Southeast Michigan Woodworkers

One of my greatest investments has to be my automatic backup generator. With the power going out several times in the last few weeks… this storm season would have otherwise got the best of me. Preferring to by my meat by the half cow, owning several refrigerators/freezers would have been disastrous with the lengthy outages that have plagued us over this month.

The creature comforts that keep us off each other’s throats (which can include TV and DVD players, air conditioning and microwaves) are much needed for some… a placard for sanity for others.

I still prefer the occasional flashlight search and doing stuff by candle light… but usually by my own accord. Others would prefer to have their eyes gouged out and be forced to drink an entire jar of pickle juice, than to live a day without charging their ipod. And I, personally, would rather drink a gallon of pickle juice and remove my eyes… than to have to listen to the wailings of a kid without 12 channels of cartoons or a teen’s constant mumbling over their dead ipod. Remember when the only cartoons where the 4 offered on Saturday mornings… only 2 of which you could choose to watch?

I heard somebody mention that a generator should be used for emergencies only and only urgent equipment need be supplied power. That statement struck a chord with me (E7maj5 perhaps). They should have finished that book, because on the next page… the author wrote that all woodworkers need only one router and one smoother.

Well, we had the second Galoot meeting dealing with the construction of the more hand tool oriented of the two benches last Thursday.  It was kind of an unusual meeting in that we accomplished quite a bit.  Stretcher tenons were finished, leg mortises were bored and a couple of tenons were fitted to their respective mortises.  Because of the nice, hot weather we were able to set up a couple of work stations outside the shop and keep everyone occupied.  Everyone had a chance to do a little boring, a little chiseling and some of us even had the pleasure of a little sawing.  The next meeting should see the last of the mortises bored, all of the tenons fitted and some assembly completed.  I think that we are right on schedule for demonstrations for the club’s August meeting. In one respect, getting some work done is gratifying, but because of that we didn’t spend as much time as usual discussing the myriad of woodworking topics that usually come up at these meetings.  It seems like Justin is at the top of the slippery slope and we should be doing a little more to grease his descent. We had a pretty good turnout with Bruce, Jamey, Jason, Justin, Matt and me.  Galoot meetings do not seem complete without Al, so Al if you are reading this, we hope to see you next time.  I know hand tool woodworking is not everybody’s idea of how the craft should be done, but if you are around Ann Arbor on the first Thursday of each month, stop by, I think you will enjoy yourself and maybe even learn something new. 

Well, due to a bit of luck and logistical convenience coupled with increasing gas prices, I now get to carpool 4 days per week.  This means that I get a little time almost every morning to spend in my shop waiting for my ride to arrive.  This morning I was able to spend some time using some new-old hand planes on some curly maple.  While there was a little tearout, it still looked really nice.  Thank’s to Jim Crammond for providing some great planes to start learning with.  I have noticed that I favor tilting the plane towards myself, which causes less than perpendicular edges.  I was able to rectify that a little bit by skewing the plane as I pushed forward.  I think, at least on edge grain this tends to allow the plane to balance a bit more on the thin side of the board.  After about 30 minutes of plane work last night, I can see why Rob Cosman from LN is built like an English Bulldog.  I was sweating profusely.  Anyway, I guess the moral for the day is that a good tool gets you interested enough to continue to hone a skill while a bad tool can keep you from even trying.

We had a meager turnout at the Galoot meeting Thursday night, Jamey, Bruce, Chris along with me met at Jamey’s shop to get started on Dave’s bench.  Actually, Chris, who arguably is the bench making expert of the SEMIWW,  just came to lend moral support and didn’t actualy participate in any bench construction. This bench will be a modified Nicholson style of bench.  It will have an open base with a shelf, front apron, leg vise and tail vise per the plans somewhere on the site.

Dave had milled some oak to Jamey’s specification as promised.  He provided 4 legs, 4 side stretchers and the 2 bottom stretchers for the front and back.  We decided to make 3/4″ X 2″ tenons and drawbore them during assembly.  We also discussed attaching the top.  Then we got down to business.  Working in a shop designed for one person is difficult when ther are three people eager to make some sawdust, but we made some good progress.  All of the side stretchers have tenons cut and Jamey bored the first mortise. 

With any luck, we should be able to finish the mortise and tenons at the next meeting and dry assemble the base.

The other weekend in between business trips I was able install Byrd Shelix cutterheads in my jointer and planer with the help of a friend.  I had been selling misc shop tools that haven't seen much use to raise the cash, and I finally raised enough to purchase both the jointer and planer heads thanks to a great sale price from Grizzly that was matched by Holbren (who threw in free shipping as well).

From reading others experiences I gathered that the jointer head would be fairly straightforward to install, but from my personal experiences with tearing my planer apart I knew that would be a PITA.  Much to my surprise, they both went fairly easy, and we were able to get the two machines done in about 4 hours.  My friend was a huge help, and we had to re-use some parts that I wasn't planning for, but overall it was a much easier task than I expected.  So I thought I'd capture some lessons learned here for folks who might tackle the same task in the future.

For the jointer, the biggest surprise was that the bearings on my Griz G0490 (one of their first models) are different than those in a DJ-20, and they're also different than those shown in the on-line G0490 parts list.  So the replacement set that I had on hand were later returned to the store, and we had to pull the original bearings and re-install them on the new shelix head.  Other than that it went easily, and after tweaking the tables with the new head I was testing the machine in no time.

The planer was definately harder to do, but it didn't take much more time (probably thanks in part to my previous experience with "repairing" the gearbox).  The biggest issue with the planer is the $%#@* gearbox.  It looks easy in Byrd's step-by-step document, but my gearbox did not come apart (on either occasion) nearly as nicely as the one in Byrd's pics.  The shafts and gears interlock with each other, there are bearings all over the place pressed onto shafts and into the box housing, and the oil seals are tricky to seat properly.  Also, I think there's a fundamental flaw in the gearbox that permits the oil leakage - it needs an additional fastener in the upper corner of the case to get a better clamp load on the gasket.  Before you start the planer head make sure you have print outs of the exploded parts diagrams, replacement oil (I used 80-90W gear oil), replacement bearings and seals, several bearing pullers (the cheap HF set I purchased had several sizes and worked great), shop rags to handle the grease/oil, a dead blow hammer and deep well sockets to coerce bearings into/out of their housings and shafts, leather gloves to protect your hands from getting sliced on the cutters, and some real estate to lay out all the pieces/parts.  If you have some base knowledge of bearings, take your time, don't chip the new cutters, and keep everything neatly organized and you'll get it done.

I’ve almost used up the last of my crappy Lowes plywood. I’ve been trying to dust-proof the garage a bit. It gets pretty dusty. I know I need to run better DC lines, I have a larger/better air cleaner on the way, and I need to be better about taking the time to hook up the shop vac to the TS guard. I’m a slacker though. I decided I should replace some shelving with quick Kreg pocket hole’d cabinets. It worked out pretty great actually. I used an idea I saw on Wood Works for sliding doors and it was cheap, quick, and makes for a nicely closed up cabinet. It should keep things free of dust for a bit.

What’s better, on half of one of the cabinets I setup some shelves so I could take better advantage of the space. I still don’t use several inches of depth to them which bugs me a bit, but I’ve not figured out a good way to deal with it. This is definitely an improvement over the 12″ mdf shelves I had here though. More space, dust free, and used up just about the last of my crappy ply. What more could you ask for?

I decided today was a clean up day. After finally getting the tools out of the house and back into the garage I figured I should spend some time sharpening up my tools. I have a new router plane I grabbed off ebay and I have another pair of planes on the way. Hopefully they show up soon. I started out cleaning/sharpening my block plane which has a horrible iron on it. Then the larger plane. The #80 cabinet scraper, which I’m not sure I sharped right, and then I started to get into the chisels. I have a ton of work to do on them since I have a trash set that are nicked all over.

What’s horrible now is I want to play with the sharp new tools, but I don’t have a bench setup to hold things down right. I tried to stick a block of walnut in my cheap vise I have on my sawhorse-door, but it vibrated whenever the plane started into the wood. I’m not sure if it’s the plane or the vise’s fault, but either way…it’s not going to work for much right now. After the bench presentation last month, looks like it might be time to start working on plans for what I need.

It’s finally done. Check out the whole thread here. Lots of pics in the full gallery here. You might want to start at the end. It was a fun project and I’m definitely glad my wife pushed me into doing something for the house. I now know I definitely want to do this some more. I’ve got a ton of things I’d like to do and I definitely learned a ton of things. Now, what’s next on the woodwork agenda.

With my finishing of the hall table top I am finally getting to try out some new sanding products. After trying to do some light sanding between coats with my 400grit wet/dry paper I’ve been thinking there must be a better way. So I happened to see at Lowes, these 3M flexible rubbery sanding pads. I got to use it finally this morning as I buffed out the nibs. It’s the 400 grit pad and I used the small Detail Sanding Tool as a backer for it. It worked pretty well. A couple of light swipes across the finish and you can feel the nibs gone. You also get some nice white powrder on your hand. So just a heads up, it seems to work well and was much easier to use than the 400 grit wet/dry paper. The  rubbery flexibility is much nicer to be sure. So, 2nd coat on the table…one more Seal-A-Cell to go and then the final Arm-R-Seal begins. I wonder how many coats I should end up with on there. It is a table after all, but hopefully one that won’t see much use.

I spend the other night sanding down the table top. I ran the ROS at 120 and then 220. The sides I did by hand with a sanding block the same way. Smooth as butta after the sanding. Then I took it inside and did the dye. Eight drops of transtint vintage maple into a dixie cup of Zinser wax free shellac. I layered it on a bit thick since I knew I was going to be taking a sanding to it anyway. If it dried with some runs it would just come out.

Tonight I went to work sanding it down. I started out with just 220 grit, but it wasn’t doing the job. I moved back down to 120 and then repeated with 220. It sanded out pretty quickly and you could really tell how the end grain had soaked up the color. The maple really seems to sand down to such a glass smooth surface where the walnut always had a little grainy feel to it. I guess this is just part of the learning to work with the woods.

Of course with some good comes some bad. I noticed this with the walnut base. I find somehow during sanding/finishing I’m putting indentations into the wood. Small little divets. I also then found a couple of tearout places that didn’t come out. I don’t know how I missed it all the way up to now. I’m not sure what to do about it. I’ve already had the top thinner than I wanted. I think I’m going to just go with it. It’s very hard to see unless you’re all over it like I am sanding/finishing it. The finish actually helps hide it as it darkens the wood and with all that end grain doing funny effects. I’m just worried about how much sanding it would take to clean it all out and I don’t want to go back to the mill for have it run through the sander again.

So the first coat of Seal-A-Cell went on. It looks really good and I’m beyond psyched. I can’t wait to  get more coats on there and get to the Arm-R-Seal. I am worried about the sanding between coats, but this what learning is for.

Here are links to the before/after the dye stage.

Before / After

I spent this weekend trying to get to work on my hall table. The top has no officially been started. Before milling the boards I changed out the planer and jointer knives so they’d be as sharp as possible with the curly maple I’m using for the top. The boards are fantastically figured, but that just means a new guy like me is going to be spending a lot of time with tear out issues. Hopefully, my trip to the milling place today will get me a nice finished top I can cut to size and start prepping for finish.

I also started planning out what I want to work on next once this table is done. My wife’s going to kill me, but I want to put together a really nice chisel cabinet. Something that I can keep chisels in the main body and in the door I’ll make it a little deep to put things like marking guages, squares, etc. I changed a sketchup model of a chisel to match the dimensions of my octoganal sorby’s and got the rough dimensions for a case that holds two rows of 5 chisels. I’m still working out things like the joinery and such, but I think I’m going to use some of the cherry I’ve got sitting in the garage on it. Only a few wood types left in the garage that I’ve not used now.

Nothing gets your mind going though like trying to design something. I had a hard time sleeping thinking of all the ways to put this together. Should the racks the chisels sit on be a sliding dovetail, just a rabbet. Could I get away with using some cheap 1/4 ply for the back. What if I covered the cheap ply back with some nice velvet to provide a dark backdrop on gleaming sharp chisels? How to do the door and have room for the extra tools in there? It’s crazy for sure.

I miss my shop.  Lately I've been travelling a ton for business, and the hours are long and there's little to no relief in site.  Since I can't take my tablesaw and handplanes with me on a plane, I've been busy with "virtual woodworking".  You know - reading books, reading web forums and blogs, working on desigs in Sketchup, visiting tool stores and galleries, and generally thinking about wood much more than working with wood.

So I'm well read but poorly practiced.  This bites the big one.  Really sucks. 

I even started a few threads on my favorite web forums asking for ideas about woodworking on the road.  The best ideas seem to be learning chip carving (which I've been meaning to do for a while).  That's fine, but when I really want to work on a desk or throw shavings at the lathe, fiddling with eeny weeny geometrical cutouts on a bland piece of basswood just doesn't seem so appealing.

So if/when free time becomes available again I need to concentrate on two priorities: my family and woodworking.  The wife and kids are always number one, but I need to take every spare half hour while the family is otherwise occupied and carve out some shop time.  I have a friend who wakes himeself up at some ridiculous hour in the morning so that he can have an hour or two of project time before the family awakes and work beckons.  I'm not a morning person, so that will never happen, but the idea of creatively squeezing out time to work with wood at every available moment is one that I need to learn from.

So if you're reading this and have your workshop a few steps down the stairs or out in the garage, get out there, spend an extra 30 minutes, and appreciate the quality time working with wood.

One of the things that I have enjoyed about SEMIWW is the varied stages of woodworking evolution of the different members.  I see others going through the same stages and interests that I have been through.  First I was smitten by the bug to make something of wood.  It quickly dawned on me that I needed to acquire tools.  I chose the handtool path because it met many of my needs, lack of shop space, quiet, not too dusty, and cheap.  After years and years of this stage, reams of sandpaper and gallons of WD-40 and time spent cleaning up rusty tools, I started doing what I had originally wanted to do, build some stuff.  

 Of course this stage requires research and practice.  First you have to learn about joinery, design and techniques then you have to practice.  Shop projects that no one else will see and small items that can be easily burned are good for this stage.  I would also recommend taking classes, besides the learning, you meet other woodworkers and get to share experiences, gloats and tall tales.  I have usually made friends with a few of the other students, found some to be really annoying, there is always someone that you can feel superior to and at least one that is so skillful that they are really intimidating.  It’s also a great way to meet the celebrity woodworkers that write books,  articles for magazines and are cited as experts on the net.  

So lastly, you reach the stage where you are fairly competent, at least the projects look similar to what you had in mind, and you have learned to hide or recover from your mistakes.  This is where I find myself and now I have two new problems.  First, I have way to many tools filling up the shop, and second what do you do with all of the stuff that you make.  My house is only so big and if I kept everything I make, my house would look like my shop.  This is where family and friends come in, you can give most of the things you make away.  I see this as having several benefits, you don’t have to look at your mistakes, everyone has different tastes so you can research many different type and styles of furniture, schedules are open ended, and if there are problems down the road you can always say, “Hey, what did you expect, it was free.”

I suppose that was the long way around to my point.  SEMIWW is going through a little upheaval at the moment, but let’s stick with it.  Thanks to a big effort by our computer savvy members, the website is working well.  The new board is slaving away on a back channel to improve meeting content and bring the fun back into our interactions.  The club is evolving and we all have to let our leaders know what interests each of us and lastly we all need to contribute our efforts to strengthen the SEMIWW.  I have enjoyed being associated with everyone in the group and I really would like to see it continue.  Woodworking is inherently a solitary activity and for me SEMIWW is an outlet that allows me to socialize with others that share the same interests and to gain and share knowledge about woodworking.

I’ve been going back and listening to old podcasts from Woodtalk Online, which is a great podcast by the way, and I took a little issue when they were talking about the future demise of the woodworking group. In their opinions, with the rise of the internet and sites such as our forum, sawmill creek, etc, information you used to go get from a group is now easily available online.

While our group isn’t perfect and lately we’ve had some issues, one thing was very clear from the meeting we had last night. Heck, we enjoy getting together. We enjoy checking out each other’s shops, tools, and projects. I don’t think anyone there thought of the forum as the answer for the group. Oh we love it and use it. It keeps us connected the rest of the month, but really, no  one wants to get away from meeting together.

It was the group meeting format that drew me into this woodworking hobby. I was looking for something to do that didn’t involve a computer all the time since that’s my day job, and found a group of guys who enjoy this very hands on, get your hands dirty, hobby. If it wasn’t for the group and the meetings that I drive out more than an hour for, I don’t know that I’d be sitting with a garage full of tools and a table in my hallway.

I’ve been reminiscing lately… when I stumbled across a picture of a guitar posted for sale. My youth came flooding back as I looked over this ad, downloaded the pic and made a call across the country to gain my youth back… to no avail. It was sold.

That day started a frenzy. I had to have that guitar. What guitar, you ask? I’ll tell you.

It was a cool fall day. My new friend and his very cool mom made a trip to purchase him a new guitar. I remember the day as if it was yesterday… although nearly 27 years had passed. I was in the market… mainly because I wanted to be as cool as this new friend… who got all the chicks.

I found a guitar there that was way out of my price range… which, by the way, was $0. It was the brand new Fender Bullet. It was hot off the presses and a beautiful combination of a  svelte 7/8 Strat body and the slim, yet bluesy Telecaster neck. These early models left over late ’70’s telecaster necks… I was told. The thing was gorgeous and a mere $200 brand new. It may as well been $2,000,000… because I hadn’t procured work as of yet. They discontinued that guitar the following year… but my love never wained.

 So, here I am… some 26 years later and in a much different finacial position. I stumble across the memory of this guitar and after a somewhat frantic search, I find a perfect specimen, and jump on it immediately. And here she is… 1982 Fender Bulletin near mint condition:

Justin from the group hooked me up with a great deal. I’ve got an upgraded air cleaner on the way. As I work to put up a ceiling in the shop I keep thinking, “Man, I can’t wait for that air cleaner”. I currently have a hand-me-down Delta AP100 in the shop which works ok. It’s supposed to push some 400cfm and definitely puts out some noise. The new one is this Steel City single speed model. I couldn’t find the db numbers on the Delta so I can’t tell about the noise difference, but the cfm is going to be about double. It’s supposed to be on its way from PA and here around Easter. So I see dust around the garage ( it is an active garage after all) and I can’t help but hope this new toy I’m patiently waiting for will help solve it.

Now I need to start looking into how I can rig up something so that it runs for an hour every time the garage door is closed.

Oh, how I miss my truck! The lease on my F150 was up last summer, and in a moment of weakness I leased a Ford Edge instead of another truck. Oh, how I miss my truck!

Yeah, the Edge is awesome, and it gets relatively fantastic gas mileage for my 50 mile daily commute, but you just can't haul stuff the way I used to in my truck. Plywood? - nope. A new major shop tool? - probably not. A load of mulch? - no way. Two kiddies and a wife? - yessiree. I suppose my priorities have truly changed over the last few years. More family (and more work); less woodworking.

So I'm in the middle of a big desk/hutch project for Sherri, and I've gone as far as I can go without buying another sheet of plywood. Instead of jumping in the F150 and grabbing a nice sheet without thinking twice I now have to plan well in advance to either borrow someone's truck, "evaluate" one from work for a night, or beg and plead for someone to bring me one on their next plywood run. I could ask someone at the Borg to break down a sheet so that it fits in my truck, but then I'd be buying el-crapola ply and trusting one of their oh-so-helpful employees to cut it properly. Nah, I'll wait to get a decent full sheet home somehow, someway. It just might take a while, and in the meantime my wife won't have her desk anytime soon.

Oh how I miss my truck!

We’ve got a bunch of great guys in Michigan doing a bunch of really cool woodworking things. I’ve been hanging around some of them for the last year as part of the SEMIWW group.

The more I’ve been messing with this new hobby the more I’ve been wanting to setup a blog for the things I am doing. I figure maybe someone else out there might find it some light reading or it might also help someone else with their own stuff.

Toward this end I’ve setup this blog on the SEMIWW website. I’m secretely hoping to get more guys in the group to blog the every day stuff they run across and maybe even post about their projects as they progress. All too often you see the final picture, without any decent understanding of what it took to get there. If one blogs along the way, a lot more of that can come out.

So here’s my start. I’m working on putting up the ceiling in my garage so I can insulate the last space…above. I’m doing it in a different way. I’m not just putting up drywall, I’m trying to do it while keeping the joists exposed. I’ll try to post some pictures as I figure out exactly how it’s going to work.

Here is a test to see how well this works with multiple posters to the system. I mean, I really would love to see a bunch of us posting blog entries on tips/tricks/events/projects and such. This thing allows the uploading of images, linking to the wiki and posts on various forums, and just commenting on woodworking in general.

Make sure to put your post in the correct category on the right or create your own new category. You can also use tags to help categorize the entries. I’m tagging this one as testing and instructional.

Test post, now isnt this all cool?