2018 - Year of the Dog... 2019 - Year of the Pig!

Well, it's officially 2019, and according to the Chinese calendar, it's the Year of the Pig. 

I'll need to do a little reading to understand how that will affect everything in the woodshop this coming year, but according to The Chinese Zodiak.org - here's what to expect:

According to the chinese astrology , 2019 is a great year to make money, and a good year to invest! 2019 is going to be full of joy, a year of friendship and love for all the zodiac signs; an auspicious year because the Pig attracts success in all the spheres of life.

Did you know that 2018 was the Year of the Dog?  

That made me think of the dogs of 2018 - the products I bought or used that were worthless. I have a few... here are the top three.

These Flexilla Blow Guns  were particularly frustrating. 

Lest you think I'm just down on Flexzilla, know that I LOVE these Flexzilla air hoses

- they coil effortlessly, so I figured their blow guns would be great, too.  

I even ordered two of them! 

After I unwrapped them and hooked them up the various hoses around the shop, the seal on one instantly failed, perpetually leaking air. Yes, Flexzilla replaced it almost immediately, but the replacement isn't much better, leaking with reckless abandon. 

What's even worse - admittedly, these guns get a lot of use, but the hook on the top of both of them broke off in the first week or two. We hang these on pegs around the shop, so this is beyond irksome. 

My solution was to buy two blowguns from Snap-On and put these two in a drawer, for emergencies. What a shame... my opinion? Don't waste your money on these. 

My next Dog of the Year are these Bessey clamps. Admittedly - these are actually a few years old, but Bessey sent me some bar clamp fixtures to test, and we put them through the wringer. If any tool manufacturer wants a true test of their  product, they should send them our way.  

We give everything a good workout at my shop!

After adding the pipe to these, we put them in rotation, only to experience failure after failure - cracks in the metal, 

as well as another weird thing... these clamps tended to shear off the threads of the pipe. Not just once, but over and over!

It would start innocently, by pulling out of parallel from the front pad. 

By the time we realized what was happening, there were probably a dozen clamps that had broken, by ripping off the threaded end.

 We have a cart full of pipe with broken threads, 

which is a reminder to me every time I walk past it  - don't waste your money on Bessey clamps. 

I've reached out to the people at Bessey who sent these to me, to no avail. Never heard back from anyone. So on one hand, I'm thrilled to be a part of their testing team, but on the other hand - we're frustrated. WTF, Bessey?

My final dog of 2018 is Powermatic, which bills itself as "The Gold Standard" of tools. 

Last Spring, my Delta 6x48 sander died, and since I needed it for a class that very night, I called local supplier and bought the Powermatic equivalent, sight unseen. If I'd have had a bit more time, I would have checked out the options before choosing this one. 

Where do I start... from the plastic parts that randomly broke, 

to the (almost instantly) flaking paint,

 to the fact that the sanding area on this machine was much smaller than its Delta counterpart... well - this sander was a dud. I take full blame for this one, as I didn't perform my due diligence, but I did learn one thing - Powermatic isn't all that, in my book. 

Anyone else have anything they want to nominate for the 2018 year of the Dog?

Coming up next... the best products that I used 2018. Stay tuned!

Last Sunday of the year...

Sunday mornings are for sipping coffee, and lounging around in my pajamas! It's so easy to get sucked into watching vintage videos on woodworking - here are two of my favorites. 

Thanks for this one, Jim C!

Hope your holiday is warm and merry...

Here's the latest scoop...

We've been making some ridiculously cool cutting boards in our Advanced Cutting Board class. Just in time for Christmas, BTW... but the funny thing is - when they make their boards, most of the students say they want to keep them, instead of give them away. I don't blame them, we've done some amazing pieces this session.

 Our end grain board on steroids is always a big hit, but we upped our game and made something really unique last week. 

To be frank, I'm a little tired of end grain cutting boards. In fact - I was just discussing that with someone this past weekend. She's made a gazillion boards for people, and told me that people always request end grain boards from her. Those take more work than a standard flat grained board, and most end grain board you see are... well... just boring. 

I wish I had a dollar for every one of these I've seen.... yawn....  

So when I was looking to add a new board as a class project, I remembered this scooping technique that a student and I tried a few years ago.  It involved making a jig for spinning a wood blank over the blade, to create a very nice bowl in wood. 

The jig is pretty simple - make a "bridge" that spans the blade, from the end of the left table, to the fence. It has to be tall enough for the wood blank to fit under it.

  After the bridge is made, we drilled a hole directly over the center of the blade. This is where the wood will spin. 

Here's the piece of wood I wanted to scoop, so I did some calculating to find the center of the scooped area, and then transferred the mark to the back side of the wood.

 I drilled a hole on that back side, and then determined how deep I could scoop into the wood.

 I figured about halfway was good, I raised the blade to that height. Then I lowered it back down, counting the number of revolutions on the elevation wheel of the saw. In this case, it was five revolutions. 

With the blade below the table, I used a drill bit and secured the wood blank into the jig. That will allow the wood to safely spin over the blade, without kickback. 

This works best with two people, one spinning the wood, and another raising the blade. But in a pinch, I've done it myself, so it's totally possible.  

After spinning to bowl and raising the blade five revolutions, here's the result - a very nice scooped bowl into your wood. 

I purchased some thick walnut live edge lumber from Andrew at Reclaimed Secrets, and our charcuterie boards are sweet! 

Can't wait to see these sanded and oiled!

Want to feel uplifted?

I'm so proud to call Rich Matta a friend... enjoy this video of one of his (famous) students sharing how Rich changed his life. 

It's officially the Christmas season....

While the snow is already flying back east, it's been pretty nice here up until this week. Then all of a sudden - the  cold weather hit us, the leaves changed colors and fell off trees, and BAM! - 

Winter is here. 

In addition to teaching every night of the week, I've been cranking out a  huge amount of work for customers - and it's been hectic, but very rewarding.

I had a chance to fire up the lathe and make these juggling spools - the second time I've had the chance to make these for a local performer. 

And I couldn't be more proud of this live edge table that one of my students made - she and her husband are so excited! The photo below shows the unfinished table, 

but check out the colors that developed once it was oiled. 

Wow. 

It takes a village!

It's great to have students making projects that they can give away as Christmas or Chanukah gifts.  So the usually holiday class is either Instant Gratification Woodworking, where we make amazing "quickie" gifts, or the Advanced Cutting Board class, where we make cutting boards in steroids. 

Can you guess which one is running right now? 

This end grain board might be the all time favorite one we offer - the colors and patterns (or lack of patterns!) make it truly a unique board - one you'll never find in a store. 

This board takes a village.

It takes three times as much wood as a normal board, and we rely on the fact that everyone in the class cuts and preps wood pieces to share with each other. We mix everything together, so that each student's board has pieces of everyone else's boards... it's quite a group project.

Because it's an end grain board that we run though the planer, we have to glue a sacrificial 2x4 on the back end of the board, so that the vertical wood pieces are supported and can't chip off. 

It's complex, with no repeatable pattern, and you can tell by their faces - they're pretty damn proud.  

We snuck in a simple Domino cutting board, too! 

We'll be making two more boards, and one of them is extremely cool. I'll be sharing a new technique that's life changing for our projects.

Stay tuned!

Who you gonna call?...

There isn't a day that goes by when I don't get a call from someone asking me to make a woodworking cut, or fix something that's broken. 

Just this week, I built a trunk deck in a car for someone who wanted to camp and sleep in their car, trimmed the boards on a trailer deck,  and shortened some table and chair legs for a dining room set. It's not glamorous, but it sure does fill a need in the community. 

This article just about sums it up...

Click on that link above to read a disturbing story about the shortage of tradespeople. With most high school trade programs and apprenticeships drying up, as well as younger people choosing to not get involved in more blue-collar endeavors, it's going to be very tough to find someone to perform basic tasks like hanging a door, replacing a garbage disposal, or rewiring a lamp. 

I'm not sure what the solution is, but high school counselors should probably be steering more students toward these fields. Not everyone is college material, nor can many afford it. There should be a way to educate students about the need for woodworkers, plumbers, electricians, and more. Not to glamorize it, because trust me, there are days when it's ANYTHING but glamourous. 

But nothing beats doing something you love, and working for yourself. 

Check out this book...

Another quick scooping technique

It's funny how things get away from you.... a student and I set up this jig on the tablesaw a while back, and I'd forgotten how cool and easy it was to scoop wood with it.  

It's simple to clamp a beam over the top of the blade, and then drill a hole directly over the center of the blade, so that wood can pivot over the blade. 

In this case, we used a drill bit as our pin. 

This simple jig will create awesome bowls in wood... you just rotate the wood, raising the blade little by little, until you get the desired depth.

Here's one in pine, 

and one in walnut.  If you look closely, you'll see a lot of texture from the blade, and frankly - it can be sanded out, or left there for a cool effect.  I ended up sanding this out, as I wanted a perfectly smooth surface, but I've seen some gorgeous pieces with the surface left textured, right off the saw.  

In an upcoming Advanced Cutting Board class, we'll be employing this technique on some charcuterie boards - can't wait to experiment with scooping some longer boards to see how this looks!