World Scroll Saw Expo

I wanted to share some of the picture I took at the Scroll Saw Expo Sunday. The work was beautiful and the people where very friendly, and I will post more on that later along with the vender's I talk to, but for now just enjoy the pictures.

Joey

Design Of The Week

This week's design of the week is a hutch that I designed for a desk, a computer desk to be exact. There are places for files and a cradle to hold cell phones and I-pods while they charge.

Surfacing End-grain Cutting Broards on a Router Table

Surfacing a end-grain cutting board on a router table, or with a router is fairly easy and quick. Using a hand held router is the same as surfacing any other board so I won't go into that, there is plenty of good information on that technique all ready. One note if you have a small router table you may need to clamp some boards to your table for the rails to ride on.

As you can see in the first picture the surface is pretty uneven.

First you will need two rails to attach to the sides of the cutting board. I used 1x4s little longer than the cutting board, and a couple of gage blocks normally I use 1/4 or 1/2 inch just nothing to thick unless you have a tall bit.

I set the cutting board on the gage blocks and place the rail along the sides on their ends, then I pin nail them to the board, and then I like to put a couple of #6 screws in the center of each rails to be sure they don't move. it is important that the rails don't rock. because they are your referenced surface.

I use a 3/4 Straight bit, but a 1/2" mortise bit gives a better finish or one of them flat bottom pattern bit that are designed for routing bowls would do a great job I am betting. 

Then all you do is set the bit a little higher that the gage block you used to set your rails, I started about 1/32nd and then slowly, with your hands on the top part of the rails, slide the cutting board back and forth across your table letting the bit do the work. 

Don't try to remove to much at one time because the bit can grab and the board can get away from you, it is better to take light cut and be safe. Stop and check your progress, you will more than like miss some sections just keep going over it. Just a note the first few times you get in to the rail it will make a lot of noise and grab the piece to be mindful of that, and it is a good idea to mark on your table a line where your cutter is you that way you will know where you are cutting.

The end product is fairly smooth and flat, but it still needs a little attention if you missed any little spots they come off quickly with a sharp chisel and then you can clean up the lines with a sander or a card scraper to get it smooth

make sure you tighten your router wing nut down tight or the bit can change hight like it need on me... duh

This bring to another point I used my small router table that I keep set up with a 1/4 round over bit. I did this to show that even with a small table you can still use this technique I know a lot of woodworkers own these type of router table and I didn't want them to think they needed a big fancy table to do it. all I did was clamp a couple of straight boards to the front and back and I used a spring clamps to hold them while I lined them up with my table then clamped them down with a couple of bar clamps. This gave the rails something to ride on while the bit surfaced the board.

Joey

Web Site of the Month

This months my Web Site of the Month is a little gem of a woodworking site I found while I was using Stumble!, it is Mike Henderson's site. He features his work on this site and his work is worth a look let me tell you! he does some first rate woodwork. Mike has every thing from tables, chairs, to some really nice carved pieces on his site, plus some nice tools he has made, like a small brass hammer and a cool tote for his plane that will have you drooling. Mike has a tutorials page also that he shows his techniques on carving shells, veneering compass rose and sand shaded fans. If like most woodworkers you like to eat as much as you do working with wood then great! he has a couple of good recipes for gumbo and creole jambalaya to boot "I am going to have to give both of them a try"  Stop by Mikes site and enjoy some of Mikes work its worth the time.  

Joey

USO | Support Our Troops | United Service Organizations | 4th of July Message to Our Troops

USO | Support Our Troops | United Service Organizations | 4th of July Message to Our Troops

Design of the Week

Back in the Late 80s I worked in a shop that made displays for conventions. It was a cool job for a woodworker especially one who was into art the way I was. It was like doing sets in a theater and like the theater building convention displays is mostly smoke and mirrors. We did get to do a lot of out of the box type of woodworking and with that came a lot of unique problem that we just couldn't run down to the hardware store and get a tool to solve, so we had to come up with some of our own solutions and time saving devices, one was a three stationed router that we keep set up just for making cabinet doors and another was a two station router for doing sliding dovetails, both the units in the shop we build were floor models.

The one in my design is a bench model that breaks down to three pieces, the two router table and larger table in the back that connect them plus the fences, however; it could be build as a one piece floor unit. The unit is meant to be set up with stick and cope bits for doors, or a 1/4 straight and a dovetail bits for a sliding dovetails, but can be set up with any combination of two piece router bit set so you don't have to keep switching out bits. Each table has enough clearance to run stock pass the next without interference, and at the angle that they are set to each other they don't take up much shop space from the wall and can still run 30" door stiles any longer and you might have to pull it away from the wall to get clearance. Now if you have the room in your shop and you don't need to sit it against a wall, you can sit it out in the middle, where all three sides are accessible, then add the third router on the back so it looks like a triangle, and you will have a nice production setup with a lot of versatility.


Well I hope that this gives you guys some new ideas to think about. I have been thinking about a horizontal router for the side of my table saw, maybe I will draw something like that next, I really like the idea of the router moving X,Y, Z like the one in Fine Woodworking
Joey

Another Reason To Save Small Scraps of Wood

Now like most of you guys I have heard my share of " do you really need them little blocks of wood" yeah! yes I do and I'll tell you why. You see these little blocks are hickory and them are apple and these over here are pecan and I have been saving them from jobs for years and in the summer when we cook out I use them on the grill to add a nice smoky flavor to the meat I grill, and in the late summer and fall, when I hunt and fish, I use them in a smoker to the smoke the fish and game, that I get.

On occasion I even find a woodworking project to do with some of them blocks like the marking gage I'm making, and then sometimes the kid in me just likes to play with the blocks, like this week when me and my youngest grandson just dumped them out on the porch and had us a good old fashion good time stacking them up and then knocking them down with his big-foot toy trucks, so you see I  really do need them blocks of wood.