While local hardwoods can be a pleasure to work with and can leave you with a gorgeous project, tropical hardwoods can be eye-poppingly beautiful.  Whether the vividly colored bloodwood or purpleheart from South America, the highly desirable bubinga or wenge from Africa or the hard wearing teak or rosewood from Asia, these boards from the planet’s tropical areas can be a woodworker’s dream, giving your projects a style all their own.

They do come with some drawbacks, however.  First, they have different characteristics than the native wood you work with, leaving a splintery mess where a clean cut should normally be.  They can also be very expensive, since they have to be harvested and shipped great distances to your supplier. And, the harvesting of these trees isn’t always done in a responsible manner, possibly being pulled from forests without consideration of their future health.

This week, let us know how you feel about using these tropical hardwoods.

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Welcome to Woodworker’s Safety Week 2009 where we will start by taking a look at one of the most dangerous tools in the shop – the table saw.  All saws come with two basic pieces of safety equipment – a splitter or riving knife which keeps the wood being cut from closing behind the blade or being accidentally pushed into the back of the blade should you make an error in feeding and pull the board away from the rip fence.

Manufacturers also include a blade guard, which helps to prevent your hand from hitting the spinning blade. The blade guard also deflects sawdust and wood chips away from you, and many models also feature a sawdust collection port which can be hooked up to a dust collector.

While the stock blade guards and splitters or riving knives are effective, there are many after market models out there which can offer even greater performance.

So, this week’s question – when you use your table saw for typical cuts (NOT dado or non-through cutting), what is the most frequently seen set up on your saw?  Do you use stock equipment, after market stuff or nothing at all?

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People love to classify things.  Speak to a biologist and you’ll learn a boatload of Latin in when talking about an animal’s classification.  Chemists classify the elements as metals, non-metals, noble gasses…  the list continues.

Pastry chefs will classify ingredients as wet goods or dry goods, and it’s not as easy as it seems. Sugar is considered to be a wet ingredient.

When it comes to woodworkers, we also tend to classify ourselves into categories based on our abilities and knowledge of the craft.

This week, I’m looking to see how you classify yourself as a woodworker at this moment.  Don’t be bashful – be as honest as possible.  Remember, no one has to know you you voted.

Well, you’ll know….

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Before screws and nails were common, adding dowels to joints was one of the first ways ancient woodworkers reinforced the joints they were working on.  Since then, dowel reinforced joints for furniture construction, face frames and other applicaitons has been used in furniture factories and by hobby woodworkers as a fast and easy way to build projects.

While the joint is a venerable one, there are some down sides – there is absolutely no room for error – the joints must line up perfectly or they won’t work.  There is little resistance to forces pulling the joint apart.  And, because of the dowel’s shape, it will expand and contract differently than the surrounding wood, potentially leading to a joint failure.

This week, we want to know what you think of dowel joinery in your shop.

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There is little doubt that a properly functioning dust collector can make cleaning up at the end of a woodworking session a breeze.  Just a little sweeping and vacuuming can turn a difficult chore into a quick and easy exercise.

But, it’s not just for convenience that woodworkers have dust collection systems.  They can improve the functioning of tools, reduce the amount of contamination you can see in a finish and – most importantly – keep sawdust out of your lungs.

The only problem with dust collectors is that while they do have numerous benefits, they don’t actually cut, shape or joint wood, meaning that some woodworkers see them as an expensive luxury. After all, aren’t we supposed to be working with wood, not running an expensive shop vacuum?

So, this week, I want to know if you have a dust collector and how powerful it is.

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For many of us, the allure of woodworking is that we get a chance to work in our own shops – our own space set up exactly to our wishes … well, maybe you would add a sweet brand new Unisaw to round out the collection…

However, there are times when you might be asked to, required to or even want to work in someone else’s shop.  Maybe you have to for your job or you sign up to attend a woodworking school.

Things may not be 100% familiar to you, and you might end up looking around a while for a combination square or chisel.  However you slice it, it is certainly an interesting experience.

So, have you ever worked in someone else’s shop?

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Drawers in woodworking projects can be very useful.  They can be dainty affairs, holding just a few pens and pencils, or they can be massive and built to withstand an entire file drawer’s worth of files and papers.

During last season’s kitchen cabinet opus, Norm Abram even advised that it would be more convenient for the home cook to replace cabinets with doors with banks of full-extension drawers in lower cabinets, making it easier to reach everything held within.

While drawer construction might be intimidating to the average woodworker, choosing a method for the drawers to operate smoothly and hold the weight can pose its own challenges.

Wooden runner systems can be tricky to build, so that’s why companies have developed an array of different styles of metal drawer runners.  Side mount, bottom mount, 3/4 extension, full extension and full extension over-travels are just some of the different varieties of runners out there.

While these runners are great, they can look out of place on a period reproduction piece, an they might be overkill on smaller drawers.  Also, woodworkers have built their own slide systems for centuries with great results.

So, this week, we want to know what you think about metal drawer runners and how you might use them.

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