DIY Sharpening Jig for Chisels & Plane Blades
- Read Time: 6 mins
- Hits: 50859
I always amazed at just how effective shop made jigs can be. With a small investment in time and the knowledge of how they work to be most effective, anyone can build jigs like this sharpening jig and get good results. Years ago I purchased a somewhat expensive commercial sharpening jig, and it works well and is very versatile, but you know what? When I first set it up to sharpen my blades at 25 degrees angle, I have not adjusted it since then, so all the extra settings and things it will do, I have never used. The sharpening jig I am making in this episode is equally adjustable, but most people who make it will probably do the same thing I did, set it up to sharpen at 25 degrees angle and leave it there because the results are just what we need.
To start off making this jig I used a piece of dowel that was 1-1/4 inche in diameter and 4 inche long. That lenght seemed to a nice size that would accomodate all my blades and still have room for something larger if I ever acquired it ...
Beginner Woodworking Tools | Woodworking for Beginners #31
- Read Time: 7 mins
- Hits: 12260
When I started woodworking as a youngster, I had three tools, a hammer, a chisel and small saw. With these tools I made all sorts of very remedial toys like boats and planes and even little trucks. I thought they were fabulous, and maybe they were for a pre-schooler, but I had the advantage of having real tools and small bits of wood to build things with and has served me with a lifetime of enjoyment and passion.
I am very frequently asked, "what tools should I be getting as a newcomer to woodworking?", and to be honest, that's a really hard question to answer because there are so many different kinds of woodworking there can be quite a different choice in tools required. For example a friend of mine, when he started woodworking, he choose carving, so he started off with quite a different set of tools than what I did. Another friend tool wood turning for novices and when he started buying tools, he too had very different tools than what I would have selected ... so in this video and article I am talking only about the tools that I find useful and that I would select if I were starting out in woodworking today in making furniture and similar type items.
Some hand tools when I purchased them, I scrimped on price because I didn't know any better and there was no one around to ask or coach me. I made some very poor choices in squares for example which turned out to be very frustrating when joints and sides do no line up properly. When I purchased a couple of the squares I used, it never occurred to me that they would not be square and when you square is off, nothing aligns ... ever. It took another woodworker's help for me to realize my problem, but it opened a whole new world for me when I realized that sometimes buying cheap tools is a waste of money because you can't do anything with them except throw them away and and re-buy better ones so you can do your work.
Make a Mini Router Table for a Trim Router for Woodworking
- Read Time: 6 mins
- Hits: 47177
Trim or Laminate Routers have been around for many, many years but there are very few manufacturers because they just aren't as popular as they could be, simply because they are small, low powered and limited to 1/4 inch bits only. But Trim Routers or Portable Routers can be a nice alternative in a woodworking shop for people who don't have full size routers. True, they are limited in their abilities, but with some add-on jigs and accessories, Trim Routers can be a useful item.
The main purpose of the "Trim Router" was back in the day when cabinet makers were building kitchen cabinets, a newly invented material was being used for counter tops and it was called Laminate. After the cabinets were made and installed, the counter tops and the back of the sheet laminate material were coated with contact cement and bonded together. The sheep material always stuck out over the edge so that it could be trimmed off even with the edge of the counter, and this was the original purpose of the Laminate or Trim Router. Since those days, counter top manufacturing has evolved and laminate trimmers are seldom used for the purpose they were designed, but there are still good uses for these smaller router versions.
Any router, full size or hand router, can do much more when it has the benefit of a router table. I would estimate that with my parter router and router table, at least 80 to 90 percent of what I do with that router involves using it on a router table, whether it's building doors, trimming wood of cutting rabbets or dados, so I expect the same would be for the trim router, which is why I decided to build this portable table for it ...
Circle Cutting Jig for a Trim Router
- Read Time: 5 mins
- Hits: 24350
Making circles and cutting holes in wood can be accomplished in many ways such as ... the bandsaw, a jig saw, scroll saw, fret saw a hole saw, and even some others that are less common. Making circles or holes in wood is not always easy, depending on the tool, sometimes the circles or holes are not really round and very often the edges are quite rough, which sometime doesn't matter, but in some cases, and nice clean edge and a perfect circle are exactly what is needed.
One of the ways to make holes or circles is using a router fitted with a suitable straight bit. The problem with doing this with full size routers is that they are big and bulky and often the sizes of the cut-out can be quite small, which is exactly why I am making this Circle Jig for my Trim or Compact Router.
Making a Circle Jig is pretty easy and doesn't take that long to make, but there are some procedures to follow to make it easier to make and more functional ...
Using Circular Saw Blades in Your Table Saw
- Read Time: 4 mins
- Hits: 26016
Yep, it can be done quickly and easuly, and with no accessories or adapters, take off the 10" blade that is in your saw, replace it with a 7-1/4" blade, it's that easy.
Many new woodworkers do not know that the arbor in a circular saw is the same diameter as most 10" table saws which means the blades for circular saw fit nicely onto most 10" table saws.
What this does is open up a whole new world of ideas and options for using circular saw blades in your table saw, with lots of benefits and only a could of slight drawbacks. Since I have been using Circ Blades in the Table Saw for some time, I thought it would be benefical for others to see what kinds of cuts they can expect from a couple of different blades that I use all the time, the Freud 24 tooth ripping blade, that is most often used by carpenters in building construction, and the Freud 40 tooth "Plywood" blade, also used by a few carpenters, but more for specialy work like cutting plywood and trim that needs a bit finer cut.
Like many things, there are advantages and disadvantages, so here is the list of Pros and Cons for you to dwell on ...
Watch the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Hez7__x0ZSI
Featherboard Jig - How to Make a Featherboard
- Read Time: 9 mins
- Hits: 11732
Featherboards are not used nearly as often as they could be for a few reasons, they are time consuming to make, they often don't work as well as they could and sometimes they are difficult to mount on your machinery. In this video I am taking one of the elements away, which is making, good quality featherboards that will give you consistent and repeatable results with little setup (depending on your equipment).
The biggest problem I have always had is making featherboards with consistently thin fingers that will give me the kind of pressure I need for use on my router table or table saw. This jig solves that problem and speeds up the process too.
Watch this and other similar videos on YouTube - https://youtu.be/UAPWB368sG0
I first tried to use my "Lynn Sabin" box joint jig (kindly provided free, by Leeway Workshop), but the design of it simply doesn't not work well for featherboards. You can see more on the box joint jig I made right on this website here. I decided to try to re-design it using the same principal of using a threaded bar a the indexing component and went about making a prototype featherboard jig. I seldom need to make prototypes but I do find them useful at times when I don't have a clear vision for the end product. The prototype I made worked OK, but not nearly as well as I hoped, but what I learned making it was what I could do to improve it and so here is what I did ...
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