Today’s post was a little late, eh? I’m actually about ready  to go to bed.

The reason why I am so late is that I had my ‘maiden voyage’ (as the nurse put it) into one of the routine rites of getting older… Let’s just say it involved a liquid diet, some medication and a touch of  anesthesia.

I was kinda woozy for most of the day, but I was good enough to take a visit from a neighbor on the other side of the block. He’s a fellow woodworker – actually, more of a tinkerer. He and his wife have moved quite a few times in the past few years, and he was getting tired of hauling everything from house to house. He asked me if I was interested in getting one of his old tools.

Free tool?  Of course!

It’s a Delta Shopmaster AP100 dust filter. According to the specs, it can pull 450 cfm of air through the filter, capturing the fine stuff that gets airborne. This isn’t the kind of tool that I would buy for myself, but, judging from the dust on my tools and shelves, I’d say I could probably use it.

It’s in pretty decent condition, with a few dings and bangs. But, I plugged it in and it drew a lot of air.  Fairly quiet unit as well.

The added bonus is that is has a light on the bottom.  Actually, a pair of florescent lights run on a pull chain. Maybe not bright enough for me to move to the bench, but, hey, I have a good place for it near my air conditioner.

Not what I had planned on writing today, but, hey, it’s always good to welcome some new tools!

Now, for a something completely different – if you are member of the Wood Whisperer’s Guild, check out the profile Marc Spagnuolo did on my workbench. It’s kinda interesting.. and I discovered that when I take pictures in my shop, I need to clean up!

Not a guild member? What the heck are you waiting for?  Marc runs one hell of a show there on the Guild, and your membership lets you in on some exciting members-only content. With the holidays RIGHT UPON US – maybe it could be that last minute gift that pays dividends all year!

I still remember when my brother-in-law purchased his first table saw. A Skil benchtop model that he used the heck out of. I was in awe of his saw, coveting it jealously, because I didn’t have one of my own at the time.

While he was showing me all of the neat features (Height adjustment? Blade angle adjustment? Rip fence? Someone pinch me!), he lamented one important thing – he couldn’t find a ten inch diameter dado blade to go with his ten inch saw. This really seemed to bother him.

It got me wondering… why the heck doesn’t anyone offer a ten-inch dado blade for hobby woodworkers? Come on, I want to use all the saw I bought, right?

“Well, it’s not quite like that,” said David Venditto of Infinity Cutting Tools. “Your saw can handle up to a ten inch blade, but dado blades are a completely different animal. Yes, they both do cut, but it’s all about the weight.”

David explained to me that a regular crosscut, rip or combination blade for a saw is a single circular plate with teeth cut in it, carbide pieces added to those teeth and a hole precisely bored in the center to ride on the saw’s shaft. That one blade has a limited amount of heft to it, and that’s what the saw manufacturer designs the tool to use. “The weight differential between a single ten-inch blade between models isn’t that great. So if you are using one of our blades or one that came with the saw originally, the saw won’t really care.”

This all changes when you move to a dado blade. In order to cut the larger groove, you have to expand the cutting area of the blade. In order to accomplish this, there are two approaches. Wobble dado blades use an eccentric hub which can be dialed to size. The blade flutters as it cuts the material, doing the dado in one pass. “Sure, you can go this way to cut dadoes. It’s a technology that has been used for years, and it works fairly well, if you don’t mind rounded bottoms of your grooves.”

The other technology which is used is to stack a number of blades together on the saw’s arbor to achieve the desired width of cut. “Stacked dadoes give better results than wobble units, but it comes with a significant increase in weight. That’s where we as blade manufacturers have to downsize the blades to help the saw compensate.”

A ten, eight and six inch blade for comparison

That’s why most manufacturers offer eight inch dado stack sets. The two extra inches of reduced diameter makes the stack considerably lighter than it would be with a ten inch diameter. “To give you an idea of weight differences, our 8” Dadonator stacked set (with 24 tooth outside blades and full-body 6-tooth chippers) weighs in at 10 lbs, the 6” Dadonator Jr. set (with the same blade and chipper design) weighs a full 4 lbs. less. The Jr. is clearly the best choice for anyone using less than a 5 H.P. cabinet style table saw. In all of the years I’ve been making saw blades, I’ve never heard one person complain about not being able to cut a three and a half inch deep groove in a board. But, they all seem to love the flat bottom cut they get.”

Stacked dado blades have the two outside blades which – when used alone – can cut a ¼” groove with no problem. To further widen the cut, chippers with a reduced number of teeth are stacked between the two outer blades until the desired width is reached. “With our Infinity Dadonator line, we make the only blade sets with six teeth on the chippers – where many other manufacturers may use as few as two. The 6” Dadonator Jr. is the only dado set on the market to feature outside blades with 24 teeth and chipper blades with 6 teeth. Those extra teeth help ensure your cut is crisp in solid wood or plywood. That does mean that our sets are going to be heavier than other dado sets you can buy.”

David’s answer for those who want to use his dado sets on a smaller saw? “There’s nothing wrong with looking at our six inch dado set. With that, you can still cut grooves as deep as one and a quarter inches, which is more than adequate for most joinery tasks while not straining your saw’s motor to keep up with the demands placed on it.” David was also quick to point out that the 6” dado set also costs less than its bigger cousin. “If you are in the market for a new dado stack and you don’t have a beefy cabinet saw, the six inch blade represents a heck of a value without sacrificing performance.”

My cable service offers more than one thousand channels. I have four movie megaplexes in a 20 minute drive from my house. The Internet can bring me thousands of movies on demand.

So, you can understand why I don’t like to be bored. I have plenty of opportunity to make sure that I never get that way.  Woodworking also helps me stay out of that dreaded state or boredom.

That’s why I can’t understand why talking about drills and what they do is called boring. It’s anything but. Whether in a drill press or a hand-held unit, there are dozens of things you can do with the right selection of bits.

Just as with the router, drilling tools are nothing but fancy paperweights without bits. The bits come in a bewildering array of sizes and shapes to do a great number of tasks. Don’t be misled by looking at the selections in the local home improvement center.  There, you will typically see your basic twist drill bits which do an OK job on wood and metal. But, if you haven’t tried bits specifically for fine woodworking, well, let me be the first to welcome to you a brave new world!

When it comes to drilling smaller diameter holes in wood, it’s hard to beat the brad point. They look very similar to the regular twist bits, but have a sharp brad point at the business end with two cutting spurs at the outside diameter. These two features allow you to start your drilling without the fear of the bit wandering. And, with the cutting spurs, the hole is very clean. If  you are the kind of woodworker who likes to drill your mortises, these are two very important traits you want in your drill bits.

For larger holes, there’s another specialty bit that you should consider – the Forstner bit. These bits feature straight shanks with a larger sized cutting head at the bottom. Forstners excel at cutting smooth, straight holes with flat bottoms.  But, not the only thing you get with them. Since the bit is large and the rim of the bit does the cutting, you can bore on an angle, or just use part of the bit to drill an arc. And, if you are looking to mount something like a clock insert, it’s as simple as chucking the right sized bit and drilling until you get the proper depth. Since the cuts are so clean, there’s little – if any – clean up required.

You can also pick up a forstner bit extender, which allows the user to drill deeper into the work. You may not use it every day, but when you need that extra little bit of reach, well, it’s a very handy attachment.

There are also  a number of other specialty bits available. For instance, for most countersinks, the drill bits are tapered.  It seems like a small thing, but if you are using traditional tapered wood screws, a tapered bit is going to give you excellent thread contact for the entire length of the screw.  More thread contact means better holding power.

From there, well, where can you go?  Plug cutters? Tenon cutters? Hole saws? Spade bits?  Hey, let’s talk about them later.  I’ll need something to do the next time I get bored!

Curves. Resawing. Joinery.

The band saw is one of those tools you wonder if you need at first, but wonder how you got along without after you  have used one.

“Band saws are amazing tools,” said Dan Walter of Eagle America. “When set up and properly tuned, even the most basic of band saws can improve your woodworking capabilities.  Slice your own book matched veneers. Make elegant band sawn boxes. Heck, you can even cut hand cut dovetails without touching a hand saw simply by using your band saw.”

The band saw works by – as you might imagine – pulling a narrow band of steel with saw teeth cut into the edge through the saw’s table. The energy for the cutting is provided by one powered wheel, with a second idler wheel on the top of the saw that keeps the band spread and helps it track. “The size of the saw is based on the diameter of each of these two wheels. So, a 14″ saw has two wheels 14″ in diameter… and, no, it doesn’t take a 14″ long blade…”

Band saw blades are exceptionally thin under some tremendous pressure, so the steel has to be both flexible and strong. It also has to have hard teeth in order to slice through wood with little trouble. “It’s a delicate balancing act for saw blade manufacturers, and it takes a lot of thought to get things to work just right.” Dan explained to me that Eagle carries the Olson line of bandsaw blades. The standard Flex-Back models are a great value general-purpose blade, and the All-Pro blades have additional elements added to them to make a harder steel that gives more durability while still maintaining flexibility.

Because the blades are cut and then welded together, there’s a chance that a rough weld could give you a rougher cut. And, curves are easier if the back square corners of the blade are rounded slightly. Eagle sells a special band saw blade stone that can be held against the back corners of the running blade to smooth  things out, or a standard whet stone can be used as well. And, once the blade is polished with smooth back corners, a blade lubricant can help improve the quality of your cut.

What those blades ride on are the wheels – and the tires that cover the wheels.  “Tires are so often overlooked on band saws, but they play a major role in how true a blade will track.  Rubber tires can crack and wear over time, and urethane tires give a better ride for the blades.  If you have trouble with your blade tracking true, you might want to check the condition of those tires and replace them if needed.”

The blade on most band saws is guided both above and below the table. They help keep the blade running true and prevent unnecessary twisting as the cut is being made. “Your standard-issue blade guides in most saws are metal blocks that help to contain blade movement.  They are adequate, but they tend to create a lot of heat as the blade rides through. To help extend the life of your blades, you might want to consider something like Cool Blocks that deposit a dry lubricant on the blade as it brushes against them, or upgrade to ceramic blocks which also reduce friction heat build up and can ride very close to the blade.”  Dan pointed out that even a standard set of blade guides can be replaced with a product called Band Rollers, which use bearings to guide the blade, meaning that the guides can touch the blade body with no chance of heat build up.

In order to reduce costs, many manufacturers don’t include a fence in most entry-level band saws. To overcome this, you can build your own fence system, clamp a flat, straight piece of wood to the table or you can purchase an aftermarket fence system like the Kreg precision band saw fence with an optional micro-adjust feature and a resaw guide to make working safer and more accurate.

“The three most important things about the band saw – or any tool for that matter – are to assemble and prepare it right when you set it up, understand the best ways to work with it and to maintain it properly. If you take care of your band saw, it will serve you well for years to come.”

So, after this weekend’s fun and festivities in the shop, I decided to go out to the shop and take a look at the squares I have in my possession. No, none of these babies is a Starrett, but I can guaran-dang-tee if I had used one of them during the project assembly, I wouldn’t be in the mess that I am.  It’s not an unimpressive collection, and I guess if I use them on a more regular basis, well, maybe I could do a better job on my assembly.

First on the top I have top and left side is my carpenter’s square.  It’s a very useful tool. Besides measuring large cases for square, this baby also makes figuring out the rise and run of a slope a piece of cake…  There is so much more I can do with this, but that’s for more complicated carpentry projects, and I still have a lot to learn.

I have my combination square.  Got it on special at a local woodworking shop, and it came prepackaged with a center finding head and a protractor head as well.  This is a handy tool for drawing lines across a project, setting the depth of a blade or bit, and, yes, finding square.

To the right are a pair of assembly squares I picked up a few years ago.  These babies are dead-on 90 degrees, and are great for clamping into place to force an out-of-square assembly into square.  They also make gluing up miters a whole lot easier, since the points of the miter can nestle into place in the corner as you clamp the sides into place.

At the bottom of the combination square, you can see my saddle square.  While this won’t help you make an assembly square, it is totally awesome way to transfer marks dead one from a face to an edge.

Next to that is a handy little double square I use a lot when I edge plane a board.  I just press the beam against the face of the board and run the blade over the edge I just planed to ensure I’m getting a nice square edge on the board.  This one is small enough to put into a shop apron pocket… if I wore my shop apron.  Instead, I rest it on my bench.

The orange square is my speed square I picked up at the local home improvement center.  Again, another VERY handy carpentry square with ooodles of uses I would have to work as a carpenter to use, but simply using it as a square is an easy way to get that square assembly you are looking for.  It also doubles as a saw guide for circular saws… a sweet multi-tasker.

The last one is my sliding square… it’s a pretty cool tool for laying out square lines during design. Again, this can help in the marking and cutting, but not so much during assembly.  But, that’s OK…I’m down with that.

Do I need to buy new squares?  Nope. What I need to do is set up something around the bench where I can keep these squares a lot closer at hand.  I figure if I can see them, maybe I will be encouraged to get them when assembling my project. I’m gonna start doing that.

Oh, about the title of this blog post.  Once I wrote the title down, you KNOW this was the song going through my mind…

As a woodworker who came of age during the 1980′s, consider it my gift to you!

What the heck is up at the workbench?  First, it’s dowels, then I’m talking about biscuits?  Where are the hand cut  mortise and tenons?  The expertly executed blind half-lap London-pattern dovetails?

OK, everybody, take a step back and inhale deeply, count to ten and then exhale slowly repeating, “Serenity Now.”  I still love my hand tools and cutting classic joints, and my biscuit jointer is relegated to a few limited but very important tasks.

First, lemme tell you about my biscuit jointer.  It is a Ryobi model that I picked up at Home Depot many moons ago – I believe sometime about 2000 or 2001. You see, Norm used one in just about every project he built, and that convinced me that if I was ever going to build woodworking projects, I was going to need one of my own.  I chose this model because it was dirt cheap – for $99, it was a steal. And, I used it for a lot of tasks when I started out.

Did it get good ratings in the woodworking mags?  Nope.  Has it served me well?  You bet.

I would attach shelves in bookcases with it. I would build cabinet boxes with it. I built this sweet little shoe bench that sits by the front door that allows us a place to stash the shoes when we come in and gives us a place to sit and put them on before we leave. I built it back in 2002, and it has held up for the past nine years with nary a complaint, and it’s still as rock-solid as the day I built it.

As my skills developed, my reliance on the biscuit jointer started to wane. I learned how to cut dadoes and rabbets.  I got my Kreg pocket hole jig setup. I started using more and more mortise and tenon joints.

Today, my biscuit jointer comes out from time to time to help reinforce miters, attach solid wood edges to plywood panels and it makes an appearance when I do panel glue ups.  Did I mention that I have issues when I glue up panels?

Now that I am entering the next phase of the project assembly – creating the actual shelves that will hold the books and span the distance between the two frames – I’ll be using the biscuit jointer to help keep my shelves on an even plane when I glue up the shelf boards. I had to stop to check my supply of biscuits and yes, I have enough to do the shelves.

All I need now is some quality shop time with my old friend and a stack of boards, and we’ll take another big step together toward project completion.

At my day job, I have given hundreds of hurricane and disaster preparedness talks. Big groups. Small groups. Companies, churches, neighborhood association meetings … you name it, I’ve gone there and spoken. For me, it’s all old hat now.

But, that hasn’t always been the case. When I first started out, I was told by my boss at the time that I needed to not run my talks free-form. Instead, I was encouraged to build a PowerPoint presentation, rehearse my material based on cues from what was on screen and NEVER deviate.

For my first few talks, this worked well. I never forgot a single point. I always put the emphasis on the key message I wanted to convey. I went from success to success, clutching tightly to the security blanket of my canned presentation.

Then, well, it had to happen. I went one place to talk, and blammo – no outlet was convenient for me to set up my projector and laptop, and I didn’t have access to an extension cord. Boy, did that ruffle my feathers.

The same thing happens when we are in the workshop. When we have our table saw tuned up and ready to make a cut, we become comfortable using the equipment. But, if you need to cut something on edge or try something a little out of our comfort range, it’s easy to get flustered – and worried – by the operation.

“That’s where feather boards come in,” said Dan Walter of Eagle America. “These simple jigs give you much more control – and confidence – over your operation.”

Feather boards are very useful jigs that help hold your work down to the table or against your fence to ensure a more accurate cut. And, they also can help prevent kickback, improving safety.

“The classic way to make a feather board is to fish a piece of scrap out of your wood stash, cut a series of parallel angled fingers and clamp it down to your saw,” said Dan. “And, you know, there is nothing wrong with that. It’s a cheap, practical shop solution.”

But, Dan also told me that commercial feather boards offer more versatility, are more durable and don’t take valuable shop time to make. Eagle America carries an extensive line of feather boards – each of which has special features.

“If you need feather boards for your cast iron topped table, band saw or other ferrous metal work surface, the Magswitch featherboards offer incredible convenience and flexibility.” Using a special magnet users can switch on and off, these feather boards can mount anywhere on the table, independent of the miter gauge slot.

Jessem’s Paralign models allow users to align them parallel to the work piece while they are clamped in the table. “In router tables, this is a very handy feature that allows you to skip all of the trial-and-error fidgeting to get the set up right.”

Milescraft’s dual slide motion feather boards feature large ergonomic handles for tightening them in place. “What a boon for people who may have limited hand strength. The ability to set these into place and know they will be rock solid helps ensure accuracy in cuts.”

Feather Bow’s offerings feature a traditional looking feather board finger design on one side and an innovative bow hold down on the other. Shaped somewhat like the leaf spring in a car, this focuses the pressure exactly where you need it without applying it across the entire length of the fingers. “These babies work very well on router or shaper tables where it’s critical to get proper bit or cutter contact to ensure a flawless shaping job.”

And, Kreg’s True Flex models not function as either a feather board or a stop block. “Their locking system also relies on a wedge to get a solid lock in a miter slot. That’s going to help ensure nothing slips when you are pushing the board past the blade or cutter.”

Dan also pointed out that many of these commercial feather boards can also be stacked together to give you control when resawing, cutting raised panels on a table saw or other functions. “I’m always surprised when a company comes out with a new and innovative feature on such an old power tool standby. There are some creative minds at work!”

My speech in front of that group sure threw me for a loop. But, it also taught me to look beyond just that one tool in my public speaking toolbox. Today, when I go out to talk, I know that I can adjust my presentation style to meet the needs of the specific group I’m addressing.

And, it allows me to stop obsessing over what could go wrong during the talks and start enjoying my time off in the shop a whole lot more.