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Whether you like or use hand tools, every shop should have one of these ”Little Victor” planes by Lee Valley! It’s a simple, foolproof design that comes in so handy for so many tasks in the shop. Knocking the edges off of corners. Beveling and rounding edges. Shaving a whisper for a perfect joint.

I like the recent thread on WoodNet where it talked about reversing the blade to make it a scraper plane. I never would have thought of that, but it’s an excellent idea and works great! I was able to get transparent shavings off of maple.

I found blade adjustment very easy using a plane hammer. A light tap on the front or rear of the plane advances or retracts the blade just enough to get perfect shavings.

I agree with some users who say that the longer blade would dig into your hand. But once you learn how to hold it, it’s not that troublesome.

I thought the blade adjustment screw was a little flimsy for my liking. I would have liked to have seen a little larger screw boss in the casting with a little larger diameter screw. It’s a perception thing. I had no trouble with it during use, though.

Read all the comments about this new little plane on WoodNet.

This plane is going to stay in my shop apron. 

Unbelievable. That’s what I thought when I read this account on NaplesNews.com of a man in Florida who makes dominoes and sells them out of his home. Here you have an 85-year old man who’s been making and selling dominoes for over 18 years. The homeowner association accuses Paul Smith of running a business out of his home which is against association rules.

Well, apparently they’ve come to terms. And here’s a classic quote from the president of the association:

“We were never going to take away his woodworking thing,” which she called “a dear little hobby.”  

“His woodworking thing?”

A “dear little hobby?”

As Paul’s wife said, “Our ‘dear little hobby’ has sure raised a ruckus.”

It’s no wonder that homeowner associations have been getting a lot of bad press in the last few years.

I have a healthy respect for power tools. Well…maybe it borderlines on fear. I still get a little nervous when I flip on my table saw or router.  I can’t even explain why that is. I’ve never had a serious accident with power tools, so my respect/fear must be working.

I ran across this column by Burt Prelutsky on Townhall.com. In it, he gives a rather humorous account of his fear of changing tires, heights, and “tools with moving parts.” He recalls:

“In the seventh grade, I was required to take woodshop at John Burroughs Junior High. In order to make a bookend, it was necessary to employ a band saw. This, in case your life has been one long strawberry festival and you’ve been spared being introduced to this Satanic device, is an electric blade around which you manipulate the piece of wood you’re sawing. In case you still don’t get the picture, your hands are in extremely close proximity to this totally malevolent moving blade.

“If you’re still wondering why I have this terrible dread of electrical tools, it’s probably because I neglected to mention that our instructor, Mr. Bailey, was nicknamed ‘Fingers Bailey,’ and it wasn’t because he had more digits than your average Homo sapien, but because, all told, he only had four, maybe four-and-a-half of them left.”

He goes on to talk about how he has learned to avoid his fears and the fact that he hasn’t touched a band saw in fifty years. 

That’s too bad.  What contribution might such a creative talent made to the world of woodworking?  One can only imagine…

Careful, now.  This is still a family-friendly blog!

So…I’m out in the shop, working on repairing some shelving for my wife. I let my 13-year old use the table saw for the first time. I could tell he was nervous, but he did fine. But the noise bothered him. Same with the router. He just doesn’t like the noise.

Anyway, I move on to cutting and attaching some drawer fronts to my drill press cabinet. He’s bored, so he pulls out some hand planes and works on making a toy dagger out of some scraps. (The kids were so impressed with a toy sword I made — complete with a leather-covered handle — that they’ve been begging for more “weapons.”) He decides to add a “scabbard” crosspiece to the blade. So he carefully marks the joint on both pieces. What he’s really after, but doesn’t know it yet, is his first half-lap joint.

Now, remember, I’m minding my own business and not paying attention to what he’s doing. But I pop my head up from behind the bench and he asks very innocently, “How do I do this without making noise?”  I bust out laughing.

After I caught my breath, I pointed him to my little joinery hand saws and showed him how to use them. So he made several saw kerfs halfway through the thickness of the “scabbard” and “blade” pieces for his dagger. Then I pulled out my Stanley chisels and showed him how to pare away the waste (while keeping the fingers BEHIND the cutting edge). “Wow, this is sharp!,” he said. Finally, he cleaned up the joint with a shoulder plane. He thought that was cool.

Now, for his first hand-cut joint, it didn’t turn out bad at all. It was a little loose, so we made some walnut wedges to fill in the gaps before he glued everything together.

He needs to keep that dagger and always remember the first time he made a hand-cut joint in Dad’s shop. Without noise. And dust. It only gets better from there.

About 25 years ago, when I was first getting out on my own, I saw a Shopsmith woodworking machine at a woodworking show. I was intrigued that one machine could do so much. And the guy demonstrating it seemed to be able to switch over from table saw to lathe to bandsaw to drill press in no time at all. Pretty impressive.

I liked the idea of a Shopsmith, but wondered about having a “do-all” machine in the shop. But in a period of time when there were limited outlets to buy stationary power tools (think “Sears”), it was one of few woodworking machines around.

Woodworking as a hobby in the last 25 years or so has matured when it comes to tools. There are retail woodworking stores where there once were none. And mail-order resources make almost any tool or supply available with a click of the mouse or just a phone call.

So I wasn’t too surprised when I read this story in the Dayton Daily News. Shopsmith is in trouble, financially. They’ve handed over day-to-day responsibilities to a consulting firm that specializes in financially-troubled companies. When asked about their strategy, they said that they need to increase the value of the company by increasing sales. What does that mean? Lower prices? More options? There wasn’t a clear answer.

If I had the opportunity to lay my hands on a used Shopsmith at a reasonable price, I’d probably grab it…and turn it into a monster lathe.

From the Consumer Product Safety Commission:

NEWS from CPSC
U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
Office of Information and Public Affairs
Washington, DC 20207

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 6, 2007
Release #07-120
Firm’s Recall Hotline: (800) 525-2579
CPSC Recall Hotline: (800) 638-2772
CPSC Media Contact: (301) 504-7908
 

One World Technologies Recalls Throat Plates Sold with Ryobi Router Tables Due to Laceration Hazard

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed.

Name of product: Ryobi Router Table Throat Plates.

Units: About 100,000.

Manufacturer: One World Technologies Inc., of Anderson, S.C.

Hazard: The throat plates do not securely snap into the router’s table top bit opening. The throat plate can come loose during operation and be ejected from the table top, posing a laceration hazard to consumers. Read the rest of this article »

The next time you’re at an auction and you blindly bid on that last box of miscellaneous what-nots for $10, you might want to think twice. An Australian couple bought a box of antique woodworking tools at an auction. When they brought it home, they found a mortar shell from World War II lying in the bottom of the box. Here’s part of the story from TheAge.com.au:

“I have a few old woodworking tools and there was this box at the end (of the auction) with a lot of old woodworking tools. I bought it sight-unseen for 10 bucks and I picked it up yesterday on the way home from work and started unpacking it and in the bottom of it I found the mortar.

“It was a fairly big box and it was hidden right in the bottom of the box where no-one could see it … and it was a little bit scary to find something like that.

“It was like ‘oh $#!+ {expletive deleted}!’ and it was like ‘oh we’ve got to ring the cops quick’, so all we did was left it where it was and they came around and we were told we should not stay in the house overnight and we went to our in-laws to stay the night.”

You can click here to read the rest of the story. You just never know what goodies you’ll find at an auction.

Here’s your chance to get your personal “15 minutes” of fame. The Woodworking Channel is now in the process of filling slots for a show they’re filming in conjunction with Ernie Conover Workshops and Powermatic.

They’re looking for woodworkers willing to join a class held in late March at Conover’s facility in Cleveland. As Conover explains on his website, “…the class, “Joinery at its Best,” stresses the use of hand work where it stands out quality-wise or offers a cheaper, easier alternative.”

Interested in being a star? Get more details on the class, dates, costs, and lodging information at Ernie’s website.

For some reason, my boys have taken a liking to hanging out in the shop with me. Several times in an evening I’ll hear, “Got anything I can do, Dad?”  Now, if you’re like me, I use my shop time as a time to relax and unwind and, well…sometimes just sit and think. (I have a nice padded shop stool by my workbench for such occassions.) And sometimes, when I’m in the middle of a complicated procedure or measurement, I’ll have to politely shoo the boys out of the shop so I can concentrate.

But I had an experience the other day that made me stop and think. I was finishing up the drawers for the cabinet under my workbench. (Read my original post here.) My three youngest boys had migrated to the shop because it was too cold to play outside. I put my 11-year old to work on installing the Accuride drawer slides. The 10-year old was helping him.

The 7-year old was watching me build the drawer boxes. I could tell he was just waiting for something to do. So I put three sides of the drawer box together, handed him the bottom panel, and his eyes just lit up. He slid the bottom into the groove with a big grin on his face. I finished the box and went to install the drawer slides. I used a centering punch to mark the screw locations, so I let him “tap” it with the hammer. As he watched me drive the screws home he said, “Dad, you know what I wanna’ do when I grow up?”  I stopped and listened. “When I grow up, I wanna’ be just like you.”  I didn’t know what to say. I immediately thought of the hit song “Cat’s in the Cradle.” I don’t want to be the father who never has time for his kid(s).

Needless to say, I was taken aback. I literally stopped what I was doing and thought about the enormity of what my 7-year old was saying and the responsibility that comes with it.

Whether we want to admit it or not, and whether we feel worthy or not, and no matter how much we’ve screwed up, our kids look up to us. Don’t take that responsibility lightly. Enjoy the time you have with your kids…no matter how old they are. Make time for your kids. It’s an investment that yields benefits for generations.

During this week’s Woodsmith Woodworking Seminar podcast — Router Inlays: Adding Decorative Details — Dennis Perkins, an assistant editor for Woodsmith and ShopNotes magazines, will show us how to use a router inlay kit. During the seminar, he uses a router fitted with a simple kit that includes a bushing, a removable sleeve, and a down-cut spiral bit (click thumbnail at left). He also used his own home-made template. With the kit, he can rout out both the inlay and the matching recess using only one template.

Note: The router inlay kits (Rockler #83642) are available from The Woodsmith Store. Call 800-835-5084 to order. Mention this online coupon code: Seminars to receive free freight.

Another way to add inlay to a project is to use color-tinted epoxy. During the seminar, Dennis demonstrates an easy way to do it. Woodsmith magazine also used the process to add a decorative detail to an end table project that was featured in the magazine.

During the seminars, the presenters often mention a seminar guide or handout. The guide is now available for download in .pdf form from PlansNow.com. If you’d like to follow along during this week’s seminar, you can purchase the guide for only $4.95. The 12-page guide includes a two-page article from Woodsmith No. 166: “Using a Router Inlay Kit.” There’s also the six-page project plan: “Curved-Leg End Table.” It’s a Designer Series article from Woodsmith No. 168 (mentioned above). In addition to the project plan, there’s also a two-page technique article: “Adding An Epoxy Inlay,” and a one-page article on how to build a router trammel: “Router Trammel Jig.”

 

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