My new Laguna band saw is awesome.  It has plenty of power, a huge table and lots of other features that make it a dream to work with.

The only problem? It’s a band saw, and that means you just can’t throw a blade on the sucker and start cutting. There are adjustments that have to be made in order to get the saw to work properly.  And, that’s OK with me, it just becomes a little tedious.

One of the most important adjustments on the saw is to get the blade to track right in the middle of the upper and lower wheels. If the blade is to far forward or too far back, it will tend to drift – or start cutting out of square in relation to the rip fence. Some drift is OK, but if the drift seems totally out of whack – like you have to angle the workpiece excessively in order to cut a straight line – you are going to have issues ever trying to get a decent cut.

The recommended method to check for blade drift is to get a piece of wood, mark a straight line on the piece, feed it through freehand until you get about halfway through the cut, stop the saw and then mark that angle so you can adjust the fence to make up for the drift. This drift can be reduced, again, by getting the blade to track on the center of the wheel.

And, that’s where my trouble begins. I would eyeball the blade on the wheel to see if it was centered on the wheel. And, that worked OK, but I was never really jazzed with my eyeballing. What I needed to do was to get the blade in the middle of the wheel for certain.  But, how was I going to get that accuracy?

That’s when I stumbled across this method on the Lumberjocks site. User Stefang used an interesting tool to get the blade centered – his calipers. It’s a very simple method that is so elementary, you will end up slapping your forehead in one of those ‘duh’ moments.

First, you use your caliper to measure the width of the the upper wheel. From hub to hub, my band saw wheel is 1.2 inches wide. That is verified by my decimal calipers.

In this case, I know my resaw blade is .75 inches wide. Now, let’s do some simple math (oh, man, you are going to make this English major do math?):

1.2 inches (wheel width) – .75 inches (blade width) = .45 inches

This .45 inches is what remains from front face to back face of the wheel that isn’t covered by blade. From there, if I want to make this blade centered on the wheel, I have to divide that in half. So…

.45 inches / 2 = .225 inches

Now, this means if I have .225 inches from the front hub of the wheel to the front teeth on the saw blade, bingo bango, chimi chang chango, I’m right on the middle.  By adjusting the tracking wheel on the saw and rotating the upper wheel by hand, I was able to get the blade right in the middle. No fuss, no muss.

When I made my cut with the saw, it wasn’t 100% on the money. There was still a drift. But, wow, did that drift nearly disappear. And, when I popped a piece up on the saw to resaw it, the saw behaved beautifully.

OK, maybe math isn’t my strong suit, but using a little bit of it, I might be able to make my woodworking just a little better.

At the St. Petersburg Woodcrafters Guild, we are getting ready to host a holiday party for the members and their guests. A chance for each of us to talk about our holiday plans and meet many of the patient and ever-suffering spouses that support us crazy woodworkers.

As part of the festivities, our guests will have the opportunity to win some of the centerpieces from the tables. And, you know the centerpieces aren’t going to be vases of flowers – but woodworking projects!  I am part of a team of woodworkers who are building a few Nativity sets to serve in this role. The characters of the baby Jesus, the Wise Men, Mary, Joseph and the menagerie of animals will be scroll sawn out of some pretty wood, and I have been put in charge of building the mangers.

Getting the mangers built was a piece of cake – sort of a building construction project in miniature. A back wall with a gable, two roof panels and two side walls.  Those were easy to cut out and glue together. I chose hot hide glue for this, because the tiny pieces were just too small to clamp, and hide glue is renowned for its high early tack.

Once these were assembled, I had to create a base for them to set on. The instructions said to cut out a wavy natural-looking edge on a piece of wood, then round it over. Yeah, that would be nice… but I was thinking something a little more unique. While picking through candidate boards for this application, I ran across a bunch of pieces with some wany edge. Hmm… maybe I could incorporate that…

That’s when the idea hit me – why not cut a more sculpted edge on these pieces?  The wane was nice, but not everywhere on the pieces.  How was I going to do this quickly on these boards?

I had to turn to my new band saw. The old model I used to have had a broken trunion under the table, so I never moved it out of square the the blade, for fear I would never get it square again. But, the trunions on my new Laguna band saw are huge. Beefy. And, they could hold a bevel without breaking a sweat.

After cutting an appropriately natural looking edge on the boards, I cranked the table over to about 30 degrees tilt and locked it into place. That roughly matched the angle on the wane. I made sure I had the board oriented the proper way – after all, I didn’t want to undercut the board – I started paring the edges down with the band saw. I wasn’t trying for nice straight lines – I wanted it to look a lot more like a rocky outcropping. Cut, cut, cut. Pull the piece off the saw and look at it, then cut some more.

I was using the 3/4″ resaw blade for this, so I knew I had to do more nibbling that I would have had to with the 1/4″ blade, but that made the final piece look better.

After the sculpting on the saw, I took the pieces and refined the edges on my edge/spindle sander. I worked off the table most of the time, accentuating the nooks and crannies I had carved with the saw. I just wanted to give that the once over to remove any bandsaw blade marks.

After that, I sanded the bases with some 120 grit paper on the random orbit sander and glued the mangers to their bases, using the hot hide glue. Just a little time in the clamps, and the pieces were ready to roll.

Now, I just have to collect the decorative facings that one of our team cut, apply those to the roof line and do the final sanding and finishing.

I’m pretty sure I can make that deadline!

Hey, everyone, Iggy here.  I wanted to alert you that Tom is now *ahem* teaching certain things about woodworking.  In fact, he was asked to speak at a recent meeting of the St. Petersburg Woodcrafter’s Guild about veneering.

I’m actually stunned, because I mean – it’s Tom. The guy who cut his finger with a set of hedge trimmers. I’m rather impressed he was able to get up and talk in front of a group without putting his foot in his mouth.

The other thing that impresses me is that Joe Gorleski of Veneer Supplies trusted this Mook enough to let him mention his company. I mean, what was Joe thinking?

Anyway, here’s the big guy attempting to make everything work. I hope you were able to make some sense out of his rambling.

There.  Did any of that make any sense?  He actually seemed to have his act together.  Maybe he was on his meds that night – who knows?  While you might be impressed, try not to be too impressed.  Check out some of his other video stylings here..

Ahh, silly boy. I guess once a Shop Monkey, always a Shop Monkey, right?  Shesh…

Now, for me, back to the shop.

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I TOLD you Tom was up to no good.  Joe was nice enough to e-mail me and give some corrections to Tom’s ramblings.  Here they are:

1. Plywood is a great substrate (my favorite) but maple plywood can be a pain. Why? Because maple is one species that many adhesives struggle with. It is the standard by which glue makers do their testing because its such a finicky wood species. It also is one species that expands more than normal when moisture is applied (such as from a veneer glue). When I use plywood, its birch or oak.
2. The veneer saw is right handed only. The blade is reversible but the handle is angled for right hand use only. I’m a lefty though and I’ve never had any trouble using my right hand with the saw.
3. Three hole tape can actually be used on the glue side. I only do this on species where the veneer has a tendency to take the stain differently if the glue from the tape does not complete come off when I sand the panel. In those instances the 3 hole tape can be used on the glue side. The holes in the tape actually provide enough surface area to let the glue keep the seam line tight and well bonded.
4. Never use yellow glue for any type of veneer. End of story. Never ever use it for veneer.
5. Contact cement is not suitable for raw wood veneer simply because its not strong enough to prevent the seasonal expansion and contraction of wood cells (even when a finish is applied). This can allow lifting and bubbles in a raw wood veneer. With a paperbacked veneer, the bond to the paper minimizes expansion and contraction so contact cement is fine.
6. A J-roller is not my choice of tools for spreading glue. The foam rollers I have are much better. 

I’m always amazed when I go to a specialty coffee shop. Not only is there a bewildering array of beans grown and harvested from areas around the world, there are also numerous levels of roasting that have been put on them to create a different cup of coffee. How about a light roast from Kenya, or a darker roast from Hawaii? And, once I make my choice, the questions keep coming at me… How do I want it ground? For a drip machine? A French press? Espresso? At this point, I’m usually looking for someone to just hand me a steaming cup of Joe and send me on my way.

When it comes to sharpening, the question of grinding comes back into play. Flat or hollow ground that is. And, depending on how you sharpen, you will come to understand and appreciate the difference.

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? When a woodworker sharpens a chisel or plane iron, you are looking to get an edge where two faces of the tool intersect with zero radius. One face is the flat back of the tool. That’s why it’s critical to get the back of a chisel or plane iron flat and smooth, so it will intersect with the other side as cleanly as possible.

That other side, of course, is known as the bevel. Depending on the purpose of the chisel or plane iron, that can be any one of a number of angles. For most bench chisels, that is somewhere about 25 degrees.

Now, there are two different ways a factory – or a woodworker in his or her shop – can get a bevel into that shape. That can be done first on a flat sharpening medium. In that case, the bevel rubs against a flat surface, grinding away steel from the bevel from tip to heel. This is how people who use stones or flat-platen grinding setups create their bevels. Some experts say that because this is a tough way to sharpen and hone an edge, because at every phase of the sharpening process, you are abrading the entire bevel, a relatively large area to grind.

To help make restoring the tip of the bevel an easier task, many people who flat grind will take a few passes with the tool tipped to a slightly higher angle. What this does is polish just the tip of the tool, creating a very narrow band of honed steel at the end. This is known as a microbevel, and it can make keeping your tool sharp easier if you are going on the flat.

Now, if you are using a wheel to grind your bevels, you are looking at a hollow ground. When I’m working with a tool at my Tormek, The bevel of the tool is rubbing against the surface of a large-diameter wet grinding wheel. As the bevel touches the stone, it’s working against a rounded surface, which means if I have my guide set properly, the middle of the bevel is going to make contact with the stone first. In order for me to grind the bevel from tip to heel, I have to remove more steel from the middle of the bevel. This means that the bevel is being ground into a slightly concave shape. Remember, we’re not talking about a huge curve here… the surface of the bevel is relatively small compared to the diameter of the wheel.

This hollow ground, though, provides an interesting effect should you want to hone the tool on a flat medium later. As you sharpen the bevel, it will make contact on both the heel and the toe, removing material in two bands. This effectively reduces the amount of contact with the sharpening medium, making for easier honing later.

Are microbevels or additional flat honing required? Nope. A sharp edge will slice wood beautifully.

Which leaves more time to take a break and sit down with a nice cup of coffee.

I’m currently in the middle of a project, and I needed to build a set of inset frame and panel doors. Time to break out the cope and stick door frame bits, right?

Not so fast, bub. I thought this project would look better with some mitered door frames instead of the plain old plain old. To make this happen, I reached back for a trick I had used on the first project I built with doors – a mitered door frame.

As you can guess, each of the four sides of the door are joined at the corner with a 45 degree miter joint. A few benefits of building a door this way are that you don’t have to buy specialized router bits to do the joinery – a table saw, miter saw, hand saw and miter box or any other method you use to make crisp, accurate 45 degree cuts will fill the bill. Also, if you want to rout special features into the face of the panels (Maybe a bead on the inside edge and other fancy molding profiles), when you cut the miters, the design will wrap all the way around the frame. Also, if you carefully measure the inside opening, the long side of each mitered piece will be the exact measurement of the opening you are trying to fill. No crazy math with subtracting style width and adding on tenon length.

The downsides? Your miters have got to be very accurate, or you are going to spend a lot of time and use a lot of wood putty to make the piece look good. Also, miter joints are very weak when compared with other traditional joints – and they slip like crazy when you try to glue them up. That’s why some method of reinforcement when building a mitered door frame is a must. And, if you have to fine-tune the door to fit the opening, you have to remove equal amounts from each side to maintain that crisp miter point (you can fudge a little, but not too much).

For my doors, I milled a piece of tiger maple for the door panel and milled up the door frame pieces out of walnut. After plowing a groove in the edge of the frame pieces (using my table saw blade and moving the rip fence to center the groove) and mitering them to size, I laid everything out on my bench. It looked pretty good. After I rounded over the inside edges of the panel, I moved to the next step.

For reinforcement, I went with a pair of dowels in each corner. I could have gone with biscuits, pocket screws, splines or the like, but I have my fancy Joint Genie dowel joint jig, and it took mere minutes to get things lined up.  Notice how I kept the dowel holes away from the outside of the miter, lest I drill all the way through the board. I was going to slather on the glue really well, and I knew the dowels were going to hold really well.

Of course, when you are assembling a frame using dowels, you should join two opposite corners together first, and then bring those two halves together… don’t ask me how I came across this valuable piece of information…

The result? Not too shabby. The door needed some sanding to even things out and get the glue marks off of it, but, all in all, it wasn’t a bad little door to work on.

What is it a door to? Well, you are going to have to stay tuned… I should have the entire project put together this weekend, and you’ll see it this coming Monday…

I remember the first time I was able to get a hand plane to work properly. I had this nasty old Stanley No. 5 that I bought from eBay, and I had spent a lot of time cleaning rust and other crud off the body, freeing the adjusting screws and just cleaning the heck out of things. I also took the time to sharpen the iron, reading the instructions on how to do the deed at the bench while I worked on the edge. When everything was back together and the first curl popped off the board, I knew I was in love.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really like sharpening at the time, and the job I did was barely passable. And, after some serious use, I struggled to get things sharpened. After that experience, I shied away from hand planing because I didn’t ever want to go through the whole process.

Since those early days, things have certainly changed. I have improved my sharpening technique and, with the Tormek setup, I can get things done in very short order. The thing I did discover, though, was that while using my chisels and planes, the edges never really got totally dull. Not like a sit down and spend some serious time sharpening kind of dull, just a little difficult to push. That’s when I discovered the joy of stropping.

What exactly is stropping? Well, when you sharpen a blade, there are three phases of technique that you have to consider. First is grinding, which is working at the blade to recreate or reshape a bevel. If you get a beat up old plane, you may need to grind that edge into a usable shape. This is done with a coarse stone, a high speed grinder or some other contrivance.

Next up would be honing. This is when you have the shape of the bevel, but you are looking to start refining the edge. This is typically done by hand on finer stones to get a good polish on the bevel.

Stropping takes honing to the next level. Rather than use a hard surface like a water stone or sandpaper on a piece of float glass, you use something a little softer – typically a strip of leather. The leather itself doesn’t do the cutting – there is a compound that you would rub onto the strop. It contains very fine abrasives and really perfects the cutting edge. Just a few passes is enough to do the job.

This is what barbers used to do to get ultra-fine edges on their straight razors. And, if you notice how a barber uses a strop, he or she never pushes the blade into the stroke, it is always pulled. This way, the sharp edge you are creating won’t slice into your strop, leaving a cut up mess.

I have a hand held strop made of leather glued to a wooden handle. This worked well when I was doing all hand sharpening, and I still use it when stropping smaller tools. The Tormek also comes with a leather strop wheel which turns on the same arbor as the main sharpening stone. The set up comes with a tube of stropping compound, which gets rubbed into the wheel, allowing for a nice polished edge.

While stropping after sharpening is a great way to go, I also have a trick I use in the shop. When I’m working with a chisel or a plane, I will stop from time to time and bring the blade over to the stropping wheel at the Tormek. Just a couple of seconds on both sides of the bevel, and I’m back to work, cutting well again. Obviously, it’s not a full sharpening job, but just as a chef may use a steel to hone his knife during meal preparation, it gets my blades back to a ready-to-roll state quickly.