brady

Fair enough - I checked eBay and there's two currently going for $400+. I figured I was missing some minor detail about my plane that made it far less valuable since if I was in the selling position I would have checked eBay first before setting a price, so I assumed the seller did the same, but apparently not

Someone posted this hand plane and drill for $25 on Facebook. I know next to nothing about used hand tools, but figured for $25 I'd take a chance. The plane is No. 608 with a corrugated sole. Is the plane worth rehabbing? The sole seems pretty darn flat by my standards. It is marked with "PAT'D APR. 2-95". The drill doesn't have any markings that I can see. Where might I find information? The guy who sold them knew nothing about either tool, they were his father's.

Pretty awesome video on a clever way to produce drawers quickly from sheet goods:

I use camelcamelcamel.com to price watch Bessey and Jet clamps on Amazon. They will occasionally drop to very low prices for a brief period. For example - the Jet 31 inch 2-pack dropped to $50.99 last March. I bought 3 pairs when it did. Not the best method if you need clamps now since you could be waiting months, if not longer, but not a bad way to supplement an already existing clamp collection.

What are your opinions of these places as a source for a hobbyist? I've been going to a place in Ft. Collins ever since I started woodworking. They have a good selection and are super friendly (they don't mind if I rummage through a stack of lumber for an hour just to buy 10 BF. Of course I neatly re-stack it ), but I'm interested in trying some other dealers. Denver's a little further for me, but I've been thinking about making the drive down there to check them out.

I forgot to provide an update. I received the collet from routerbitworld in a couple days and it measured in at exactly 1/2", and my 1/2" router bits actually fit!

Be careful if you use walnut - I believe it's toxic to horses.

My community has green waste dumpsters around the city that they use to make mulch. So I take it there as long as it doesn't contain dust from sheet goods or walnut. If it does then it just goes in the regular garbage.

I ended up finding someone else who sells this collet - www.routerbitworld.com I called them up, explained my situation and the gentleman measured the collet they carry for me while I was on the phone. Came out to 12.7 mm so I ordered one from him.

It should be exactly (or very close to) 1/2", right? I'm battling with a couple of collets from Bosch that they say are 1/2", but appear to be too small. I got a great deal on a used Freud FT3000VCE (3.25 HP) and Freud router table, however, the seller only had the 1/4" collet, but he had all of the manuals. So I dug out the parts list, found the part # for the 1/2" collet and called Freud. They apparently got out of the router game so they passed me on to Bosch who handles their router parts now. I gave them the Freud part #, my payment info, and they shipped it out. I received it and tried to fit a 1/2" bit into the collet and it would barely budge without more force than I was willing to apply. So I grabbed my digital calipers and measured the inner diameter - came to 12 mm almost on the nose (for reference 1/2" is 12.7 mm). Turns out there are 12 mm collets and bits, so I called back Bosch and told them they sent me the wrong size. They insisted they don't carry any 12 mm collets of any size, so it must just be a bad part. So they sent another. Just received it and the second one is exactly 12 mm as well. I also have a Bosch router with a 1/2" collet that works great. So I measure that, and what do ya know - almost 1/2" on the nose. I'm not losing my mind, am I? I think Bosch has some 12 mm collets and they aren't aware of it. To be fair there is not a 12 mm collet on my parts list, but I would imagine Freud, being a Canadian company, would have had metric collets. I'm going to call back Bosch in the morning, but I'm afraid I won't get anywhere with them. Any other options I might have? So far I really like the router and it's a beast, but 3 HP isn't much use unless I can use some big panel raising or tongue and groove bits on it.

I'm a mechanical engineer and I work for Autodesk (developers of Autocad) so I have access to all sorts of great 3D design software, but I actually take the "rough sketch/wing-it" approach to my woodworking. I think that's what I like about woodworking - I can leave behind the daily grind of nitpicking over small details and just get out in my shop and build something. However, I will say that my pieces generally lack creativity or flair. I'm not sure if that's because I don't spend much time on design or if I'm just a boring engineer with no sense of creativity (probably both).

That's good to know. I wasn't quite sure how serious these small problems can become. Thanks for the re-assurance.

Thankfully I didn't use any other 2x4s to patch the fence. I bought them just in case I needed them with the intent of returning them, but of course I lost the receipt. So I was going to make a little corner table for a plant. I'm thinking of just burning it if there's any doubt about what it might be.

Long time reader, first time poster I recently bought some cedar fencing lumber to fix some sections of my fence. I ended with two leftover 2x4s so I decided to do a 2x4 challenge with them. I cut and milled some of the parts last night and when I came back to the shop today I noticed a small (1/8" long) black beetle crawling across some of the cedar on my workbench. On closer inspection I noticed a couple of misshapen holes on some of the surfaces that appeared to be filled with wood dust. I scraped out some of the dust with a knife and placed the beetle next to it and took the attached photos. I inspected the rest of the pieces and didn't notice any small round holes, or any other beetles or larvae. Any ideas what it might be? Do I need to burn it all? Thanks for the help.