Using Winding Sticks to Check Wood Warps

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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

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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

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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 ... 

Tips and Info on Jigsaws

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Jigsaws have been around for many years and have not changed significantly in that time. The principal of how they work is the same, the blades move up and down at a high rate of speed as the saw is pushed into the wood and thus a cut is made ... pretty easy eh? .... Well, not so fast. There are a few things that we can all learn about jigsaws that can make them far more useful.

First of all, there are 2 basic jigsaw blades available. The newest version is called a "T" connection, the older one is often called a "U" connection because at the very top of the blade there is a tiny "U" cutaway. As usual, the blades are not interchangeable. The quick way to tell (in most cases) if you jigsaw has some sort of a screw at the point where the blade enters the mounting slot in the saw, it is likely the older type, the "U" connection. If your jigsaw has some sort of twisting lever, it's likely a "T" connection type blade required.

The newer jigsaws now have variable speed motors, and locking switches so that if you are making a long cut, you can not only adjust the speed accordingly, you can also lock the motor on rather than trying to hold the on switch for the entire cut. What about blades you ask ... well ...