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dupersaurus posted:There are people that make for the process and there are people that make for the result, and you can tell which one you are buy your preference(*) of hand or power tools. If I could wave my hands and get finished things I would do that. Goes for software too. I make because I don't trust anyone else to do it how I want, and/or don't want to pay them to do it. However, I know that I have a habit of looking to machinery to remove unknowns in a process, since it's theoretically easier to learn how to operate a machine safely and accurately than it is to learn how to operate a hand tool with ease and skill. Of course it doesn't always turn out that way and I'd likely not make the same machinery purchase choices now that I've made so far. So that's why I'm quite wary of dropping £1300 on a device which in theory is the answer to my lack of confidence in planing. Maybe I should just buy a couple of new planes and refresh my sharpening tools and give it a go. Should be a much smaller investment.
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Feb 6, 2020 16:01
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dupersaurus posted:There are people that make for the process and there are people that make for the result, and you can tell which one you are buy your preference(*) of hand or power tools. drat I've never thought of it that clearly, I'm totally in the process camp generally
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Feb 6, 2020 16:19
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Jaded Burnout posted:If I could wave my hands and get finished things I would do that. Goes for software too. I make because I don't trust anyone else to do it how I want, and/or don't want to pay them to do it. Are lunchbox style planers not a thing in the UK? Here they are very available for $3-400 and would save you lots of cash, time, and space. Plenty of rough lumber is flat enough to not need face jointing and can go straight to the planer, and the stuff that isn't can be roughly face joined on one side by hand and then planed clean by machine. There are a number of ways to use a table saw as a straight line rip saw (or your track saw) to get a straight, square edge and then you're off to the races.
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Feb 6, 2020 16:29
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Are lunchbox style planers not a thing in the UK? Here they are very available for $3-400 and would save you lots of cash, time, and space. Plenty of rough lumber is flat enough to not need face jointing and can go straight to the planer, and the stuff that isn't can be roughly face joined on one side by hand and then planed clean by machine. There are a number of ways to use a table saw as a straight line rip saw (or your track saw) to get a straight, square edge and then you're off to the races. I keep thinking of getting one of these, I come across them regularly enough to be picky. Do they have the juice to do anything? The 12" ones seem so tiny
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Feb 6, 2020 16:30
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dupersaurus posted:There are people that make for the process and there are people that make for the result, and you can tell which one you are buy your preference(*) of hand or power tools. Building some kind of manually operated lathe (spring pole or whatever) is on my todo list 
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Feb 6, 2020 16:33
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Are lunchbox style planers not a thing in the UK? Here they are very available for $3-400 and would save you lots of cash, time, and space. Plenty of rough lumber is flat enough to not need face jointing and can go straight to the planer, and the stuff that isn't can be roughly face joined on one side by hand and then planed clean by machine. There are a number of ways to use a table saw as a straight line rip saw (or your track saw) to get a straight, square edge and then you're off to the races. I believe so, but seem to have the word BUDGET printed on the design docs, second only to the mentions of SNIPE. ColdPie posted:Building some kind of manually operated lathe (spring pole or whatever) is on my todo list https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHsywNFAL0g
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Feb 6, 2020 16:35
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dupersaurus posted:There are people that make for the process and there are people that make for the result, and you can tell which one you are buy your preference(*) of hand or power tools. Going to disagree here. You can very much "make for the process" on power tools. No matter how you are making if you are not doing it for the process then why are you doing it? There is a place for both hand and power tools in the shop, sticking to one way or another is just limiting your capabilities IMO.
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Feb 6, 2020 16:38
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ColdPie posted:Building some kind of manually operated lathe (spring pole or whatever) is on my todo list uh I'm super interested in this so keep the thread updated if you don't mind when you do begin
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Feb 6, 2020 16:41
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JEEVES420 posted:No matter how you are making if you are not doing it for the process then why are you doing it? Self-sufficiency.
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Feb 6, 2020 16:47
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Jaded Burnout posted:I believe so, but seem to have the word BUDGET printed on the design docs, second only to the mentions of SNIPE. Snipe is a thing plagued by all planers. There are ways to minimize it and that is about all you can do. I actually get less snipe on my 10y old 12" Harbor Freight Planer than I do on the 15" Helical Powermatic at my makerspace. But I know the ins and outs of mine and have built an infeed/outfeed table at slight angles to compensate for the snipe.
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Feb 6, 2020 16:49
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Harry Potter on Ice posted:I keep thinking of getting one of these, I come across them regularly enough to be picky. Do they have the juice to do anything? The 12" ones seem so tiny Yeah they are mostly fine ime. They don’t have segmented feed rollers so it’s best to just run one piece through at a time, and they can bog down a bit on heavy, full width cuts. They will snipe more than a well adjusted, more complex planer, but it usually belt sands out pretty easily or you make the board a little longer and cut off the snipe. The upside is they run on universal motors at very high rpm and usually make nice clean cuts. Plus they’re much more portable and cheaper than a bigger stationary planer. We used to have a super lovely ryobi lunchbox we would use for figured stuff because the cutter head spun so much faster than the big old 1950’s powermatic 224 my boss would only ever run with 2 knives (‘Cuts just as well with 2 instead of 4, and costs half as much to get sharpened!’). The ryobi left a much nicer surface but did have more snipe than the Powermatic (which also still sniped some). My current planer is the only one I’ve used that has had basically no snipe, but is has some kind of fancy pneumatic pressure bar system I don’t understand and I pray never breaks.
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Feb 6, 2020 17:09
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JEEVES420 posted:Going to disagree here. You can very much "make for the process" on power tools. No matter how you are making if you are not doing it for the process then why are you doing it? Sure I'm being overly reductive, but I know plenty of people that value the result much more than getting there, whereas I definitely prefer making the things over having made the things.
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Feb 6, 2020 17:17
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Do you think Satan is woodworker?
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Feb 6, 2020 17:21
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I honestly don’t think it matters if you’re on a side of this or not. Each piece you make is different and will have different meanings attached. Especially when you make it for yourself. I think this makes me a bit like Switzerland. Just don’t want to take a side, because that’s not important. Just build stuff and find what matters to you along the way. Now excuse me while I go crank up some CCR and finish some tenons.
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Feb 6, 2020 17:22
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I think all told it'll only cost me half a week's wages, so I should probably just go ahead with it.schmug posted:Do you think Satan is woodworker? Nice.
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Feb 6, 2020 17:39
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Harry Potter on Ice posted:I keep thinking of getting one of these, I come across them regularly enough to be picky. Do they have the juice to do anything? The 12" ones seem so tiny 12" is a good compromise width, and if you can figure a way to bolt it down, that would add stability. They're typically 15 amps 120v, but that's a tool I'd love to have in 240v. They get the job done and a bonus feature is if you can get a true 90° rip of face frame stock, you can use that planer to joint edges smooth as a baby's rear end, glue joint smooth. So,, Jaded, there's a 3rd easier and cheaper option.
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Feb 6, 2020 17:49
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Mr. Mambold posted:So,, Jaded, there's a 3rd easier and cheaper option. Too late!
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Feb 6, 2020 17:56
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This was fantastic, thank you for the link. The spring pole lathe looks way less scary than power lathes; I've hardly used lathes at all, but always feel like I'm one wrong move from the piece exploding. Can you do bowls on a spring pole lathe?
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Feb 6, 2020 19:19
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:This was fantastic, thank you for the link. The spring pole lathe looks way less scary than power lathes; I've hardly used lathes at all, but always feel like I'm one wrong move from the piece exploding. Worth noting they're using it with very fresh green wood, which I guess is softer?
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Feb 6, 2020 19:45
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:This was fantastic, thank you for the link. The spring pole lathe looks way less scary than power lathes; I've hardly used lathes at all, but always feel like I'm one wrong move from the piece exploding. people made bowls on lathes like these for centuries, yes As for the power tools vs. hand tools debate, I'll weigh in and say: I think both have their place, but I also think it's common for a woodworker to inappropriately make general statements based on their specific experience. We aren't all making the same kinds of stuff, and we all have different budgets and working environments as well as personal preferences and talents and predilections and those all factor in. For myself: I genuinely enjoy the process of buying a rusty old plane for $25 and resurrecting it into a fine woodworking tool with a couple or three hours' work. For me that's so satisfying that I now have three different #4 planes all of which can do exactly the same job exactly as well, and meanwhile I don't own a power planer. Is that because I would never use a power planer? Absolutely not! I use my table saw and band saw and sanders etc. regularly while doing a project, and actually when doing a project I tend to reach for whatever tool seems the most expedient at that moment... with expedience being things like what's nearest, what will take me the least time setting up, or just what can I most readily envision accomplishing the task satisfactorally. That last one is a big deal because while I do make sketches of what I'm going to build, I tend to work semi-improvisationally and I tend to view woodworking projects as little puzzles to be worked out. Having several ways of doing some task gives my mind different options to visualize a process that might work. Case in point, that plane with the cracked handle I showed a few days ago: I removed the handle and decided to test the glue joint with a little pressure, and it snapped apart as I kind of expected it to. So now I'm repairing that handle. How? It's an irregular shape, so I decided to make some custom cauls from a scrap of 2x3 pine, and tracing out shapes, cutting out hollows for the ends of the handle to fit into, trying with clamps etc. all involved a little puzzle in the workshop. I used a combination of a bandsaw, a coping saw, my japanese pull saw, two different small chisels, my new whittling knives, and my pocket knife, as well as a ruler and an adjustable square. I could have done without any two or three of those tools, definitely. I could have done it entirely with nothing but a whittling knife, or mostly with just a coping saw and a chisel, or nearly as well with just the bandsaw and a box cutter. There is no single correct approach to this job, just whatever seemed right to me, at that moment, given what I was familiar with using, or wanted to learn to use. I've not used my bandsaw for freehand cutouts of curves much yet but I already had a thin high-tooth blade mounted so it was perfect. If I still had a 3TPI 3/4" ripping blade mounted, it would have been a five minute setup cost in order to make 30 seconds of cuts, and I undoutbedly would have done all the curved cuts with the coping saw. Also I was working at around 7pm at night so I didn't mind making a little noise with my bandsaw (which also involves turning on my noisy shop vac for dust). If I'd been working at 9 or 10pm again I'd have gone to hand tools only. Also this was a small project, my bandsaw is not well situated for dealing with big stock, so if I had a big sheet to cut down I'd likely have been working on my table saw instead. I do one or two projects at a time, usually small projects, and I work for one or two hours at a time, usually once or twice in a week, but sometimes two or three weeks go by without doing any work. My budget is not tightly constrained but my workshop space is. My dust collection is a shop vac which works OK but I have to maneuver it in tight spaces. I share my workshop space with my wife and a lot of junk and the laundry facilities and all this stuff matters in how I work and what I work with and what tools I can or do buy and where I can put them and that in turn feeds into "what's best for me." I think folks should do some projects and try different tools. It'd be great to try out a big power planer at a workshop before committing to owning one (and I have). It'd be great to not just try on my own how to flatten a board with a plane (and yeesh not just a #4 smoothing plane!) before deciding or rejecting on the idea of owning and using one. My first experience ever with a hand plane was not encouraging because it was not set up well, but taking a hand joinery class was great because two minutes of instruction and the use of one of the classroom planes led me to the correct conviction that I'd enjoy using a hand plane very much. I also enjoy using my bandsaw and my table saw, hell, I just enjoy using tools of all kinds really! Each has its own attraction I guess. Even cheapo tools that are finicky and hard to get right have a certain attraction to me, in that they represent challenges, and it's very rare that I actually decide to get rid of a tool on the grounds that it can't be made to do anything useful. (I have gotten rid of a tool that I determined was simply unreasonably dangerous to use - a wobbly, garage sale harbor-freight-style table saw that was missing all of its safety equipment). My cheapest chisels have regular use in my shop alongside my best chisels. I have two block planes and the cheapest one was probably $15 new but I have it set exactly to a specific setup that makes it work perfectly well for certain tasks and I grab it about as frequently as my much more expensive and nice block plane. In summary tools are good, all of them, there's no universal rules that fit everyone, do what is satisfying and helpful to you and the projects and tasks and processes that work for you. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Feb 6, 2020 |
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Feb 6, 2020 19:46
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I'm excited because I just discovered that the previous homeowner had run two 30 amp circuits specifically for tools in his garage, one 120v and one 240v, and the cables run through the semi-finished basement area I use for my woodworking shop. Today I bought a bunch of wiring stuff to add outlets around my shop by tapping into those cables. No more extension cords!
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Feb 7, 2020 00:39
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In celebration of page 666, I am embarking on re-organizing my shop space. Hail satan.
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Feb 7, 2020 00:52
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I'm about to build a workbench to get away from doing my woodworking on the kitchen table (one of the first projects on the new bench will be making a new top for the table). It's very difficult waiting for these 100bf of spruce to dry, my hands are aching to take a plane to these boards!
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Feb 7, 2020 01:13
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I don't know if it's been posted here, but this is the funniest thing I've come across in a while: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QGCLI-UFBA
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Feb 7, 2020 02:23
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Hasselblad posted:In celebration of page 666, I am embarking on re-organizing my shop space. Ah yes, the darkest and most unholy of rituals. I would add to the hand/power conversation this: We are the Captain Picards of woodworking. Because our work isn't subject to the demands of specific scarcity constraints (only the general scarcity of our own leisure time and money) we get to define the value of the process and result for ourselves. Paul Sellers refers to the value of modern amateurism in woodwork as being a broad interest in both learning and sharing. I strongly advocate for listening to passionate people. I find a beautiful, transcendent satisfaction in the sound and feel and motion of a plane on wood. I don't have much space to get a jointer. But I only impoverish myself if I let my experience blind me to the fundamental zen of a well tuned jointer that for all I know is attainable through some YouTube videos.
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Feb 7, 2020 22:08
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There was some crosscut sled chat in Jaded Burnout's house thread and I had to rebuild a crosscut sled anyway so here is a post about rebuilding a crosscut sled. I bet it winds up too long because  .I'm a big ole dumbo and one time I wanted to cut an angled square cut so I tilted the blade on my table saw and made a cut and....cut out a big chunk of my crosscut sled. This meant it was no longer zero clearance and suddenly became very dangerous if I was just cutting off a little bit  Sooo I've been using my dado crosscut sled because somehow it is less dangerous because the gap is to the left of the blade, and I finally have time to rebuild this one. Both are built on a sheet of plywood 30"x36" and have a ~26" crosscut capacity and I can't say I've ever needed more. Most casework is 24" or less, and standing up the 30" stays below the table top and out of the way, so it seems to be a good size. While I have the fence off this one, I want to undercut it just a tiny bit to give the dust somewhere to go so it doesn't gently caress up my cuts.  I'll just make a little 1/16th bevel where the fence meets the sled. I can reuse everything but the plywood, so let's cannibalize this fucker.  Tracks are sapele which is nice and hard, but one is a touch warped, so we'll jam it to one side of the slot with some Ultra-Precision, Super-Premium, Professional-Grade Shimstock commonly referred to as 'cut up manilla folders and printer paper'  We're gonna lay the plywood on these tracks and glue them together, so we need to elevate them with the hard currency most commonly encountered in professional woodshops  Shimmed, elevated and glued.  Throw some Baltic birch on there and some heavy stuff and let that glue dry. Think I might have a cigare...   Oh. One of many good reasons not to smoke. M. L. Campbell-Great finish, even better paperweight. Let that dry. Stare at this and try to figure out the least bad way to repair this repair  (It's epoxy, I guess  )Screw a few screws in from the top in case that glue isn't really dry, and screw a temporary fence on to hold the thing together because we're about to go Solomon on this baby  Cut it in half, heck yeah. Now we can use the saw kerf to align the real fence with our trustiest square.  Screw it on from the bottom, and cut 5 sides of a square, and see how we did  We did, uh, surprisingly incredibly perfectly for the first try  A touch of light in the middle, but tight at both ends and more than suitable for my purposes. Not gonna gently caress with that. Way better than it used to be, and it used to be pretty good. Very square from both sides of the blade too.I did cut a little bevel where the fence meets the ply and that seems to help a bit. Keeps dust from getting trapped in that corner and gives it somewhere to go. I still need to add a little arm to my stopblock so it can extend past the end of the sled. There's a few awkward inches where I can't use the saw fence as a length stop and my stop block won't reach. Apparently I never took a picture of the whole thing, but there's sort of a groove the stop rides on on top of the fence, and then it gets clamped in place with a vise-grip from my pocket hole jig and it is pretty darned solid.  Very glad I did this because having a zero clearance crosscut sled is much safer than one with a giant gap by the blade and I can now use the saw kerf to line up the cut pretty precisely. It's also a better fit in the slots than my old one and slides much easier without even being waxed yet.
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Feb 8, 2020 02:07
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Nice sled, what thickness ply is your bottom?
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Feb 8, 2020 02:17
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3/4". In hindsight probably 1/2" would be plenty and give an extra 1/4" of thickness cutting capacity?
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Feb 8, 2020 02:46
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3/4" sure does make a solid sled. The one I built was 3/4 too and I had exact same thought. But how often are you cross cutting that thick of stock? I think the 45° sled I make will be 1/2" though.
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Feb 8, 2020 03:03
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JEEVES420 posted:3/4" sure does make a solid sled. The one I built was 3/4 too and I had exact same thought. But how often are you cross cutting that thick of stock? Where I used to work we had a 45 degree sled that was actually not a 45 degree sled, but rather a perfect 90 degree sled that was probably actually 44.7 and 46.3, but it didn't matter because they added up to 90. It was fairly useful, but the place I always really wanted to use it was for crown and it never had the depth of cut to do crown, so I would definitely try for as much depth of cut as possible. Sometime I discovered good miter gauge + bandsaw for trim and have never looked back, but I still don't have a great solution for mitered boxes and stuff.
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Feb 8, 2020 03:23
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dupersaurus posted:There are people that make for the process and there are people that make for the result, and you can tell which one you are buy your preference(*) of hand or power tools. I know I’m not the only one but there are also people who wouldn’t mind more of the process but have kids and a wife who works full hours and they work a full day too so they consider buying jigs instead of making them even though they are DIY til they die... and it loving takes me months to do a simple wall mounted strip coat rack that should take a week counting finishing... *sigh*
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Feb 8, 2020 04:35
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Just bought a Grizzly 1073 for $140. Seller says “the switch doesn’t work” but I figure even if I have to replace the motor and reword the whole thing that’s a loving steal. Picking it up next week. Very excited— this finally completes all the shop “essential” power tools and really opens up lots of poo poo for me
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Feb 8, 2020 05:06
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drat that is a come up.. awesome find for that price.
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Feb 8, 2020 05:26
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Feenix posted:I know I’m not the only one but there are also people who wouldn’t mind more of the process but have kids and a wife who works full hours and they work a full day too so they consider buying jigs instead of making them even though they are DIY til they die... and it loving takes me months to do a simple wall mounted strip coat rack that should take a week counting finishing... *sigh* Oh god, I could have written this. It’s brutal man, I feel like projects take forever anymore. Although there’s days I’m just happy to get any shop time where I can.
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Feb 8, 2020 05:30
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Falco posted:Oh god, I could have written this. It’s brutal man, I feel like projects take forever anymore. Although there’s days I’m just happy to get any shop time where I can. Real talk. I’m not even posting that as a sob story. Just saying... some days I feel guilt for buying a circle jig instead of making one but then I realize if I have to make a circle jig or a table sled with the time I have, I won’t actually make the THING I want to mage for several more weeks. So I try not to beat myself up about it.
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Feb 8, 2020 06:48
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Feenix posted:I know I’m not the only one but there are also people who wouldn’t mind more of the process but have kids and a wife who works full hours and they work a full day too so they consider buying jigs instead of making them even though they are DIY til they die... and it loving takes me months to do a simple wall mounted strip coat rack that should take a week counting finishing... *sigh* Especially little kids so you can't run any power tools in the evening when they're asleep, or during weekend afternoon nap time...
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Feb 8, 2020 13:05
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Finally got me an electric hand plane. Think it will come in handy when I do some carpentry (building a shed) this summer. 
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Feb 8, 2020 16:25
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Sockser posted:Just bought a Grizzly 1073 for $140. Seller says “the switch doesn’t work” but I figure even if I have to replace the motor and reword the whole thing that’s a loving steal. Picking it up next week. Very excited— this finally completes all the shop “essential” power tools and really opens up lots of poo poo for me Nice find. I have a hard time figuring how you can burn up a bandsaw motor, and with some switches, there's just sawdust built up between the contacts- wouldn't that be lulz. Or you can get a replacement switch from them.
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Feb 8, 2020 16:28
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Stultus Maximus posted:Especially little kids so you can't run any power tools in the evening when they're asleep, or during weekend afternoon nap time... Yup. I really only get any shop time after 10 pm and or MAYBE on weekends, so that was another big motivator in going to mostly hand tools.
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Feb 8, 2020 17:48
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His Divine Shadow posted:Finally got me an electric hand plane. Think it will come in handy when I do some carpentry (building a shed) this summer. Fun, a power planer took a little getting used to for me and do yourself a huge favor and be very careful for any random metal or rocks in your wood
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Feb 8, 2020 17:57
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