Wobble Wheel Dado Sizing Jig

Read Time: 6 mins

Hits: 6774

Many many years ago I purchased a Wobble Wheel Dado Blade. For those of you who do not know this blade, it is an interesting invention where a single blade is mounted in housing that when you turn the housing base, it offsets the wheel in stead of running true. The more you offset the blade the wider the dado it will cut. The blade works fine, although mine seems to be a bit sticky and harder to move in recent years. I have also heard many people who don't like wobble wheel dado blades, explaining that the blades don't give perfectly flat bottom dados because of their design, the bottoms are slightly convex or hollowed.

If you check out the previous video I did on this, you can see that ... yes, there is ... barely a dip in the dado cuts, but honestly, I think in most situations this would be more than acceptable for most people. I also have a stacked dado blade set that I use most often, mostly because it is more accurate for cutting size of dados I need.

Personally, my only real complaint with wobble wheel dado blades is that in order to get a snug fitting dado, you need to fiddle around with them setting, testing, re-setting and re-testing. All this takes time and I have always thought it would be nice to have some sort of a jig that I could use that I could set the blade width before putting it into the table saw, that would be accurate and give me the kinds of dados I want. 

A Tool Tote Teaching Task

Read Time: 4 mins

Hits: 4556

There are always new people interested in woodworking, and often these are younger people who have an interest in learning how to do woodworking and the best way of teaching them is getting them involved in making something. In the past I have made bird houses, and they are fine, but more recently I discovered another project that is still quite easy, but this one gives the woodworking student something to take away and something they can use in the future ... their very own tool tote.

It's easy to make, can be made with power tools or hand tools, there are many different designs, sizes and methods of making these all of them have their own unique advantages and perfect build for helping to teach newcomers to woodworking some of the finer techniques and methods.

I prefer to use Pine, or some other softwood as it is lighter in weight, so less to carry around. Softwoods are usually less expensive and easier to "work" than hardwoods, and if you make a mistake, it's not too costly to fix or replace. What's nice with this design is it doesn't take all that long to make, the tote works great and you can use a wide variety of tools in making and assembling it.

How to Make an Antique Style Ice Box

Read Time: 6 mins

Hits: 7719

I'm not sure why it happens, but sometimes I get involved in building something that turns out to be one my favorite builds ever ... this is one of those projects.
Not long ago I made a video on some of the elements that go into "distressing wood" in an effort to make wood look old and well used. In this article we take that information and apply it to the making of an antique style Ice Box, something that would have been built and used between the 1880s and 1920s. This piece of furniture was crudely made, probably by people with few tools and little knowledge of woodworking. There are very few of these pieces around anymore, most have long since been scraped so in order to have something like this means recreating it.

I don't know why this piece of furniture caught my eye, something about it was appealing. I love old and antique furniture and this little ice box seemed like a nice piece to replicate. Anyone looking very closely at it would not be fooled, and certainly any furniture expert would not be deceived by the replication of a piece of furniture like this but in a room full of furniture, this piece stands out by giving the illusion that it has been around for many decades and could likely have been rescued from an old barn or disused cottage in many parts of the world.

Because this piece was to appear old I worked hard at finding rough cut lumber that had nasty knots, cracks saw marks, chips and gouges in it because this would all add to the finished affect.

Making Distressed Wood for an Antique Look

Read Time: 3 mins

Hits: 4719

I don't know who coined the phrase "what's old is new and what's new is old" but it certainly fits well in the entire furniture making industry. There are many companies that work hard making new furniture look old. It's not that they are trying to fool anyone, they are filling a market need. There is lots of old furniture around in various states of condition but sometimes it's quicker and easier to replicate the furniture than it is to go out an find it, then to carefully restore it specific condition.

The elements that go in to making new wood look old are as varied as you can imagine and basically there is no right or wrong way of doing it, you just do what ever works. All that really counts in the end is how the finished piece looks and if it lives up to your expectations.

Of course the first thing to choose is the type of wood you want to use and if you want to stay true to replicating a specific piece of furniture you would want to use the same wood, but, as I said, there are no rules, if you want to use a different kind of wood, you need to experiment with how the finished wood will look and this means working with different finishes, like dyes, stains and top coats ...