I had originally planned on releasing this video as part of a series on Monday and Wednesday.  But based on the number of requests I had to see the construction process as soon as possible, I couldn't wait.

So here is Pt. 1 of a two part series.  Today's video highlights the basic construction of the base, the 90 degree fence and the hook. 

This is a great start on the project considering that easily 90-95% of the work I do on the shooting board is cleaning up end grains of 90 degree cuts.  In Pt. 2 which will be released on Wednesday covers the construction of an auxillary fence for 45 degree cuts and then a very basic lesson on shooting.

Don't forget!! Hendrik is back in September so get your questions in for our open Q&A session.  

If you'd like to enter for free schwag or just have a comment, question or suggestion drop me a line at mattsbasementworkshop@gmail.com or  head over to the website www.mattsbasementworkshop.com or leave a voicemail at 231 354-2338.

To download directly to your computer Right Click on direct download, choose "Save Target as"

I finally got my hands on the tool accessories needed to turn a pen(cil). So using a scrap cutoff of padauk, I went to town and made this beautiful padauk mechanical pencil, with gold plated trim and a black stripe on the clip.

Wait, what accessories were needed?

Aside from the obvious (lathe, turning chisels, drill press, wood), the following are absolutely necessary:

1. Pen mandrel to fit your lathe.
2. Pen kit.

Yep. That's it. The mandrel is $9.99 at Woodcraft Item 141469. Pen kits are around $5 at all the usual vendors. I got a pencil kit at Woodcraft.

Another thing you may find useful is a barrel trimmer. this squares the end of the turning blank to the newly inserted brass tube. Keeps things neat and tidy. Mine was $20 at Woodcraft. All that is left is to make the pencil!

I took a scrap piece of padauk and cut it into 4" sections. Two of those sections I put into the drill press and put a 7mm hole through them to hold the brass tubes. I then pressed the tubes into the wood with a drop of CA glue ("super glue") to hold it together.

Then I mounted the whole thing on the turning mandrel with a bushing on either end, and one in the middle between the blanks.

After tightening things up and mounting the mandrel to the lathe I was ready to turn.

Too bad my craptastic Harbor Freight lathe wasn't compatible with the mandrel! I knew it had a "morse taper #2" fitting. But it didn't occur to me to check that the fitting was in the headstock... The part that turns. The fitting is only in the tailstock in the cheap 40" lathe. The tailstock doesn't turn, so the mandrel wouldn't turn. I had to find a way to get the mandrel MT2 base into the headstock.

I had a faceplate that was separated from a mug I made that I hadn't cleaned up yet. There was enough meat on the wood there to carve out a MT2 hole for my mandrel to rest in.

Once it was carved out, the arbor fit nicely. My live tailstock (a MT2 spinner) was tightened snugly into the dimple on the end of the mandrel and I fired up the lathe.

It worked perfectly!

All that was left was to start cutting the wood! I started off gently removing wood because of the thin diameter of the mandrel. I was afraid it would start bowing under any pressure. It turns out that my fears were unfounded. It's very rigid and does not bow under normal cutting pressure.

The pen blanks were turned with a 5/8" spindle gouge and finished with a 3/4" skew chisel. I got such a great finish I was able to sand starting at 600 grit! A pass at 600 and a pass at 2000 got me a nearly mirror finish all by themselves. I then applied some thick CA glue for a finish.

If you're applying super glue for a finish, don't worry about slopping it on the bushings and such. The pieces will pop right apart and the CA glue will be removed the next turning session.

I got the blanks out and started assembling the pencil. The package for the pencil kit didn't explain what parts went where. It took some trial and error to get things where they belonged. I'm sure once I've done a few of these the positioning will make sense. Until then, I'll have to pay extra attention to the order the pieces are assembled.

As you can see, the results were awesome! I'm really happy and want to make more! Lots more! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

First off - let me apologize for not posting anything for a few weeks. I have been pretty busy in the shop - working on some very cool planes and some “other work”. I will be posting about it in the next few weeks.

I have recently completed a set of 4 rebate planes - 1/2", 3/4", 1" and 1-1/4" widths. The sides and sole are 01 tool steel and the infill is Brazilian Rosewood. It has been a while since I have made a set of these - and I have to say it was a lot of fun.




They are a matching set in that all the Brazilian Rosewood came from the same piece - but I tried to maximize some of the figure by using it where it will be most visible. The 1-1/4" rebate is a good example with that wonderful swirl at the front.







Most of the wedges have either some burl or curl in them.

A lovely couple from Wyoming designed these blue spruce and hawaiian koa rings with birch liners. They wrote:

The latest Popular Woodworking magazine has a good shooting board article with plans. An expanded version of the article is available as a PDF file. It is pretty big at almost 2mb so it might take awhile to load over a slower intenet connection.

HI Folks
There was a recent thread on the UK Workshop Forum about obtaining knurled brass knobs for tool making projects (or just to upgrade tools with horrible plastic knobs). I was surprised to find that they are not commercially available - even after a long Google session.
So I have decided to step up and offer my own range of knurled brass knobs - there is more information here....
To start with I am offering four standard sizes - these sizes have been decided upon after measuring the knobs on most of my planes. Obviously if you have a specific size or shape in mind just drop me an email.
Cheers
Philly

My new favorite saying prompted me to list all the commonly-used phrases and metaphors I could think of that involve some aspect of woodworking. Here's what I came up with:
These phrases have been around for a while and are as worn out as 30-year-old band saw tires, so I feel it's our duty to coin some new ones for the good of the craft. If you come up with one, feel free to share. I mean, surely we couldn't have exhausted all possible woodworking clichés.

(Knock on wood.)

Click Here to Download

Topics: Marc's new finishing room, The Earlex Spray Station, self-cleaning blast gates, "lazy people food", taking photos of your work, accepting credit cards, and dyed through tenons.

Relevant links: Steve Kaeser Lights

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

When it comes to finding a tool(s) that can speed up your set up of router bits or blades I've been very skeptical. 

But I've been won over by the brass height gauges from Whiteside.  These little pieces of brass allow me to accurately set up bits so quickly I'm still convinced I'm doing something wrong, but the fact is these accurate results are repeatable over and over...

If you're interested in learning more about these gauges click here Whiteside Brass Height Gauges.

If you'd like to enter for free schwag or just have a comment, question or suggestion drop me a line at mattsbasementworkshop@gmail.com or  head over to my website at www.mattsbasementworkshop.com or call our Skype Voicemail at 231 354-2338.

If you have the time, please take the new listener survey.

Listen to today's show by clicking on the player below

powered by Podbean.com

To download directly to your computer Right Click on direct download, choose "Save Target as"

You can sharpen your woodworking skills with helpful tips and techniques from the editors of Woodsmith and ShopNotes magazines. Get a FREE tip sent to your email address each week! Go to WoodworkingTips.com and sign up today.

Here’s last week’s tip from ShopNotes online editor Phil Huber:

The router table in my shop gets lots of use. But it’s always difficut to make fine adjustments to the fence. So I built the micro-adjuster you see in the photo above using spare parts I had around the shop.

The adjuster is easy to build. Start by drilling and tapping a strip of ¼″ aluminum to accept a piece of threaded rod. And then bend the aluminum strip into an “L” shape.

Next, drill two holes in a hardwood adjusting block. One horizontal hole for the threaded rod and a vertical one for the hold-down. Then you can cut a dado at the bottom of the fence to hold the piece of L-shaped aluminum in place.

Assembly. Put the pieces together by slipping the threaded rod through the adjusting block and adding washers and locknuts, like you see in the drawing and detail below. This allows the aluminum strip attached to the fence to be moved forward and backward one thread at a time when you make fine fence adjustments.

Fence Adjustment. To use the micro-adjuster, you’ll first need to lock down the opposite end of the fence. Then lock down the micro-adjuster by tightening the knob on top of the adjusting block. Use the turning knob to adjust the fence to the desired position. Once the fence is located where you want it, lock down the other end of the fence. Then all that’s left is to turn on your router and you’re ready to go.

If you’d like even more great ideas for getting more from your router, go to: Router Tables at PlansNow.

Good Woodworking,

Phil Huber
Online Editor, ShopNotes

Send for a preview issue of ShopNotes magazine

Hey everyone today's Feature Friday is a review of another great Lie-Nielsen title.  This time we have Brian Boggs and "Drawknives, Spokeshaves and Travishers--A Chairmaker's Tool Kit"

Part of the reason I've chosen this title is because of my recent desire to learn how to use a spokeshave properly.  And who else would be better to teach the techniques than Brian Boggs?

In "Drawknives, Spokeshaves and Travishers--A Chairmaker's Tool Kit" Brian introduces to the most common tools used by chairmakers.  While he makes it look easier than it should, Brian gives us some great insight into understanding how to make these simple tools work at their best and in turn give us results like we've been doing it for years.

Available primarily at Lie-Nielsen to order a copy of your own click here.

 

If you'd like to enter for free schwag, have a comment, question or suggestion, drop me a line at mattsbasementworkshop@gmail.com or  head over to the website.  Or...leave a voicemail at 231 354-2338.

Interested in ordering DVDs containing the complete series of audio, video and PDF episodes from Years 1 & 2 of MBW?  Drop me a line at mattsbasementworkshop@gmail.com, $25 for each or $40 for both.  Also, each month I'll be selling CDs with all of the previous month's episodes for $8.

Listen to today's show by clicking on the player below

powered by Podbean.com

To download directly to your computer Right Click on direct download, choose "Save Target as"

Much of my cabinet design and build process involves the creation of a cabinet back. Conventional wisdom says the back of a cabinet is not nearly as important as the front or sides, so it merely needs a panel which is rabbeted into the sides, top and bottom. The problem with this thinking is that it assumes the back of the cabinet will be placed against a surface or wall and never seen. This doesn't apply to all cabinets as many cabinets are designed as showcases which are away from walls, sometimes placed in the center of a room or even a foot or two away from a wall. Something also feels wrong about diminishing the importance of the back of a cabinet when so much emphasis is placed on the design and structure of the front and sides of the cabinet. With this in mind, the need for a more aesthetically nice cabinet back becomes important, along with the function that it introduces to the cabinet. An example of function is if the cabinet is a wall-mounted cabinet and needs a structurally strong back.

The practice knot I carved when I started this project has a rounded look, like rope, but I tried something different with the final cross. Instead of creating rounded edges, they're chamfered, and I think it looks a lot nicer. (It's also a faster and easier technique.)

I used a gouge to chamfer the inside curves and cleaned them up with a small round file. All straight edges and outside curves were chamfered with a straight chisel.

Just another option if you plan to try this type of carving.

NO PEEKING DAVE!!!

(Inside joke. Please ignore if your name isn't DAVE and you're not home playing hooky.)





I didn't take any pics of the process (I'm a dummy) but here's the final result. I think the padauk and maple is too gaudy. But it was a good test of the concept!

It has been years since the radial arm saw came into my shop, and I have not used it at all because it was not set up accurately. I've been working on fixing this over the last two weeks, and I'm getting quite familiar with the settings.

The thing that took me longest, was getting the table to be nearly perfect in its alignment with the saw arm. I had spend hours trying to get this right, and I was getting nowhere until I learned the trick from a book called Fine Tuning Your Radial Arm Saw, by Jon Eakes. The secret was to adjust four reference points on the table and use a crescent wrench as a lever for fine positioning. This simple trick was a huge revelation, and once I learned it, adjusting the table was done in under an hour. I'm sure I could do it in under 30 minutes now if I needed to do it again.


I'm now most of the way through testing and adjusting the saw. I hope to finish tomorrow and start ripping stock for the storm windows I need to build. I guess I just needed a big project (ripping and chopping the stock for 5 storms) with a deadline (winter) to motivate me to get this machine working. There was no way I was going to rip all that stock by hand.

I've started working on a new segmented pen. There isn't much to look at right now, but I can give you an idea of what it will look like.

Prior to finishing my last segmented pen, I cut several hundred segments with 22.5 degree angles to create a few more pens with eight segment layers. Having these pieces of Maple, Walnut and Jatoba, I thought it would be a nice way to get a good visual of what some different designs could be. Kind of like a rough sketch in 3-D.

I didn’t want to get into gluing anything and commit myself to a design I didn’t fully like, so I carefully stacked my segments and let gravity hold everything together for me. I figured this method would let me quickly see, physically, what I thought I was seeing in my head. It would also be much less time intensive than gluing a full blank together to flesh out the complete idea. Each design I have put together is the full size of a Jr. Gent II cap.

After stacking a design and taking a couple pictures from different angles I took apart what I had done and designed another. It was after I had six or eight of these designs that I thought I would put together a blog series to show how these segmented pens would look from design to completed pen.

A couple of the designs I’ve come up with include all three species that I had prepped. This design I'm working on now is one I’ve been thinking about for a while. With the light color of the Maple separating the Walnut and Jatoba diamond patterns; it reminds me of an argyle sock.

Currently I have the first of three glue-up phases completed.

They really are that big!

These are the irons for a rather unique pair of planes I have been working on for the last 12 months. One iron is for the commissioned plane - the other for the spare “prototype”. The pair should be completed in the next few days - stay tuned...

In this episode of the Woodworkers Resource Video Podcast we're continuing the topic of building bookcases. This time we look at cutting and installing crown molding on our bookcase.

We will show you how to use simple off the shelf crown molding you can find at most "Big Box" hardware stores to really dress up your bookcase.

Ever had problems getting tight joints when install crown molding? I'll show you a simple way to get perfect looking miters every time!

If you would like to be notified when new espisodes come out, sign up for our newsletter at:

www.WoodworkersResource.com

And as always, if you have any questions or comments, you can email us at:

contactus@woodworkersresource.com

Thanks for Watching!

This is part 2 of a multi-part series following me building a bookcase for a friend of the family.  As promised I documented the build, the good, the bad and the ugly and I'll be posting new episodes on Wednesdays from this point out, enjoy!!

REMEMBER!  If you have any comments, questions, suggestions or you want to enter for some free schwag drop me a line at mattsbasementworkshop@gmail.com or you can always leave a voicemail at 231 354-2338.

Don't forget that Hendrik is conducting a seminar on June 14th, based on his book "Starting and Running a Woodworking Business".  If you'd like to attend or just get more information about this seminar contact Hendrik at info@passionforwood.com.

If you have the time, please take the new listener survey.

To download directly to your computer Right Click and "Save Target as"

I’ve returned from a great vacation yesterday. We’ve visited lots of beautiful places in Sri Lanka and one of them was a small local woodworking factory. I’ve taken following photos for you to enjoy:

Lots of hand tools in action, huh? ;)

For the Myanmar people of Southeast Asia the blossoming Paduak is an enchanting time. I have heard that to walk among the Padauk trees when in full bloom is to walk hand and hand with the spirit of nature. For the Myanmar people it signifies youth, love and romance.


See it here: Ruby Red Padauk Wood Ring

Halloween Challenge: LumberJocks | HomeRefurbers | GardenTenders

13 projects have been entered into our Halloween Challenge and I’m very pleased to announce the winners of the prize draw:

1. $50 gift card → Steelmum
2. Leather apron plane holster → mjon
3. Lee Valley cap → jeffthewoodwacker

Congratulations!

———————————————————————————————

Halloween Challenge: LumberJocks | HomeRefurbers | GardenTenders

When people think of high quality hand planes, one of the first companies to come to mind for most is Lie-Nielsen Toolworks, and for good reason. Lie-Nielsen Toolworks has been turning out some of the best "Stanley" type hand planes for over 25 years.

However, over the last several years Lie-Nielsen Toolworks has been turning out a lot more tools than just hand planes.

In our fourth interview I get the opportunity to talk to the owner and founder of Lie-Nielsen Toolworks, Thomas Lie-Nielsen. We talk about:

• What it was like to start a tool manufacturing company 25 years ago when woodworking hand tools weren't as popular

• The challenges they faced bringing chisels to the market

• Some of Lie-Nielsen's newest tools - Workbenches, Progressive Pitch Saws, Inlay Tools, Educational DVDs, and much more

• What a typical day is like for Tom Lie-Nielsen

• My own suggestion for a new product for Lie-Nielsen: You're gonna love this!

• You'll even get to hear first hand what new tools Lie-Nielsen will be coming out with in the near future (I'm VERY excited about this one!)

• And much, much more

And of course we talk about The Woodworking in America Conference and the classes the Tom will be teaching:

• Modern Tools: Tolerances and Myths

• How Modern Tools are Designed and Made

• Bevel-Up vs. Bevel-Down Planes (CLOSED)

• Modern Tools: Tolerances and Myths (repeated session)

Visit our website for more information and to hear more interviews!

www.WoodworkersResource.com

Craig Stevens

Halloween Challenge: LumberJocks | HomeRefurbers | GardenTenders

Don’t forget that Saturday – November 1st – is Halloween Challenge deadline. We already have 7 creative entries and there is a great chance to win one of the following prizes:

1. $50 gift card
2. Leather apron plane holster
3. Lee Valley cap

Winners will be announced on November 2nd…Good Luck!

———————————————————————————————

Halloween Challenge: LumberJocks | HomeRefurbers | GardenTenders

It's the first Friday of a new month and that can mean only one thing here at Matt's Basement Workshop...IT'S TIME FOR ROUTER BIT OF THE MONTH!!!!

Once again the great folks at Whiteside and Woodcraft sent us another router bit to tryout and giveaway.  So for all of June ,Woodcraft is featuring Whiteside's Shaker Style Rail and Stile set.  A great set of bits that makes quick work of helping you build beautiful Shaker Style doors for whatever project you have coming up.

Unlike other Rail and Stile sets.  Whiteside's set is designed to cut grooves that accept a 1/4" plywood panel without the rattling and loose fitting that others leave you with.  And considering that it's on sale at Woodcraft for 25% off all month long...it's a deal you shouldn't miss.

 

REMEMBER!  If you have any comments, questions, suggestions or you want to enter for some free schwag drop me a line at mattsbasementworkshop@gmail.com or you can always leave a voicemail at 231 354-2338.

Hendrik is back this month and we're talking about "Why we woodwork".  We'd love your feedback on why it is that you woodwork also, so call or write in to the show.

Don't forget too that Hendrik is wrapping up his annual finishing seminar:  Part 3"Antique Restoration Techniques" - June 7th.  Also, coming up on June 14th, Hendrik is conducting a seminar based on his book "Starting and Running a Woodworking Business"at his Acton, Ontario Workshop.  If you'd like to attend or just get more information about these seminars contact Hendrik at info@passionforwood.com.

If you have the time, please take the new listener survey.

Listen to today's show by clicking on the player below

powered by Podbean.com

To download directly to your computer Right Click and "Save Target as"

アメリカ人の友人が、新しく発売された木工の道具だと言って、これを教えてくれました。
さすがアメリカ！
何だか分かりますか、これ。