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Blogs

Featured Entries

Steve Krumanaker

Making name tags using inkscape

I've mentioned that to take advantage of the potential of one of these little laser engravers  there are some software programs to know. One of these is an open source program called "inkscape". To someone who has never used it, inkscape can be intimidating as there are so many menus, options, controls, etc. etc. With a little effort it all starts to make sense and a person begins to understand what is going on. This is a little step-by-step to create a name tag file that can be used with a cnc
Steve Krumanaker
Photography

Lets talk Photography

Here is a topic that may not come up often enough. I am not a professional and do tend to point and shoot, but there are some basics we can all benefit from.   Lets start with equipment. A good camera helps, but there lots of them. I like SLR's and have been using them since the early 80's. Now using DSLR. There are plenty of compact cameras out there that will work also. Important is being able to change settings from A,to T to P,or portrait or macro and capability to
Gerald
  • Gerald
Drying Turned Wood

Six methods

Drying Turned Wood by Gerald Lawrence   I will cover the method I use as well as some other methods which have been up and down in popularity in the woodturning world to dry a blank in a method of turning called Twice Turned. First what is Twice Turned (TT) . TT is when you rough turn a bowl (usually only green wood) down to a wall thickness equaling one-tenth of the diameter of the bowl, the turn again when it reaches moisture equalization (MEQ) to final finish.   1. Ba
Gerald
DUST COLLECTORS 101

Ducts and blast gates

Now this may be getting the cart before the horse but lets call it collecting supplies you will need to connect your DC to machines. Thin wall PVC will work just fine . For the best you can order metal ducts any size you want but you will also have to buy expensive connections .   A consideration many people talk about is grounding the dust collector and duct. To my knowledge and every forum I have been on and every article and book "there has never been a explosion in a home workshop
Gerald
  • Gerald
Military Challenge Coin Display Build

Military Challenge Coin Display Build

Thank you for joining us. Below is the Military Challenge Coin Display as described by The Patriot Woodworker network. This is a design that we drew up with the help of designs seen all over the web, it is easy to build, most folks have the tools that are necessary to build it, and the finishing process is quite simple. If you don't have the tools that I am using, your sure to find a way around that, as this is as I said, very simple to build. This basic display is 12" long, 4 1/2" deep, 1 1/8"
Courtland
Thickness Sander

Part 1- The Drum

When making my rolling pins, I use the thickness planer to bring the thin strips down to 1/8” thick. Unfortunately, if the grain in the wood is not uniform- or there are knots- the strips shatter. This wastes a lot of wood and doesn’t do the planer any good either. It seemed to me a thickness sander would be perfect for this process. Well, Craig’s List wasn’t producing any results and I couldn’t afford a new one. Time to take action!   Starting with what seemed to me to be the most cri
lew
  • lew
Small Patch Musings and Such

attaining a snowflake

To start one needs a program like Rapid resizer then go to Pinterest... maybe like a few thousand flakes to choose from..  Find one you like and click on it to make it the largest size on the screen before you click on to Save as and here I use Documents to store this type of pictures.    Now you need a printer. No big deal here for I use for this is a Canon # 2522. About two or three months ago it was on sale  for less than 20 bucks.   Once the picture is stored in doc
Smallpatch
Republishing the French Rolling Pin blog

Part #5 Some Final Thoughts

In Part #1, I mentioned that the pattern of the Celtic knot can be varied by how much wood is removed during the creation of the slots. Typically, I plow out a 3/8" wide slot and fill it with three inserts. That technique results in a pattern of knots that overlap-       If the slot is cut, leaving a center slice of wood intact, and then placing an insert on each side; the pattern displays diamonds at the cross-over-         Another subtle
lew
  • lew
Republishing the French Rolling Pin blog

Part #4 The Glue-up and Turning

I found it easier to glue if I oriented the blank with the diagonal cut facing up. I use an old restaurant cutting board as a gluing work surface and pieces of the cutting board as culls and pads. In this picture, you can see the three strips to be glued into place. They measure 2” x 10 3/4” x 1/8”. Test fit the pieces first to make sure they will seat into the slot. (I now have a thick piece of Corian countertop for the gluing surface)     On my first attempt, I didn’t use
lew
  • lew
Republishing the French Rolling Pin blog

Part#3 Making the cuts

Once the blank has the layout lines drawn, it is time to cut the slots for the ellipses. The first step is to set the blade height. When the cut is made, there should be about 3/32" to 1/8” of material left holding the two sides together. This is necessary during the glue up by keeping the pieces aligned.   Set the blank on the jig and adjust the angle and the end stop so that the front SHORTER layout line is positioned to the LEFT side of the blade cut. Orientation is
lew
  • lew
Republishing the French Rolling Pin blog

Part#2 Layout

The second part will concentrate on the layout of the rolling pin blank in preparation for cutting the slots. Create a blank that is 22” long and 2” square.    Locate the center of the length (11”) and carry a line around the blank.   The ellipses are 11” long and made of three pieces of 1/8” thick material Layout a mark 5 ½” on either side of the centerline and accurately carry the lines around the blank.   To assist in laying out the diagona
lew
  • lew
Republishing the French Rolling Pin blog

Part 1- The jigs

This is a re-post on the Celtic Knot Rolling Pin. I am a fan of “Cook Book” style instructions so if I miss any details, please let me know and I will try to flesh them out. In addition, many of these photos/procedures have been refined over time and I will try to point them out by adding extra photos rather than rewriting the entire blog. I thought it best to start with the jigs I used to prepare the turning blanks. Please note that I always over engineer everything and hardly ever see the
lew
  • lew
Workbench PIP

How I got this started

Where to start is to determine just what do you want to use the bench for. At the time for me it was flatwork and planing. I looked at many plans and decided on parts of several. Not sure where each part came from but the contributing plans were in Wood Magazine, Shop Notes and Popular Mechanics.   I started with the vices. Both are Lee Valley and maybe even paid full price. They are both front vices but one is mounted on the end. Next is to decide on the wood. I wanted White Oak and i
Gerald
DUST COLLECTORS 101

Make your own blast gates and add ons

Ok finally got a little time to continue. First lets talk about blast gates and routing boxes. I made these from plans in either Wood magazine or Shop Notes but did not write the issue on it. This gate is for individual tools or can be mounted in the duct . Basically this one is ply for sides and 1/8 masonite scrap for the blade. The plastic PVC connector is a piece of thinwall with about 1/2 inch cut out and then use PVC glue. This will allow the 4 inch flex to be attached.This could
Gerald
DUST COLLECTORS 101

Ducts and blast gates

Now this may be getting the cart before the horse but lets call it collecting supplies you will need to connect your DC to machines. Thin wall PVC will work just fine . For the best you can order metal ducts any size you want but you will also have to buy expensive connections .   A consideration many people talk about is grounding the dust collector and duct. To my knowledge and every forum I have been on and every article and book "there has never been a explosion in a home workshop
Gerald
  • Gerald
DUST COLLECTORS 101

What my current setup is

Thought it might be best to start off with what my current setup is or at least parts of it. My Dust collector  is a Grizzly 1029 2 hp operating on 220v. It had a 5 micron bag top and bottom when purchased and was upgraded to a canister filter from Penn State. My collector is located in the attic of my shop in a insulated enclosure and a 12x24 filtered return to the shop. Power is controlled with a Long RAnger remote.    Ducting I used is 4 inch thinwall PVC. We will get into ducting a
Gerald
  • Gerald
Situation Normal, All Fired Up

Let's burn stuff!

So, I'm new to the site but I figured out that there is this nifty little blog feature.    I am a pyrographer. I burn designs into wood. It's amazing how relaxing it can be to create something so beautiful from something so potentially chaotic. Currently my works have been patriotic or pagan in genre. Eventually, as I gain more skill, I will branch into others as well.    I am more than happy to help answer any questions, to help you find the tools, etc.   
MaDeuce
Small Patch Musings and Such

Its been shown before but still questions

this is not the same box but is the way I start building one.   I have to print out 10 exact patterns. The tenth one is just solid with no holes for drawers.     All the pieces  I cut out for the drawers are later glued together except for the front of the drawer and the back of the drawer. I use dowels to line up everything . If I don't use the dowels when clamping two pieces together it could slip just a hair one way or the other and cause lots of extra sanding or cause for the
Smallpatch
Small Patch Musings and Such

If you have a printer

I ran across this picture and thought some who use patterns they buy with money, you just might save a few bucks.  I noticed home printers are getting about the price of a big hamburger so that shouldn't slow too many away from one.. I don't know how much the Rapid Resizer cost to have on your computer but it is sure helpful when needing to enlarge or reduce a picture to be used as a pattern...    This is the pattern that got me to carving wood and the patterns or I should say one pattern I
Smallpatch
Canon Ball Bed

Bed from a (few) boards

Have to start with a glue up . Did not think I could find 6 x 6 dry pine so here we go with 3 pieces of 2 x 6. Tried to get the knots toward the surface outer edges as these would be turned off. Remember you can never have too many clamps                                     After squaring the blanks on table saw we will need a centered hole to assemble the two parts of the post as this lathe is not lon
Gerald
Segmented Turning

Down Hill From Here!

So with the koozie glued, there really isn't much left but the fun part.  I threw it on the lathe in my new oversized jaws and went to work.  I started slow, about 500 RPM because I didn't know how fast I could go with something this size.  Eventually I bumped it up to 800 and settled at about 1000RPM.  I used my Sorby roughing gouge to get it round (mainly because it is my favorite tool) and finished smooth with the circular carbide tip.  I also slightly rounded over the top lip and flattened t
Joe Candrilli
Segmented Turning

Groundhog Day

This was a stupid idea.   Sorry, that was wrong of me.  What I should have said was...   This was a REALLY stupid idea.   OK, in all seriousness, it is not THAT bad.  It is only about 200 segments the size of my pinky nail that have to be cut, sanded, and glued into 10 rings...per koozie.  I honestly found that I could get into a rhythm.  I would cut  one 1.5x.5x24 strip of oak into 3 strips, then cut those int segments.  Once the segments were cut I divided them in
Joe Candrilli
Segmented Turning

The real day two

OK, so on to working the segments.  As I said, my goal is to complete a can koozie using segmented rings.  The best way I found was the 'wedgie sled' concept created by Jerry Bennett.  It is basically a 3 part sled.  I thought I could get away with just the adjustable arms and quickly figured out why the parts are there.  It is really a simple concept.  You adjust the 2 bars on the sled according to how many segments you want per ring.  You can do math (360 degree circle divided by 18 segments p
Joe Candrilli
Segmented Turning

Day Two, plus some background info

Welcome back!   Before I roll into today's update please allow me to fill in the background story and update my tool list as per Mr John Morris' request.   I caught the woodworking bug back in 2014.  I have always wanted to be creative, but in all honesty I do not have that gene.  If you sat me in front of a canvas and asked me to create content I would fail.  I simply do not have the ability to take something from imagination and turn it to reality.  What I have found though
Joe Candrilli
Segmented Turning

Segment Day One

I moved this post here, figured it was more appropriate as a blog vice a random post...   I figured this would be a great place to document my path down segmented turning.  That way we can all look back years later and laugh...   Today I will start with why I am looking at getting into segmented turning in the first place.  Last Christmas I was trying to figure out what to get my dad for a gift.  He is at the stage where there isn't much he needs, and I had already made him a
Joe Candrilli
Another Church Table

Finishing Up The Top

With the base finished, all that was left to do was trim out the top with the walnut edge trim. Glue, clamps and some pin nails.   I forgot to take photos of the top to apron mounting system but this Sketchup drawing should explain what I did. These are simple wooden clips with their tabs captured in slots that run around the perimeter of the inside of the aprons. The slot is 1/4" wide by 3/8" deep. The clips are cut from 3/4" thick maple and the tabs sized of a snug fit in the slots.
lew
  • lew
Another Church Table

Mistakes, Mistakes, Mistakes!

Once the legs were completed, I started on the aprons and stretchers. The stretchers are to be mortised and tenoned into the legs. The long stretcher needed to be securely fastened into the side stretcher but their thickness was only 3/4 ". That meant a very short tenon (1/2") on the ends of the long stretcher. I decided, mistakenly, to use a fox tenon and a dovetail style mortise, with tapered sides and wider at the bottom.     It took a little work to get the mortises chop
lew
  • lew
Small Patch Musings and Such

All building being built for wood shops should be built for 20 or 30 years down the road..

We left a very perfect size shop where we retired from. A  40x60  with a concrete floor.  So in thinking ahead with my lovely we won't need that much shop cause in our visions every road and highway is the U S was going to be our work shop.     Wild thinking but hey the very first 8 years of our last business we were open 7 days a week. Every day and even when it rained, we had many things to do.  From experience, so believe me when I say build a shop for 20 or 30 years down the r
Smallpatch

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