Ultra-accurate table saw tune-up tip

here is the straightedge lined up on the blade

Table saw tune ups are necessary and annoying.  And for me, I've never really gotten my table saw "perfectly" tuned.  I've always had the nagging suspicion that using the blade as a reference was insufficient: with a 10" table saw blade, the distance between the reference teeth is a mere 5" or so.  That's not a lot of distance to magnify any deviation from square. 

But  this week I had a bright idea: I used my machinist's straightedge to lengthen the reference surface to a whopping 24".  By laying the bar flat on the table and resting one edge against two opposing teeth on the blade, I essentially increased my precision roughly 5-fold.

Check out these pics:

My first dovetail

The dovetail: a classic corner joint, superior to almost all others for joining two boards at a square corner.  It's one of most recognizable signs of craftsmanship (especially for laypeople), one of the first things taught at most furniture schools, and the joint that spawned a million-dollar industry of products designed to avoid hand-cutting it, or avoid using it altogether. 

After nearly two years of teaching myself woodworking, I have read a great deal about dovetails.  So today, in the midst of what I think of as my first "fine furniture" commission, I decided to see if all my reading could help me make a decent dovetail. 

I decided to make a

180 Gallon Cabinet

Here are some pics (and a YouTube video) of one of my 180 gallon cabinets, now on display at Skipton Unique Aquaria in Boston.

Here is the video (below).  To see the pictures click "Read More" at the end of the post.

Best hand-plane results from sharp & square blades

Most people with a tool box own a plane and a chisel.  And yet of all the tools in those toolboxes, the plane and chisel probably get the least amount of use.  If this state of affairs sounds familiar, then read on!

When I fist started woodworking, I was, like many, the proud owner of an unused plane and an unused set of chisels.  I figured I was one of a "new breed" of woodworkers who simply relied on today's power tools to make furniture.

Such are the crazy things one can come up with when one is self-taught!

Now that I have a couple of years under my belt, and I've finally started making fine furniture,

My favorite books about hand planes

I have learned about almost everything I do from a book, followed by repeated practice.  Here are the books from which I learned about hand planes:

1. Understanding Wood, by R. Bruce Hoadley. This is the first book I ever read about woodworking.  It is so clearly the best book for beginners to read, I can't recommend it enough.  It's also a must-read for experienced woodworkers who haven't yet opened the book.  I have seen and heard enough examples of master furniture makers experiencing "mysteriously" poor results, because of something they didn't find out about in Understanding Wood.  This book takes a narrative, scientific approach to the fundamentals of wood, from physiology to wood movement, to cutting wood, blade angles, stress and shaping, and so much more.  If you make furniture and you haven't read this book, then you don't know wood.  The sections on blades, chip formation, and cutting are fundamental to my work with planes.
2. Sharpening, by Lie Nielsen.  It's a good over-all reference by a renowned metal plane maker.  It covers the sharpening of a wide range of tools.  It's organized like an encyclopaedia, which can be nice as a reference.  But I don't like this style if I'm learning about something for the first time, because it's hard to tell if you're getting the whole picture on a given topic.  For example, If you're trying to successfully use a hand plane, Sharpening will not get you there. 
3. Making and Mastering Wooden Planes, by David Finck.  A great primer on sharpening, setting, and using planes.  It's also a decent guide to making wooden hand planes.  This book is organized in a narrative way, and is best read start-to-finish.  I use it as a reference as well.  Finck teaches his methods, rather than try and cover the gamut.  For example, a novice wouldn't know from Finck's book that different planing tasks and wood grains might be best suited to different blade cutting angles and wedge angles.  However, this was the most recent book I've read on the topic, and it's the book that finally got me going with hand planes.  

These three books show the why and how of sharpening and using hand planes.  Read them and practice what they tell you, and soon your plane will be2 singing away!

120 Cabinet stand and canopy

I recently got a chance to take photos of one of my recent aquarium cabinet and canopy builds.  I also 

took photos of every stage of the build.

 

How to bend wood - vacuum methods

While researching bending methods for a counter-top wine rack I am designing, I came across this excellent post on JoeWoodworker.com.  I found the author's real-world expertise informative, as he describes a few tricks of the trade I haven't seen elsewhere.  If you want to bend wood with a vacuum bag, check this site. 

The site also offers plans and materials for building your own vacuum press.  These are relatively sophisticated systems and there are many options and parameters to consider.  Take a deep dive into vacuum press FAQs here. 

...And stay tuned for pics of my new "Wine Wave" counter-top wine rack!

CS Machinery: A source for pattern-maker's and Tucker vises

While looking for a power stock feeder on eBay, I came across a great source for the highly sought-after (and out of production) Emmert Vise.  CS Machinery is run by Bill Kerfoot, and is located in Oxford, PA, not far from Philly, NYC, and Charm City.  They have an incredible number of antique vises and vise parts, especially Tucker vises and pattern-maker's vises.  I wrote Bill an email with a question about how to use a stock feeder on a table saw.  He was very helpful and knowledgeable, which is not always the case with owners of machinery stores.  I imagine Bill knows quite a bit about vises of all types, so if you're looking for a vise, why not give CS Machinery a try?

210 Lower Hopewell Rd
Oxford, PA 19363
Phone: (610) 998-0544
Email: csmachinery@zoominternet.net

Russ Fairfield's Woodturner's Blog

While looking for information on turning (in preparation for using my new Lathe), I came across this excellent resource

QR Code for business cards?

A business development consultant advised me to add a QR code to my new business card, so that people could quickly navigate to my blog or website through their camera phone. It's an interesting idea, though I wonder

Vicco Von Voss: Mastering Fine Furniture

Vicco and Jacqui's timberframed home

See more of Vicco's work at the Massoni Gallery Website.

Achieving truly fine furniture is as much about talent and experience as it is about relationships.  

On a recent return home to Baltimore, Maryland, for Thanksgiving, we got the chance to visit with our friends Jacqui and Vicco Von Voss, who live and work in Centerville on the Eastern Shore. Jacqui and Vicco live in idyllic splendor amid vast forests of maple, oak, and walnut trees. On their property are several structures Vicco built himself, including an award-winning timber-framed home and a large workshop where Vicco creates unique custom furniture of unparalleled quality.

My friendship with Vicco began only a few years ago, when I

What goes into a loudspeaker?

I have built a couple of loudspeakers in the past 18 months, but they were very simple affairs: one driver, no crossover, and an open baffle.  But I aspire to make "real" speaker cabinets.  I have a good book, the Loudspeaker Design Cookbook (LDC), but I am also looking for more inspiration, and more options.  One challenge to speaker design, however, is matching the acoustical and mechanical properties of the drivers with the cabinet design.  One solution, which I will likely use, is building a speaker according to plans, such as those in the LDC.  The company Parts Express also sells speaker kits. 

As for myself, I plan to build my own cabinets.  But I am certainly tempted by the high-quality products available from Parts Express.  Here's a video showing what goes into a basic 2-way loudspeaker.  Interesting, no?

Custom 120 Cabinet & Canopy

>>>> Click here for the photo album of the project, step-by-step <<<<

I recently completed a custom cabinet and canopy for a 120 gallon aquarium.  The project represents several firsts for me, and is also the best aquarium cabinet I've made, with dozens of unique features for major load-bearing applications.  Apart from the design, the fit and finish on this cabinet are among my best work.  The doors, for example,

Building a Square Base Pyramid

when it came time to build a pyramid out of plywood, I found myself stumped. This seemingly simple task is made extremely complicated by the compound angles of the mitered edges of each panel in the pyramid.

I eventually created a truncated pyramid with trapezoidal sides with base angles of 22.5 degrees, and edge miter angles of 40.2 degrees each. I couldn't see any rhyme or reason to the relationship between these two angles, so I looked online.

This explanation is a pretty good one.

But then I found this calculator, which is even better! (no math).  but alas, it doesn't show the angles between the sides.   

THEN, I found this gem of a site: the Miter saw calculator website, with calculators for all kinds of compound miter cuts. 

I used it to predict the angles on my NEXT pyramid. Now, If I could only find tools accurate enough to make the cuts...

My Review of Sketchup 8 Pro Solid Tools

I love Google's Sketchup software.  I have used the free version, and I currently use version 7 Pro, which is now free on Sketchup's website.  I have also tried the new version 8 Pro with Solid Tools.  My only gripe is that making actual complete plans is difficult because it's hard to draw compound angled faces, or manipulate profiled extrusions.  Sketchup isn't great at curves.  

But the Solid Tools are a major improvement in Sketchup, especially for

My new lathe

The first woodworking mentor I ever had is a former luthier who now works as a manager for a woodworking consumer products company.  He still gives me tips on techniques, joinery, and how to use the wide range of products available to furniture makers today.

He was also kind enough to give me a lathe he had lying around.  The lathe is, of course, a unique tool that does things no other tool can do.  Namely, a lathe spins a workpiece, allowing you to shape the work by holding a sturdy knife up to the spinning piece.  It's a lot like how you would cut a decorative groove into a clay pot, spinning on the throwing wheel.

But a decent lathe

Change the size of many images at once with automator for OS X

I have dipped my toe into "programming", and it's already saved me five minutes! Now I can take hundreds of images that are 2000 pixels wide, and scale them all down to a Web-appropriate 640 pixels in just a few keystrokes. Even the most computer-averse knucklehead can do this, and I'll tell you how.

As a woodworker who maintains a blog and a website, I deal with digital images and video more than I'd like to. Not that I mind showing off my work, and adding visual aids when describing a new technique, but I could do without the process of getting the images ready for the web.

The biggest hassle is changing the sizes. But now, after following the simple two-step directions from MacTips, all I do is open Automator and press go!

I don't know what's been holding me back.  I guess I figured it would be hard to find directions on how to do exactly what I wanted.  But finding the directions was as easy as googling "change image size automator os x".  I can't wait to try another one.

Skipton's 180 gallon aquarium cabinet

Finally!  A post about the 180 gallon aquarium stand I made for Skipton's Unique Aquaria in Boston.  I have posted previously about this cabinet, but until now I haven't had the chance to take decent pictures of it in the store.  So here they are!

At the time, this cabinet was the best I'd ever made, from the design to the fit to the finish.  It also taught me a lesson about materials and larger tanks:

DIY Tool Upgrade: adding a 3 h.p. Baldor motor to the Delta 14" Band Saw

My Delta 14" band saw is one of (probably) hundreds of thousands of similar 14" band saws around the U.S. and the world.  The Delta 14" is perhaps the most common starter band saw of the past few decades.  Mine was a gift from a friend, whose father had put the old 14" in the garage after replacing it with a bigger, more powerful saw.  Many woodworkers graduate from their 14" band saw once they get serious about cutting through really tough, thick pieces of wood, such as when re-sawing, which is the process of slicing thin sheets of stock from the face of a thicker board.

Re-sawing allows you to make your own veneers and book-matched panels, which are so much more visually appealing than non book-matched panels, it's worth

Building a 120 gallon aquarium cabinet and canopy step by step: a photo album

For my most recent custom aquarium cabinet commission, I decided to take pictures throughout the design and building process.  The resulting photo album isn't just a great way to keep my clients apprised of their project's progress.  It's also a treasure trove of teaching moments for anybody interested in building their own large aquarium cabinet. 

If you ever wanted to see how something like this is made, take a peek at this Picasa Photo Album - "120 Mafia" (so named because the aquarium will house African cichlids...a "Mafia Tank").  Many of the pics include captions explaining the picture and what's being shown. 

This particular build includes some innovations you won't see in many other cabinets, and information to help you incorporate these innovations into your own designs.  I also address some of the common challenges in designing and building cabinets for large aquariums.