (they were only once sharpened). They cost me some fraction of a dollar, back when forever began (some time in the 1970s).

Too, I have an ancient French chef’s knife, nearly ditto, made I think from exactly the steel that went into the Eiffel Tower. It holds an edge like nothing else in my cutlery drawer, and has a weight and balance that triggers the desire to chop vegetables and slice meat.

And there are nails in the wooden hulls of ships from past centuries which have not rusted, after generations of exposure to salt sea and storm. Craft, not technology, went into their composition: there were many stages of piling and rolling, each requiring practised human skill. (The monks in Yorkshire were making fine steels in the Middle Ages; and had also anticipated, by the fourteenth century, all the particulars of a modern blast furnace. But they gave up on that process because it did not yield the quality they demanded.)

What is sold today as “wrought iron” in garden fixtures, fences and gates, is fake: cheap steel with a “weatherproof” finish (a term like “stainless”) painted on. These vicious things are made by people who would never survive in a craft guild. (Though to be fair, they are wage slaves, and therefore each was “only following orders.”)

However, in the Greater Parkdale Area, on my walks, I can still visit with magnificent examples of the old craft, around certain public buildings — for it was lost to us only a couple of generations ago. These lift one’s heart. I can stand before the trolley stop at Osgoode Hall (the real one, not the Marxist-feminist law school named after it). Its fence and the old cow-gates warm the spirit, and raise the mind: if the makers sinned, I have prayed for them.

Almost everywhere else one looks in one’s modern urban environment, one sees fake. This, conversely, leaves the spirit cold, and lowers every moral, aesthetic, and intellectual expectation. To my mind it is sinful to call something what it is not — as is done in every “lifestyle” advertisement — and to my essentially mediaeval mind, the perpetrators ought to be punished in this world, as an act of charity. This could spare them retribution in the next.

David Warren, “For a Godly materialism”, Essays in Idleness, 2015-01-31.

May 1, 2016

QotD: The wonders of shellac

Filed under: Humour, Quotations, Woodworking — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The finish had been subject to extremes of sunlight and temperature and humidity. Not left outdoors, but I figured an attic or something. My neighbor later told me that it was left on an enclosed porch for many years. Bingo. The finish was missing here and there, but what there was looked like suede when you ran your finger across it. It was completely crisscrossed with fingermarks going every which way. I pawed at it a bit, running through the rusty filing cabinet of my mind to figure out what I was looking at. It came to me in a vision — all at once.

I knew it was shellac. Of all the dumb luck. No one had “fixed” this piece of furniture in 75 years. It didn’t have any new, improved finish that wouldn’t last but couldn’t be fixed. It wasn’t “eco,” another word for wasteful useless disposable plastic crap. The finish was made from the nasty ooze that comes out of a lac bug and dries on a tree branch. Your favorite Hindoo used to gather the stuff by putting tarps on the ground under trees where the lac bugs congregate, and then beating the limbs with sticks to make the amber flakes rain down. When you mix lac leavings with alcohol, you get shellac. It’s wonderful stuff.

Shellac sticks to anything. Anything sticks to shellac. Shellac can be diluted till there’s barely a whisper of lac left in it, but it still makes a coherent film. It seals knots. Shellac can be polished to mirror shine if you want to. A technique called French polishing is the finish you saw on Baron Percy Devonshire Smythe XXIVth’s harewood and mahogany gaming table back when King George was still gibbering on his throne. You can make shellac look like anything you want. Our dresser had pigment mixed in with it to make a kind of varnish stain that could be sprayed on in one coat as an all-purpose stain/finish.

Shellac is so safe for humans to handle that you can eat it, and you might have. They used to make the capsules that drugs and vitamins come in out of shellac. And the greatest thing about shellac, at least for me, is that no matter how old it is, it immediately dissolves and gets loose in the presence of alcohol, just like everyone at your office Christmas party.

Sippican Cottage, “Happy Birthday, Mrs. King”, Sippican Cottage, 2016-04-20.

« Newer PostsOlder Posts »

Powered by WordPress