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Link of the week

Link of the Week

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Building Chess Pieces and Checkers

The Chess SetA few weeks ago, I posted a link to Popular Woodworking’s Classic Chess Board plan.  Since then, a few readers have asked if I could find any plans to build chess pieces for the board.

After some searching, I found this link by ShopSmith which shows how you can build a full set of chess pieces as well as a set of checkers for those who prefer that game.

While the plans refer back to using the attachments of a ShopSmith, you can build these pieces with any band saw by using a compound cut method.  In fact, all of the pieces, with the exception of the bishops, require just two cutting setups.  The bishops are just a little more complicated due to the saw kerf cut that gives them their unique appearance.

Full -scale diagrams are available for you to print out and use to cut the pieces.  This is a great way to make chess pieces, especially if you don’t have a lathe.

Experiences

The Halfway Point

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40th cakeI woke up this morning.  That’s always a good thing.  It means I have another day to enjoy on the green side of the grass and do what I do.

Yet, I woke up this morning, and things were totally different.

Today is my 40th birthday.  A big moment in anyone’s life.  After all, with the average life expectancy of a male in the United States pegged just shy of 80, that means that statistically half of my life is now in the book.

Today, I look back at the accomplishments of my past 40 years, and I have to smile.  Sure, I did some pretty dumb things through the years.  Opportunities lost – or completely missed.  Bad decisions when I should have been making better ones.

But, all in all, I am where I am by making a lot of the right decisions.  Studying hard in school.  Graduating high school – then college.  Asking my wife to marry me.  Buying our first and only home.  Deciding with my wife to become parents…

Becoming a woodworker.  It’s amazing to think that I’ve been woodworking for a quarter of my life.  About the same amount of time I have been a parent.  I just can’t imagine life without my kids or my craft.

The crazy thing is that I feel like I’m not over the hill – but as if I am finally arriving at adulthood.  My thirties were better than my twenties, and I feel as if my forties will be even better.  After all, now I have another decade of knowledge and wisdom that I didn’t have when I entered my thirties.  I am better at my job, I’m a better husband and father and I’m a much better woodworker.

Now, a lot of those painful learning lessons of just getting here are over and done with. Oh, sure I have a whole bunch more to get through – after all, my sons have yet to reach the terrible teen years.

However, I also know not to take myself so seriously.  Now, I know that I have established myself at my job and in my craft.  Now, I come armed with the knowledge and experience to accomplish what I want to in my life.

Now, I don’t feel like it’s all downhill…

It’s not a midlife crisis – it’s a midlife realization that yes, I did put my mind to what I wanted to do, and I was able to do it.  Besides, if I did have a midlife crisis, I wouldn’t go for the stereotypical red convertible Corvette- I’d spring for a Powermatic 66 or a Delta Unisaw…

It almost makes me want to go out and build a new project with techniques I have never tried before…

Thanks for reading.

Projects, Shop Talk

Great Jigs: The Square Assembly Jig

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The Square Assembly JigThis is one of those projects I have always thought about, but never got around to building.  That was until I had to build a box that had mitered corners.  Trying to square those slippery joints and keep the joints aligned… well, that was tough.

The square assembly jig couldn’t be any more simple.  I took a scrap sheet of 3/4″ MDF I had laying around the shop – about 2 x 3 feet.  I then took a scrap of 1/2″ cabinet grade birch plywood and ripped 1″ wide strips.  I made sure the scrap MDF was perfectly square, then I glued and bradded a double stack of the plywood strips to the table, again ensuring I was perfectly square.  I held the ‘junction’ of the two strips apart by about 1″, so I could see any miter joints I was gluing up.

The Jig in ActionAfter I built this, I finished it with four coats of polyurethane to help prevent any glue from sticking to the jig.

To use the jig, simply glue up the joint you want to build.  Then, you can clamp the piece to the plywood strips however you see fit.  Once the piece is glued up with the boards tight to the plywood fences, your assembly will be square.  Pretty clever…

The best part of the jig is that you can use short clamps to grip the boards on small peices, or you can use the plywood fences as a contact point for larger bar clamps.

Quick Polls

Quick Poll

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Write those lists!Now that we are in to holiday season, I’m sure visions of giving – and receiving – gifts are dancing in your head.

While we would love to believe that those special people in our lives know exactly what they should give us, there are plenty of spouses, siblings, parents and other loving people who don’t have the smallest clue of what to get us… even though we could walk into a Woodcraft store and drop a small fortune on tools.

While many of us would love the opportunity to stroll into a woodworking store and go nuts, others have other interests that help us balance out our lives.

So, without going into gory detail, how does your holiday wish list break out?  Are you looking for all woodworking, or are there other interests appearing on your wish list?

[poll id=”50″]

Link of the week

Link(s) of the week

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Woodworking sale pages

The Gift Bonanza!Hey, we’re now deep into the holiday season.  That means it’s not only time to deck the halls, donate to food pantries and make connections with friends and family – it’s time to think about gift giving and recieving!

And, if you have a special someone in your life who might be buying you a present AND they might be wondering what to get for you, you might want to consider checking out some of these pages.  I’ve gone through some of the big woodworking supply companies and found their gift – or, even better – sale pages so you can find those items you really want.  Also, many of these places also offer online wish lists where you can identify the tools that you really want!

Experiences

Things I’m thankful for…

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Working hard in the shop* That I started woodworking ten years ago and discovered how much I really enjoy it.

* For the room in my house where I can set up a dedicated shop.

* A loving and very understanding wife who lets me spend hours in the shop on a sunny Saturday.

* Two healthy and curious boys who love to come into the shop and ask, “How can I help you, Daddy?”

* The loggers who do the tough job of cutting down trees to bring to market.

* The sawyers who skillfully cut the boards that we work with.

* The hardwood sellers who go out of their way to make sure I find the right wood for my upcoming project.

* My local library and the dedicated librarians who will scour the entire state of Florida’s library holdings to find some obscure woodworking book that’s been out of print for about a dozen years.

* The Internet with its scads of information just a mouse click away.

* Woodworkers such as John Lucas, Marc Spagnuolo, Doug Stowe and Tom Hintz who take the time to push valuable woodworking reviews and tutorials out to the masses from their websites – for free!

* Woodworking forums where I can post a heap of stupid questions, and the woodworkers from around the world who patiently answer each of them.

* Innovative companies – many of which are simple mom-and-pop organizations working out of their basements or garages – that find simple, elegant answers to vexing problems.

* Established companies such as Lee Valley, Rockler and Eagle America who value customer service above all and work hard to make sure I am a happy customer.

* eBay where I can find old woodworking tools that have been languishing in some barn in upstate New York for a century so I can get them sharpened and put back to good use.

* The folks at Google who developed Sketchup and still offer it for free.

* The woodworkers from around the world who have graciously agreed to be interviewed by me for the Woodworking Spotlights.

* Each of you for stopping by and reading my blog.

For those who will be celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, have a very happy holiday with your family and friends.  For those around the world who will wake up and go about your business just like any other day, I will raise my glass of wine and toast each of you.

Tools

Tools I Use – My measuring and marking tools

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You can’t expect to do good work at woodworking if you can’t measure accurately.  Whether it’s getting an exact 45 degrees on a miter, cutting a mortise to an exact dimension or marking an 8:1 dovetail.

To help me achieve accuracy in my shop, I turn to a pretty decent selection of tools I have amassed over the past few years.

Measuring Tools

Let’s go from the back row, left to right –

A Veritas saddle square and saddle miter square.  These were some awesome scores from the folks at Lee Valley (Remember, the holidays are coming up…).  They make it easy to transfer measurements from one face of a board to another.  I find myself using these babies on almost every project.

My combination square.  Not the top of the line model – I picked this up at Woodcraft for about $35 on sale.  I’ve tested it several times and found it to be accurate.  A great tool to set blade and bit heights, mark out sections to be cut…  It’s a multi-use tool.

An electronic t-bevel gauge.  I have a regular t-bevel, but it can’t actually tell me what the angle is.  This one comes with a digital readout and makes transferring and bisecting angles a breeze.

Down a row, you see my Veritas setup blocks. I use these to set up most of my machines.  There’s nothing more sensitive than touch, and I can tell when I lay a 1/4″ bar next to a router bit, I can get it exactly to 1/4″.  I love these things!

My decimal fraction calipers.  Sure, I could get an electronic setup that goes from fractions to metric to decimal inches, but this one – so far – has answered the call.  Your work becomes a whole lot easier when you can get this kind of precision.  For instance, you can use the ‘inside’ measurement prongs to measure a mortise, then the ‘oustide’ jaws to measure the tenon… slick!

A new set of Groz dividers.  Just got this after trying to use some plastic dividers I culled from my kids’ school supply kits.  WOW, what a difference.  Great for scribing things to walls and measuring circles.

A Veritas wheel marking gauge.  I have used a wooden gauge with a pin, but this one is killer!  The wheel is easy to sharpen and gives very clean marks on the wood both with and across the grain. I have the model with the marked post, so don’t have to measure to know I’m at a particular measurement.

A good old tape measure.  Great for marking out long measurements, checking assemblies for square… I’m sure everyone has at least one.  I use a 16′ model and limit myself to just using that one for projects.  This way, I don’t run into problems if two tapes don’t quite measure up…

A tiny Groz engineer’s square. The small size makes it easy to sneak up to a table saw or band saw blade to ensure things are square.  Very handy..

Finally, a Veritas marking knife. This one is awesome, because you can use it either left or right handed.  The back side of the knife is dead flat, so you can run it along a straight edge to get a crisp mark.  And, nothing beats the accuracy of a clean slice when you absolutely, positively have to make the cut the right size.

Some things that didn’t make the photo include a carpenter’s square, some speed squares, and two steel rules… one a center finding model.

By using these tools and taking my time, I can get pretty decent results in my woodworking.