Tool Sharpening

    Good morning all, I just wanted to take a minute to tell you about a business I've been working with for my saw and other cutters sharpening for quite a while now.  They are located in Salt Lake City so the only downside is that you'll need to mail your blades, shaper cutters, and router bits to them.  The upside is that they do excellent work and if you have a question they will call you up to answer it.  It's been getting harder and harder to find a good source of sharpening here in Las Vegas.  Woodworkers Emporium used to send their blades to them but that's been years ago so not sure what happened.
     In any case, they are called Accurate Carbide and here is a LINK to their website.  Just to give you an idea of costs, I UPS'ed two blades to them for about $12.00.  For a typical carbide combo blade, 10" x 40 teeth they charge $16.40.  I had some concerns about them and Chuck called me personally to answer the questions I had.  Turn around time is about a week but you can plan around that.  What I do is rotate three blades, one is beyond sharpening so when the two good ones get dull I put it on the table saw and use is while the others are out.  I really dulled them for the box series where I used lots of exotic woods!  As I work in my shop I'll set aside any other cutters that need to be sharpened and send it all at one time to save on shipping.
     I learned about them at one of the big woodworking shows.  I use Tenryu blades and the factory reps in that booth recommended them for sharpening their blades.  Check them out, they may be just what you need.

Photo's, Video's, and The Meeting Blog

Waiting for the Main Event

     We had roughly 23 members at our meeting last Wednesday, September the nineteenth.  The weather is improving and so was the comfort level inside Jamie's shop which was perfect as we had lots of demonstrations and valuable information. These are things we can try in our own shops, seeing them demonstrated in person helps to understand what to do.  As is customary, we went around the room for our brief intro's and there were about 3-4 new faces -- welcome!
     Before the scheduled demonstrations we had our show and tell session.  Starting off with Ed, who brought in his latest lathe project, this segmented turning:

Ed's Segmented Bowl

     If you've ever used a lathe one of the important things is making sure your wood is securely fastened to the faceplate -- flying wood is never good!  Ed brought in an adjustable faceplate that he found plans for and made himself.  The rubber items that securely fasten the wood are bathtub stoppers.

Longworth Chuck

     For any of you that are interested in seeing how this chuck works and/or want to make your own, here's a LINK with plans for making it.
     In keeping with the wood turning theme, Don (president of the woodturners group)  brought in his latest bowl design which is really pretty amazing.

Don's Bowl

     To create this design he started out with a  3/4" x 7"  piece of Leopardwood.  This was cut into circles that were tapered and got progressively smaller.  The tool used for that is the bandsaw.  After cutting they were run through a sander to prepare them for the next step which was to glue them back together into a conical shape.  Finally, this is attached to a faceplate and Don worked his magic and skills to produce the bowl you see here:

Completed Bowl

     Quite often, the things we make in our shop reflects where we are in our life situation.  Some of us can look back on what Jonathan has been working on and remember doing that for our families and others of you may have this phase to look forward to.  He's been working on child related items like this neat Cow Jumped Over the Moon piece:

Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the Cow jumped over the Moon ...

     Apparently what started out for his own kids ended up as a must have for neighbors, cousins, and so on.  That's the fun part of being able to create these things.  To help him create more efficiently and accurately, Jonathan also brought in his recently completed drill press table.  Jamie was quick to offer her drill press as a place to set it up and evaluate but he declined.
     Last of the show and tell session was the boxes that I brought to share.  I was asked to do a show of them and have been busy making 29 different examples.  This kept me pretty busy coming up with something different from what you usually find.  The show was last Thursday and will be up at the Urban Ranch General Store until the end of next week.  I really appreciate those of you that were able to come to by, check out all of the work, have some wine/beer and snacks, and just be supportive.  Thanks for that and the purchases some of you made as well.

One of the Gilded Dog Series

     Trying to get recognition and market your work is a pain for me but it was lots of fun to come up with the unique box designs.  Got to feed my wood addiction!

      We had two really informative demonstrations at this meeting.  The first was with Dennis who showed us how to make an Ogee, bracket foot.  As with all of these demonstrations he made it look pretty easy but that's only because of his experience in making these.  It is something that all of us can do, seeing it "up close and personal" is so much better than pictures in a book.




   
 Making the cove began with a piece of 8/4 stock and templates.

Template Drawn on End

Template for Side

     In actual practice Dennis would use one piece of wood for each pair of the feet.  You start with adjusting the height of the blade for the depth of cut needed.  He then counts the number of revolutions as he returns the blade below the table.  After setting up the fence, he'll return the blade to that height in small increments.

Double-Stick Tape to Secure Fence

     The fence used to guide your cut is attached to the tablesaw at an angle.  Different diameter blades will give you a larger or smaller radius on your coves which determines the size of your molding or, in this case, cabinet foot.  You could use clamps but Dennis's chose is this 3M brand tape he gets at CTI here in Las Vegas.  There was a lot of interest in this store and the tape so here's a LINK to them, they are located at Valley View and Hacienda.
     After making the required passes to achieve the depth of the cove, the next step is to cut the shape on the bandsaw.  This can then be sanded with either a spindle sander or by wrapping some sandpaper around a piece of dowel.

Refining the Curve

      By using a block plane the edges are chamfered and brought to the desired profiles.  The piece shown above is a sample, in practice it would have been long enough for both sides, mitered and joined to form the complete foot.
     Lupe did an outstanding video which can be seen on YouTube, here is a LINK to that video.  I'm somewhat computer challenged so let me know if this doesn't work for you and I'll try to figure it out.  The video is really informative and will show you much more than I could write.
     Next up was another outstanding demonstration from Ted.  He's doing a staircase up in Sandy, Utah out of rift sawn, white Oak.  The newel posts are made by having a four sided taper that starts at about 7"  wide and goes up to 4" or so.  The style of them is an Asian/Craftsman one and hopefully he'll take some pictures of the completed project to share when the job's done.  Since there were a number of posts to make it was well worth the time and effort for him to make a perfect template to follow.  I've enhanced this picture to try and clarify it so no, you don't need to adjust your set!

Template for Newel Posts

     The piece on top is the template and it is perfectly centered on the piece needing to be cut out.  You can see how the template piece has brackets screwed to it that go around the needed part.  These are screwed into the top and bottom of the post sides and will be capped over on top, bottom you won't see.  If you've ever done pattern routing with a hand held router or on a shaper, this is the same concept.  The first step is to clamp a T-shaped fence (called an Overshot Fence) to the tablesaw rip fence.

Installing the Overshot Fence

     There is ample space between the piece being cut off and the rip fence to insure nothing will bind and be shot back at you.  There's also space between the top of the piece being cut and the overshot fence.

Adjusting for the Cut

     The outer edge of the blade is in line with the fence.  As the template is guided against it the results will be a perfectly matching part.  Where a router or shaper uses a bearing, the edge of this fence serves the same purpose.  To assemble these parts the edges next had to be cut at an angle which was accomplished by tilting the blade.  Next up was to move the fence to the opposite side of the blade, lower the blade and cut a slot in each mitered edge to accept a spline for glue up.  Ted said that to hold these together for the glue up all he needed was masking tape across the edges.
     Once again, my words and Lupe's photographs aren't enough to really describe this process but Lupe has made another great video showing Ted in action on YouTube.  Here's the LINK to that one as well.  Lupe is doing a great job on these, if you agree tell her so next time you see her.
     Well, this one (or me!) got to be rather long winded but there were a lot of good things happening, shared, and discussed at this meeting.  Last thing I'll add is that there will be a swap meet in the parking lot of Woodworkers Emporium.  It'll be on Saturday, Oct. 13 from 9am to noon.  From what I understand you can bring in your stuff to sell without any charge or comission.  Until next month, or maybe sooner, that's all for now!
   

Coves on a Tablesaw !!!!

What the heck !!  

   Coves on a tablesaw?

'Ya been drinking or something??

Tablesaws cut square & straight,

   Coves are round & radiused -- 

       You are definitely confused.


     Yes, that's right and here's a picture to prove it.  Not to give away my age or anything but here is a sample of what we used to make in high school woodshop back in the day.  These skis weighed a ton but were almost always coved.  The guys who'd done them before claimed that the shape of the cove determined how good the ski rode through the water.  Based on my own experience though it didn't seem to matter much; my coordination couldn't get much of a ride no matter how the cove was cut!

     At our 7:00 pm  meeting tonight, Dennis Patchett will show us how to make some small, ogee cabinet feet that are destined for a cedar chest.  The process starts out with cove cuts made on the tablesaw.  You'll get to see first hand how to determine the size and depth of the cove and also how to locate the fence or fences to do this safely on your own tablesaw.
     This promises to be an interesting demonstration and something we can all use to enhance our own projects.  Feel free to bring in some of your latest work to share with the group but also take some notes on this really interesting process.

See you there