It's nice to see so many people from outside of North America sending in tips and in this episode are a couple more from European Countries, but tips are coming from all sorts of new sources and gives us all a fresh look at new ideas.
Watch it on Youtube: https://youtu.be/W74LW1RNcRI
Sharing ideas in so many different formats means we all benefit and it enhances the community of woodworkers worldwide.
This tip comes to us from Juan and what he suggests is that if when you are scribing lines on a board, sometimes they can be hard to see, and his suggestion is to put "chalk" in the cut which allows it to be seen much easier. There is different ways of doing this and everyone will develop their own technique but you can either mark the line with a chalk stick and rub the chalk in, or you can create your own chalk dust and rub that into the scribe line. Either way, they both work but some methods might work better depending on the wood you are using. If you don't have chalk in your shop you should, it can be used to mark many things is easy to read and comes off pretty easily, and it's inexpensive and easy to find.
This tip comes from Allen, who suggests using a dab of white paint on your plugs, to identify which blade is the wider one. Here in North America, and in other countries, the prongs on some of the plugs are different sizes so they can only be inserted one way. Having a dab of paint on the plug means you can easily identify which way to plug it in ... and in the workshop, we can be doing this multiple times a day with different tools so this is a HUGE convenience to those of us who are using plug-in tools.
Here's a time for More, who is suggesting if that if you want to recover all the material from a can of paint, one trick is that you can use a blade screwdriver and drive a hole in through the trough at the top of the can. This way all the material the ends up in that trough will drip down back into the can.
A couple of warnings !!! first of all, if you are using Varnish or Poly or some other similar product that is highly susceptible to air bubbles, doing this is probably not a good idea because having used varnish dripping back into the can will likely introduce more air bubbles into your work.
Also, it is best to only do this if you are pretty sure you will be using up the can of paint because there is a risk that the hole you make is not completely covered by the hole you make and if you are thinking of long term storage after use, the hole may be placed where a small amount of air can leak in and out and dry out what is left in the can.
This tip comes from Mama C, who has already provided many tips for us. Here she tells that she uses ICE water to cool her "bits" but I don't recall her mentioning which bits are router bits or drill bits, but either way a great topic to go over for both.
First of all, the reason we need to cool down bits it to help maintain the sharpness of the bit by helping to retain the hardness in the bit.
Router bits these days are all either pure carbide or carbide embedded in steel body bits. In either case, these bits do not need to be cooled down. Carbides withstands very high temperatures while still maintaining a sharp edge and even bits with steel bodies should under normal routing jobs, be just fine if they do become quite heated.
Drill bits are different. Almost all drill bits are manufactured with some level of steel hardness and some are coated with Titanium, with the idea they are to last longer. Some drill bits like cobalt are manufactured with a 5% to 8% added cobalt making them harder and somewhat less susceptible to heat.
In both cases, drill bits that are heating up should be cooled down, ice water can speed this up a small amount but cool tap water works fine too, just remember to give the tap water enough time to cool the bit down sufficiently, usually a few moments in the water will do this.
Cooling down from time to time may be required throughout the drilling process.
Here's a tip from Thomas from Berlin, who suggests using a plastic drinking straw to collect excess material, like varnish, paint, or Poly when you are finishing inside corners. Very often when we use these materials, some of it tend to collect in the corners and one great way of getting rid of the "glob" of material is using a plastic drinking straw. just cut the bottom of the straw in a sort of an arc that when finished will resemble a bit of a tear-drop look. This can then be run along the inside corner and the material you are taking away will fill up into the straw making a very convenient way of taking away this excess material.
Here's a tip from Dennis, who suggests we can get a longer shelf life from our wood fillers by putting them into a plastic freezer bag, then using a straw to suck out the air, further reducing the tendency for the material in the container to looks liquid, which is why these things can harden during storage.
Thanks, everyone for sharing your tips and ideas ...
Copyright Colin Knecht
woodworkweb
