Buying Tools at a Tool Swap Meet
- Read Time: 3 mins
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Everyone loves to "get a deal" and one of the best ways is to find tools and equipment that is pre-owned. There is a plethora of used tools and equipment in the world and a small fraction of it comes to market in the form of garage sales, yard sales, flee markets, swap meets as well as the huge variety of on-line listings.
Buying used tools is really no different than purchasing new tools, except you will get no warranty and usually no return options. You either need to know what you are buying, and even then you still run the risk that what ever you buy will end up being unsuitable for your needs. Just one of the risks you run, so be careful on how much money you are willing to risk.
The more complicated the tool ...
Making a Chainsaw Sharpening JIg
- Read Time: 5 mins
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I know that to get good at something you need to practice, but I just never seem to use my Husqvarna Chainsaw enough to really get efficient at sharpening the blade. I do a good job of sharpening, but I know it takes me much longer than someone who uses the saw a lot.
My biggest challenge is when I have the saw in the field, and inadvertently hit the dirt or some small rocks, I can feel the blade getting dull instantly and have to stop to sharpen it. This is where my sharpening skills need the most help. I find it difficult at best to try and hold the saw with one hand and sharpen with the other. I know there are some jigs you can buy that you can drive into the stump of a tree, then clamp the chainsaw bar to ... but I never seem to be around a big enough stump to use one of these clamps. I am however, very often fairly close to my truck, so why not build a clamping system for the chainsaw bar, that I can fasten to my truck's tailgate, that I can then spend a few minutes and make a good job of sharpening the blade.
I started off by measuring the size of my saw and cutting an old piece of 1/2" plywood to fit. In my case 31" x 15". Next I needed to make a simple rack that would hole the motor and handles from moving around too much ...
Patio Server
- Read Time: 5 mins
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One of the best features of being a woodworker is that fact that you can re-make things, alter designs or just make things from pictures or ideas. What an amazing thing to be do, I guess that's where part of the art form of woodworking comes from. I often wish I had some of those creative abilities. For the most part, I need to at least look at a picture of something before I can create it, which is precisely what happened with this build.
I liked the design and the functionality of having and using a patio server ... what a handy little item for anyone who does some entertaining among family and friends. A perfect way to hold and transport food and drink around a patio, sundeck or back yard get-together.
I started off by making a rough model, just to get a sense of comparative sizes of the parts that might be needed. Once I had that, the next real measurement I needed was ... what would be comfortable height for the handle to be at and with this knowledge the build began ...
Using Winding Sticks to Check Wood Warps
- Read Time: 3 mins
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I'm not sure if anyone really knows where or how winding sticks came into being, but I would be willing to bet it was in ancient boat building. Boat builders use all sorts of tricks to figure out the best angles, curves and lines on boats and to do this they need to start with straight lines, which is where winding sticks would be helpful.
Winding sticks are used to help show where boards are warped or twisted and the way they work is simply to set them up on a board which is lying on a flat surface, then sight down the tops of the 2 sticks. If they line up perfectly, the board is flat, if the sticks are uneven, then the board is warped.
Oddly enough, it is boards that are only slightly warped that are the hardest to determine and this is where winding sticks really shine. Boards that are wildly warped are pretty easy to see, it's the ones that "look" flat that can be challenging ones to work with.
In the past winging sticks were useful to a woodworker or carpenter who was hand planing boards to make them flat, and that really hasn't changed, only now we often use machinery to make boards flat, and winding sticks are still useful in ...
Making A Collectables Cabinet
- Read Time: 4 mins
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There are a variety of television shows that revolve around the collectables theme, whether it be antique or more modern collections. Almost every collector loves to show off their collections or at least parts of it to those who are interested. In this article and video we build a small wall hanging cabinet with glass door, and with battery operated motion sensitive light, precisely for showing and storing a collection.
In order to make the collection the focus, we purposely built the cabinet fairly plain, and even finished it with a dark color to help take away any distractions from the wood and the cabinet. After all, the whole purpose here is to show off the collection, not the cabinet.
This cabinet could also easily be built without the door, in our case it was a requirement, but for others it might not be so. Our cabinet was a modest 14 x 6 inches and 4 1/2 inches deep. The main reason for this size was to make something small enough that a battery operated illumination would enhance, and it did ...
Finding Exotic Spalted Wood
- Read Time: 5 mins
- Hits: 9421
One of the joys of woodworking is being able to work with all sorts of different woods, and with woods that have different figures within them. I never get tired of looking at all the different designs and shapes that are comprised of different figured woods. It's almost like looking at clouds, they are all different, the beauty of wood, is they don't change like clouds do, they remain constant.
One of my favorite woods to work with is SPALTED wood. This kind of figure can occur in any wood and is basically caused by a fungus that invades the inner tree and in so doing leaves a path of lines and color changes that can bring out a very unique beauty to woods. It is far more noticeable in lighter color woods but can also occur in dark woods.
Spalting is the first breakdown of the wood fibers. It is where wood rot begins and if it is allowed to go too far, the spalting becomes rot and when rot goes far enough it can actually crumble and eventually would disintegrate and become part of the earth again ...
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