T-astragal

That bug actually eats sapwood only. Cut out all sapwood and problem is solved. I've never seen it on anything other than mesquite. Adult beetle is black and gold. The grub is eating your wood. Kiln drying will kill them but they can come back for bark and sap. I don't think your other wood is at risk. Steve

Bearded brotula. Weird looking fish tastes like crab. Steve

I've gotten in to blue water fishing in the Gulf of Mexico It's amazing how hard these fish fight. The variety is also quite interesting. Short trips can produce red snapper, kingfish, vermillion snapper, grouper, sharks, ling, dorado, etc. A little farther out gets you into amberjacks, deep water grouper, and many other species. My favorite is tuna. We have to go out 120 miles to get them with any consistency. We catch yellowfin mostly on top water poppers and swim baits at night. Try to rest during the day so you can stay up all night. It's an awesome experience to see the huge blow up and hear the drag sing. Most Texas yellowfin are 60-80 lbs and the average fight takes 15 minutes at 15 lbs of drag. Steve

A friend grilled some for a "get together" last weekend. I was skeptical. He called it "ribeye in the sky" and that was very accurate. Fantastically delicious. Steve

McFeelys has really dropped the ball. New ownership is killing them. Their stock isn't good either. Sad. Steve

For large flat areas this works good. A coffee can fits too. Steve

Spiral heads are not worth the money for a hobbiest. You'd be better off spending the money on a heavier machine. Spiral is sexy. I get it. My spiral head 24" planer does fine but the surface is not near as good as a steel knife planer. Buy two sets of knives and change them as needed. Send one in for professional grinding while running the other. Combo machines are sexy too. I've used only a Robland $5500 back in the 90's and it was far from enjoyable. Nothing really ever stayed right on. Spend some coin and buy the best. You'll never regret it once it's paid for. Steve

Pics as promised. Glue applicator Clamp carrier I started in a garage. [emoji1] Steve

I'll try to post pictures tomorrow. I bought a Doucet applicator about 8 years ago. I think it cost $6000. Maybe more? It has saved me 1000's of man hours. Stock goes down on the infeed conveyor and over a roller then eventually stops at a photo eye. Then you grab the pieces and load on the rotary clamp carrier (another $18000) we use the pneumatic flattener and tighten with the hydraulic motor. This is where my hobby got real. I've never once regretted spending the money on this. Heck once I reluctantly (stupidly so) did a custom glue up for a moulding shop. I agreed to 20c a linear ft to glue two 3 1/2" pre ripped boards (tons of them) together. I didn't know that it would be a home run. I had a knuckle head employee just run boards over the conveyor and load the clamp then unload and stack the glue ups. 3-4 days later and I billed the guy $4000. I was much more open minded after that. The job would have taken a month with a glue bottle and pipe clamps. Steve

Sometimes 1/16" is no biggie. Sometimes it's huge.; a gap in a joint vs a panel size for example. I set up shaper heads to .001" but my parts may vary by .03" from time to time. It all ends well though. In the end this is wood not metal. Plane it, sand it, fair it out and move on. Steve

Build two doors not one wide one. Why complicate it? I see nothing to gain by ripping a larger door into two. I'd want a little more tenon as well. Look at the Hawa Bifold 30 system. It's a high quality interior system. Steve

I think this is it. I was shocked at how long it took to stir the lumps out. Steve

I remember something about the color "red mahogany" in minwax that needed special consideration. Other than that idk. 600 and steel wool is too fine. 240 or 320 then recoat. 3 coats outta level out darn near perfect. Especially with satin. 600 would polish satin to the next sheen level or at least close to it. It looks like inter coat adhesion problems. Good luck. Steve

Military is a whole "nuther" subject. I used to rent shop space from a machine shop owner that did some military work. Dave had a job that specified a hole in a certain position with tolerances something like .1250" +.0001-.0000." They couldn't quite hold the tolerances and contacted the guy in charge who said that they had to go by the specs. He asked for a higher brass contact and eventually got a colonel who explained that the hole was to line up with a pin that held a certain rocket munition in place in the shipping crate to keep it from jiggling in transport. He accepted the lower tolerances. Our tax dollars hard at work fellas. Steve

I'd love to think in metric. It is truly a superior system. But in a practical woodworking sense I don't know if it makes good sense. Plywood in 18 or 19mm doesn't really make for easy math. Hardwood projects at 12,7 mm (yeah I used a comma as a decimal (another weird part of the metric system)) doesn't help sell the system either. It seems that in the business the metric folks are accommodating the imperial system. I like inches because a door for example is 36" or 42" or 30". A door 914.4 mm wide doesn't make it simple. 1000mm would. 900 wouldn't be bad. Maybe in Europe construction is more "even" in mm. Still the 3 digits to express 3' or 36" is a hurdle Steve