Its been a busy month. Too much to type so here is a quick video update. Topics include: Festool grand opening, visit to the offices of Popular Woodworking, The Woodwerks Store, our new DVD cover (designed by our friend Langly, the FesCool Giveaway, safety week, new project with Fine Woodworking, a Live WTO experiment, new coffee table project, the new Festool routers, and birthday wishes for Nicole.

Yup, today is Nicole’s birthday. So let’s talk about Nicole for a little bit. For those of you who don’t know, Nicole is my wife. She also plays some important behind the scenes roles here at the Wood Whisperer, the most important of which is marketing and what I like to call “sittin’ there and lookin’ pretty.” But the truth is, her role in the show has decreased over the past year simply because of the demands of her day job. A job that keeps The Wood Whisperer Cruise Ship afloat, and allows us to take chances and capitalize on opportunities when they arise. And all of this means a better show and a better experience at TheWoodWhisperer.com. So I just wanted to take a moment to publicly thank the one person who truly makes all this possible, my adorable wife Nicole. Oh yea, and happy birthday!!!

This week’s shop is from Tony in Bowling Green, OH. Here’s his story:

I have a 20? x 24? basement shop with 9? ceilings. When I built my house a couple years ago, I planned for this space being a shop so I ran 2 power circuits under the floor to the table saw location. My house has a 6-zone forced air heating system and the shop is on it?s own zone. It?s a nice feature and very efficient. I have a 1HP Jet dust collector with an add-on second stage. I do have blast gates. I have a wye with two gates at the horizontal run at the ceiling for the TS and RAS, and one on the run to the lathe and one that runs to the floor sweep/ vac port. The suction is great as long as one gate is open at a time. That first stage collector drum is great. It actually has a cyclone effect inside. I also have that Jet air filtration hanging from the ceiling. With both running, I probably get about 95% of the dust. Also, it?s clean because I am really anal about keeping it that way. Believe me, It has looked pretty rough in there but it only lasts a couple days max before I have to clean it. I have access to it from the rest of the basement and also through a Bilco door that leads to the end of our driveway. It?s great, I just back my truck right up to the door to unload materials. I made the 8? door into the shop so I could get 4×8 sheets down the stairs with ease. The shop is still growing. The views you see are from each of the four corners of the shop. All the cabinets in the shop either came from the Merilatt factory outlet( 5 bucks for a 30? base cabinet!) or the local University auction( 1 dollar for a 6? base cabinet!). The brown cabinets under the RAS are from the auction. They came out of a chemistry lab. I have a usual compliment of tools. Thats my restored Craftsman RAS. The RBI scroll saw I got for free from someone who didn?t know what it was worth (I wasn?t even aware about it at the time). I?m most proud of my autographed picture of Norm, see if you can find it. The floor is coated with a water-based epoxy and the walls are poured concrete with a light coat of primer to lighten it up. I also ran the power for the entire shop through a few switches mounted up high on the wall. That way I can shut off the power to everything and my two young children can?t reach them to turn them on. Also check out my Wood Whisperer style assembly table. It is 4′ x 8′ and is at the same height as my table saw and acts as an infeed table.

This week’s question comes from Mike. He writes:

My most recent project as I’ve mentioned to you before is a baby crib for our first child. This crib will later convert to a day bed and then a full size bed. Therefore there are several legs that must be built first, 6 in total. These legs are built up of 3 pieces of 3/4″ maple laminated together. The center piece is planed slightly thinner to match the thickness of 3/4″ maple ply for the rails that will be mortised into the legs. Once I began to glue the boards together I realized I have some difficulty when it comes to clamping, more specifically knowing how to clamp properly.

I recently purchased some of Rockler’s F-style clamps. I love them and started with them however I quickly realized that they were probably not the right clamps to use for this application. I then grabbed some of my hand screw wood clamps. They seemed to give me a better spread across the boards which are 2 3/4″ wide. I supplemented with the f-style clamps using wood blocks to spread the clamping pressure evenly I do not own any small parallel jaw clamps or I would have used them for this job. What I ended up with was some of the legs went together well with no gaps in my glue joints while others has small gaps in the glue joints the full length of the legs that will have to be filled. How can I avoid this in the future? I’m not concerned that they will come apart because there will be some fasteners that go through the legs to attach the railings, but I would like to have tight glue joints when laminating several boards together so I don’t have to do so much gap filling before I go to finishing.

And here was my reply:
Hey Mike. Excellent question. Using “less than optimal” clamps is something many of use have to deal with. And there really is no big secret. It just comes down to lots of clamps and lots of pressure. I would recommend using cauls that are at least as long as the leg is wide. Then, I would use the F-style clamps to clamp down over the cauls. And since one clamp in the center of the caul may still not apply enough pressure at the edges of the leg, I would recommend putting two F-style clamps at the ends of the neighboring caul. So in effect you will alternate: one centered, two on the edges, one centered, two on the edges, etc… Do this across the leg every 4-5 inches (the closer the better), and you should have enough pressure. From your description, it really sounds like you had enough pressure at the center of the leg, but not at the edges. Of course this means you need a lot of clamps! But as they say, you can never have too many. And kust so you know, the way I do this: I use the parallel clamps and alternate the sides they clamp from. Then I actually reinforce the clamping with F-style clamps in between the parallels. Good luck.

This week’s project comes from Tim. Here’s his story:

Well, I have finally grown a skin thick enough to submit 3 project pictures of an end grain butcher block cabinet that I made for my parents recently. It just got shipped out to Singapore; cost me $800 for the freight!! I got the inspiration by watching you build your cutting boards, and have made up to about 20 so far. It’s a great way to use up scrap wood!!! Saw David Marks’ version on his woodworks show that day and thought that it would be an interesting challenge to build one. The top is larger than David’s design; it’s about 3 feet wide by 2 feet deep - a nice size for a single person to work at, and just enough counter space. You are probably wondering why I would put a semi-gloss finish on the top? Well, my parents want it as a piece for a corner in the house, so I thought I would spend a little time practicing my varnishing skills for a semi-gloss look.

I used 7 types of wood on it - purpleheart, black walnut, yellowheart, ash, mahoganey, jatoba, maple and cherry. Flattening the top was a major pain!! I have a 22-44 performax drum sander, but still had to use router rails to slowly but surely flatten one side before drum sanding the other. Touched it up with a Lie-Nielsen 7 1/2 bevel up jointer plane. The face frame is made of purpleheart (a major pain to plane, I might add), and the drawer fronts are made of ambrosia maple. Made a little effort to match the grain on the drawers + doors as well. The cabinet is finished with shellac (3 coats) via my Apollo HVLP spray unit, and rubbed out to a satin sheen with Howard’s feed n wax.

And yes, I did use casters - double locking ones - they put a strong brake on the wheel plus a lock on the swivel. They actually cost about $20 a piece from Linco Casters at Clairemont Mesa Blvd (next to the San Diego Rockler); They really do look a little utilitarian, but those were the best I could find in terms of durability and stability. Those red shop-grade ones at woodcraft were too tacky for my taste. All in all, it was tiring; but I have to give you the credit for the original inspiration via the cutting board! THANKS

The Wood Whisperer is proud to announce the first annual Woodworker’s Safety Week. Every year, during the first full week of May, I hope the woodworking world will join me in taking some time to refresh our memories about the importance of safety and proper techniques. Most of you probably know that I am by no means preachy when it comes to safety. I am a big believer in personal responsibility. But with so many new woodworkers joining us every day, its important to reinforce the things that may seem like common sense to a seasoned woodworker. And even seasoned woodworkers can always use a refresher course. So I would like to think of Woodworker’s Safety Week as just that, a refresher course on safety.

Now here’s a little back story for you. A few weeks ago, Brent (a friend of the show) emailed me some pictures of the aftermath of his jointer injury. I know the jointer is dangerous and I thought I had an idea of what kind of damage that tool might do. But there was something about actually seeing the pictures that had a profound affect on me. It made me realize how easily something can go wrong, even when we think we are safe. And that was all the inspiration I needed to put something like this in motion. I will start the week off in May with Brent’s story and his pictures. Don’t worry, they will be text links, so if you don’t want to look at them you won’t have to.

Just a few of the things you can expect to see that week are safety-related videos from me as well as a few from Finewoodworking.com. We will also have daily giveaways, sponsored by Rockler. And be sure to check all of the sites in The Wood Whisperer Network. I know folks will be posting articles, videos, and some are even having their own giveaways! And keep an eye out for the LumberJocks/Wood Whisperer Safety Challenge that will be announced soon. Its going to be a great event, and hopefully it will result in the prevention of shop accidents, which is obviously the ultimate goal.

If you have your name in for the regular Wood Whisperer Giveaway, you are already entered into the Rockler-sponsored giveaways. But if you haven’t yet entered, just email us at TWWPromo@gmail.com. Thanks everybody, and let’s make sure the first Woodworker’s Safety Week goes off with a bang (just make sure you are wearing hearing protection). haha.

Topics: April is turning out to be a very busy month with lots of travel. Marc recently attended the Festool Grand Opening event. Matt went to a Lie-Nielsen tool seminar/demo last weekend. Improper safety techniques in a woodworking class. The announcement of the first annual Woodworker’s Safety Week (May 5th - May 9th). We get Rick Rolled. Hollow chisel mortisers. Tom’s Tip. And if you had $2500 to set up a shop, what would you buy? Leave us a voicemail and let us know!

If you want to leave us a voicemail: 623-242-2450

Eric brought it to my attention that there is no obvious way for people to sign up for Comment Avatars (aka Gravatars). So here goes a reprint of the original notice. Many of you have already noticed the new avatars next to your names in our comment threads (the default is the Wood Whisperer logo). I have installed a new plugin that works with Gravatars. Gravatars are Globally Recognized Avatars. It?s a super simple way of personalizing your comments on many websites around the web. If you leave a comment on a Gravatar-enabled site, it will automatically recognize your email address and assign your avatar to the comment post. It?s free and all you need to give them is your email address and a picture to use as an avatar. Sign up here.

A big thank you to Michael B. for alerting me to this. For those of you who don’t know, iTunes is a pretty important part of the podcasting community. In fact, about 63% of my subscribers use iTunes to watch the show. As a result, we frequently review iTunes stats and rankings and consider them a barometer for what’s happening in the bigger picture. And all too often, we are beaten out by knitting podcasts and podcasts provided by BBC and G4 TechTV. We usually hover around 3 or 4 in the Hobby Category Top 25. But as of today, we are back in the #1 position!! Woohoo! This may be short lived though, since I believe these rankings are based on the number of new subscribers as opposed to total subscribers. This way, new and notable podcasts can find themselves in the #1 position if they start to get popular.

This is all very cool, but what excites me even more is the number of my comrades that appear in the list as well. Congrats to Woodworking Online, Matt’s Basement Workshop, The Rough Cut Show, and Woodworkers Resource. And let’s not leave out the rest of the awesome woodworking videos and podcasts that just happen to not be on the list today. Woodworking is clearly, ALIVE AND WELL!