Great New Measuring Tools You Should Know About
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“Measure twice cut once” I always hated this saying, and despite the fact that I forced myself to adhere to it, it STILL cut boards to the wrong length. It used to aggravate me that no one made a tape measure for right-handed woodworkers. Imagine this for a minute, you have a board that is 30 inches long and you need to cut 15-5/16” off it. You pick up your pencil with your right hand and your measuring tape with the left and lay it out on the wood. All the numbers are up-side down. Can you think of any other single thing we do that is more ripe for making mistakes than reading numbers up-side-down?
Oh sure, we can all read numbers up-side down, unfortunately we often read them wrong don't we, that's why we measure twice and cut once, and hope that our brains and eyes were coordinated in seeing the numbers correctly. Well there is HOPE, finally some tape measure companies have realized that seeing the numbers the right way up might be of help to us woodworkers. Infact, some have even made tapes that are for both left and right hand people because they have numbers you can read EACH WAY.
Picture Frame Clamping Device
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Many of you have requested information on how to make the picture frame clamping device so we have finally decided to publish our own information on this device. Before we get into the building of the device a word of safety. This clamping device uses a few small pieces which can be somewhat challenging to cut on some power tool equipment. We recommend making the smaller components on a band saw. If you do not own a band saw or are not familiar with it's use we recommend cutting them by hand with a hand saw using a bench vice to hold the work.
For the list of materials and the methodology, please see the following section.
Woodworking 101 - The Art of Woodworking. Free Beginners Guide.
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Woodworking encompasses a great number of diverse activities, including turning, woodcarving, marquetry, cabinetmaking and joinery, however, every specialist craftsman or craftswoman has at some time mastered the fundamentals of measuring and marking, dimensioning, assembling and finishing – considered the basics of woodworking skills that are the core of any woodworking calling.
Woodworking 101 will help you get started as a woodcrafter.
Free Beginners Woodworking Plans
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We’ve added the below beginners woodwork plans to downloads
- Amanda Cat Puzzle Woodworking Plan
- Toy Box on Castors Woodworking Plan
- Toy Spaceship Superstar Woodworking Plan
- Rocking Horse Woodworking Plan
- Rocking Horse version 2 Woodworking Plan
- Rocking Horse version 3 Woodworking Plan
- Toy Dino Dinosaur Puzzle Woodworking Plan
- Toy Dumbo Elephant Puzzle Woodworking Plan
- HOW TO CARVE A WOODEN SPOON Woodworking Plan
- Toy Scotty Dog Puzzle Woodworking Plans
Making Shaker Doors Using a Router
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Making cabinet doors is easy, fun and cost effective. With wood you can purchase at any hardware or lumber store, anyone can make beautiful and functional doors in no time. The only tool you need is a decent quality router and router table, and router bits. The wood we used for these demos is just 3/4” pine that was cut to 2” widths. It is important that thickness and width of the door components is constant, otherwise you will find uneven edges on you doors that will require sanding to make even again.
After you have cut your raw wood, that is the wood for the rails and styles you will need to cut those pieces to their proper length. The length for the stiles is easy, that is simply the length of the door that you will be making. This is because the stiles are ALWAYS the full vertical length of the doors.
Cutting the rails, (the horizontal components of the door) can be a bit trickier, that is why we like to use 2” for the width of stiles and rails (plus it just looks good). The rails when they are finished will need to have tongues cut into each end to fit into the groves of the stiles and this is where knowing woodworking math is a help.
Router Table Basics
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Many people consider routers "scary tools", this is probably because they can spin at such a high rate of speed, but truthfully, routers are among the safer tools in the workshop. Not that they should be taken for granted, ANY tool can do serious harm even a router. The thing that I like most about routers is they can be used to make entire projects. If the only tool you have is a router, you can make many projects with only a router.If you are new to routing, you will soon discover that the most of the things that you can do with a router involve using a router table. Routers with tables are useful too, but having a router table opens a whole new world of projects and woodworking elements.
If you are about to invest in a router, make sure you choose a good brand name like Porter Cable, Freud, Milwaukee, DeWalt or similar. If you are also investing in a router table do NOT purchase an inexpensive table based on price. You will soon find out that your money was wasted and now you still need to go out and purchase decent table. Most bench top tables are not worth bringing home, although there are exceptions, even some of the floor standing models are sketchy, so take your time and buy a decent table.
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