Quotulatiousness

April 2, 2018

The amateur woodworker’s six stages of tool addiction

Filed under: Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Christopher Schwarz explains the painful path most amateur woodworkers follow as they begin gathering tools:

Get Tools, Any Tools
When I first decided to make furniture, I knew I needed tools. So I went to a 24-hour Walmart in the middle of the night and bought a set of tools that looked useful, including a chisel, a block plane, a level, a coping saw and a miter box saw. I had no idea how to use them, but they looked like things a furniture-maker would own (as opposed to a plumber).

The next day I started to make some shutters for our house, and realized I needed other tools. So I went to the hardware store and picked up another pile of junk. This cycle continued for a long time until I decided to start reading about woodworking instead of making things up as I went along.

Obsess Over Statistics
You get every catalog out there. You find every website that sells tools and machinery. You discover tool reviews – wait there’s something better than a Walmart block plane? And you discover statistics. Table flatness, arbor runout, Rockwell hardness, the different grades of carbide.

The idea is that if you can process all of these statistics, you will be able to pick the best tools to replace your dimestore tools.

[…]

Buy Jigs to Replace Skills
The next two stages are dangerous because if you get stuck in one of them, you can go bankrupt. During the “jig” phase, you start using your statistically perfect tools and realize there is something missing because your results suck.

It can’t be the tool. You did all the reading, and it is the best one out there. What’s missing is skill, but you conclude that what is missing are the jigs and accessories.

Example: Your first hand-cut dovetails look terrible, so you buy a router and an entry-level commercial jig. After weeks of messing with the jig, your dovetails look better but they are so uniform that they look boring.

So you dip back into your statistics phase and read all about dovetail jigs and buy a commercial jig that allows you to variably space your tails. But this jig only has an 18” capacity, so….

[…]

Upgrade & Stockpile
As you become more skilled, you enter the most dangerous phase of all. This is the phase where you find you have some success with a tool, such as a shoulder plane, and so you buy seven examples of it to find the one you like the best. Different sizes, different grips, different makers.

You upgrade your benchtop table saw because you can finally understand the benefits of a contractor or cabinet saw. You end up with four smoothing planes, six routers and a huge credit card bill. You start comparing scratch awls and screwdrivers. You divert your online tool purchases to your workplace so your spouse doesn’t notice.

On the bright side, there is hope, or as he calls it the “Great Psychic Break”, followed (for the fortunate) by the “Please, No More Tools” phase of spiritual enlightenment.

January 25, 2018

What Can You Do With a Miter Saw? Should You Get One? | WOODWORKING BASICS

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

Steve Ramsey – Woodworking for Mere Mortals
Published on 28 Jul 2017

Learn what you need to know to get started using a miter saw for woodworking.

January 11, 2018

5 Tips For A Small Wood Workshop – making the most of your space

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

Rag ‘n’ Bone Brown
Published on 30 Jul 2016

Five tips for making the most of the space in your small workshop.

Here are links to the other workshop project videos I mentioned:
Making a stand/mobile base for the electric planer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP0X7F…
Making a workbench http://goo.gl/Z521Dk
Making a mitre saw station part 1 http://goo.gl/s4vtvC
Making a mitre saw station part 2 http://goo.gl/4N4iX5

Thanks for watching! Please subscribe!

http://www.ragnbonebrown.com

August 26, 2017

Building a French Cleat System for Power Tools

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

Published on 26 Jul 2015

For a written tutorial check out my blog at http://wilkerdos.com/2015/07/power-tool-french-cleat-system/

Follow me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/wilkerdos

Visit Triton’s homepage: http://www.tritontools.com

This week I build individual holders for each one of my power tools so that I can store them on a French cleat system.

July 23, 2017

Setting-up Your First Woodworking Shop Pt. 2

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

Published on 21 Jun 2014

http://HomegrownFurniture.com Create your very first woodworking shop for under five hundred dollars. In part two of this video series, woodworker Jim Thompson offers more workshop tool tips for a new furniture builder on a budget. Jim goes over popular, low-cost options for a router, clamps and a sander.

July 13, 2017

Setting-up Your First Woodworking Shop Pt. 1

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

Published on 7 Jun 2014

http://HomegrownFurniture.com Create your own woodworking shop from scratch. In part one of this video series, woodworker Jim Thompson helps you build your very first woodworking workshop. Jim includes buying tips, craigslist tactics and tool recommendations for a new woodworker on a budget.

June 27, 2017

What Can You Do With a Jigsaw? A Lot! | WOODWORKING BASICS

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

Published on 21 Oct 2016

A lot of people think that they need a lot of big, expensive stationary tools for woodworking. If you don’t have a lot of space or money, a jigsaw is an amazing tool that can make almost all the cuts you need. Full article► http://bit.ly/JigsawBasics

May 11, 2017

Pocket holes vs. mortise and tenon joints

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

Published on 24 Feb 2015

Before commenting about glue, please see the followup: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMi6W2cvw7g

More about these tests here:
http://woodgears.ca/joint_strength/pockethole.html

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 8, 2012

Woolley: We need power tools (and cars) for girls

Filed under: Economics, Randomness, Technology, Tools — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:59

Over at the Worthwhile Canadian Initiative blog, Frances Woolley marks International Women’s Day:

Goods are becoming ever more specialized. Everything from baby diapers to multivitamins is now dispensed in gender- and age-appropriate models. Yes, it makes sense to have his and hers jeans. But gender appropriate soft-drinks? Does the average guy’s masculinity really need to be bolstered by buying Coke Zero instead of Diet Coke?

The profitability of his and hers products is partly due to price discrimination. The local hair salon charges women more than men because women are prepared to pay $50 or $60 to get their hair cut. Men asked to pay that price would just walk across the road to the barber shop that charges $15 for a short back-and-sides.

[. . .]

Second, gender differentiated power tools. I have small hands. My palm sander doesn’t fit into my palm — it’s more like a two-handed sander. I’d love to get a new drill, but most have such a large grip that I can barely hold them. It’s not just a gender issue — men’s hands come in all sorts of different sizes, too. How can women be expected to share equally in home repair duties when every power tool is the wrong size for their hands?

Finally, I’d like to see more cars built with features that appeal to women. I’ve heard — but I don’t know if this is true — that as soon as a particular model of car is perceived as being “girly,” men won’t buy it. Since men still constitute the majority of car buyers, sales collapse. I’ve heard this offered as an explanation of the lack of cars like the Smart car — two person vehicles that use hardly any gas, and are easy to drive and park on city streets. Smart cars are just too cute, and cute=girly, and girly is the automotive kiss of death. But what is the cost of this pursuit of masculinity?

September 10, 2010

More on that list of tools you don’t need

Filed under: Randomness, Tools — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:27

Jon, my former virtual landlord, wanted to respond to this post:

Your post — here — is amusing. I am guessing, though, that you and Sippican Cottage just don’t do certain things around the house. Taking SC’s easy ones . . .

Sledgehammer — I use mine to set stakes around trees and shrubs.

Center Punch — You don’t need the one shown in the Pop Crap article (which has a shank similar to that of a cold chisel, which makes me think the one they show there is for masonry work), but a centre punch is helpful for drilling. I punch the centres of all my drilled holes, even those that I’m doing on the drill press. I also use a centre punch when mounting hardware, such as hinges, to wood.

Combination wrench — I guess you guys don’t do any plumbing, or anything with bolts that go completely through an object. You can’t reach everything with a socket — a socket will not undo the nut on a toilet’s feed pipe (unless, of couse, you break away the toilet’s tank so that you can get to the nut from the top). And you sometimes need to hold the bolt head in place while you crank on the nut with a socket. I have a good set of combination wrenches and use them a lot on our bikes and playground equipment. I also have a cheap set that came with my socket set that’s convenient to have with the sockets, but I don’t think they will stand up to prolonged use. The socket set itself is an interesting item that would make Sippican Cottage laugh out loud: it’s a 300-some-odd-piece set with 1/4″, 3/8″, and 1/2″ drives and sockets. I see the need for 1/4″ and 3/8″ and use both frequently. If I ever need to install industrial-grade light standards or build a highway overpass, I guess the 1/2″ set will come in handy.

But hey — it was on sale!

Jigsaw — Depends on what you are doing. I use mine to rough out stuff that I am going to finish with a template on the router table. If I had a bandsaw, I’d use that instead. I did not have $700 to drop on a bandsaw, so I bought this $50 item instead.

Tin Snips — you need these if you do home repairs involving metal. I’ve used mine to repair or replace exhaust vents, install anti-bird mesh in said vents, replace the clothes dryer exhaust tubing, and to do repairs to aluminum downspouts. I’ve also used them to open those freakin’ polycarbonate clamshell packages that all electronics and toys seem to come in. They are the only way I can get into those things without slicing up my hands on the packaging.

Machinist Vise — this is the only vise I have at the moment. A real woodworker may not need one of these, but I have found mine to be handy.

I wonder how many bench planes Sippican Cottage has . . .

Humph.

As Gerard Vanderleun points out in the comments to the original Sippican Cottage post, “I love this fisking more than I love the dream of an Obama recall. It gets worse since Yahoo evidently chopped this down from the original 50 by Logan. That’s a schmo at the beginning and a know-nothing Yahoo intern chopping at the end. De-licious.

September 7, 2010

A “terrific, haphazard mess of twenty arbitrary thingamabobs”

Filed under: Humour, Randomness, Tools — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:57

I’m not much of a woodworker, so I don’t quite have the necessary gravitas to manage a proper takedown like SippicanCottage:

It’s a shameful pleasure of mine, I admit it. I love to read lists of tools randomly drawn from a Home Depot flyer, written by people that can’t write, aimed at people that don’t make anything but reservations. Popular Mechanics doesn’t disappoint with their: Tools Everyone Should Own. It’s a terrific, haphazard mess of twenty arbitrary thingamabobs, written in the breathless prose usually reserved for paperbacks with pictures of Fabio on their cover and the tears of countless overweight data entry clerks dappling the pages.

OK, first, let’s take care of the easy stuff:

  • Sledgehammer – You don’t need that
  • Center Punch – You don’t need that
  • Combination wrench – Singular? Never mind. The item just before it is a socket wrench set. You don’t need both. And they put an adjustable wrench on the list, too. How many nuts you got, Willis? Are they all loose?
  • Jigsaw – You don’t need that. And Jig Saw is two words.
  • Tin Snips -You don’t need those
  • Machinist Vise – You don’t need one of those

Down to fourteen.

Hmmm. What about a slightly more serious look at the PM list? Here’s my barely informed views on the suggestions:

  1. Sledgehammer. I’ve got one. I bought it for one specific job. I’ve only ever used it for that one job. Should have borrowed one from the neighbours.
  2. Center Punch. I’ve got one. Inherited it from my late father-in-law’s toolkit. Never used it.
  3. Putty Knife. I’ve got a few. Used occasionally for filling voids in plywood.
  4. Safety Glasses. SC is right: this isn’t a tool, but you should definitely use them whenever you’re waving powertools around.
  5. Adjustable Wrench. Got a few, mostly inherited. Occasionally used, but I could get by with fewer.
  6. Pipe Wrench. Got one, also inherited. Never used it.
  7. Socket Wrench Set. I have both metric and Imperial flavours. Used fairly frequently (far more than I thought when I first bought a cheap set at Canadian Tire). SC is right that if you’ve got a socket set, you should have few uses for adjustable wrenches.
  8. Combination Wrench. I have several, unmatched, in various states of rust/paint/corrosion. All inherited, and rarely used.
  9. Jigsaw. One of the first power tools I bought. Rarely used once I bought a table saw.
  10. Crosscut Saw. Once I used a Japanese saw, I scrapped all my “traditional” western saws. Cutting on the pull stroke allows a much thinner blade, and better control in use.
  11. Snips. I have some general purpose snips. They’re just oversized scissors, and not used very often in my shop. Probably more useful if you do metalwork.
  12. Needle-Nose Pliers. Yeah, okay, you probably need these.
  13. Power Drill. Yes, you need this one too. Don’t go for the biggest and best: at heart, these are simple tools and you don’t need too many “features”. Variable speed and a “pilot light” are probably all 98% ever use in the way of extras. More battery power also means more weight: unless you want the exercise, don’t go bigger than you can comfortably lift and hold without wobble or shake.
  14. Drill Bits. I don’t know why they listed this separately: what good is your power drill without drill bits?
  15. Circular Saw. I’ve got one, and use it for breaking down plywood panels pretty much exclusively (I can’t get full 4’x8′ panels down the basement stairs). If you have a table saw, you won’t use your circular saw as often.
  16. Measuring Tape. Yes, you need one. Get a good one. A metal case is probably better for general use, because it’s one tool that everyone seems to drop off the workbench every now and again.
  17. Hammer. Yes, you need one, but you won’t use it as often as you expect.
  18. Machinist Vise. No, you don’t need one, unless you’re doing metal work. I have one — bought on sale several years ago — it’s still in its original packaging.
  19. Multibit Screwdriver. Yes. Get a good one, if you can: you’ll use it a lot.
  20. Extension Cord. Once again, not really a tool, but do get a heavy duty cord for running your power tool away from the outlet: don’t use cheap household extension cords for this.

H/T to American Digest for the link.

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