Product Reviews


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  2. Rec room heater

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  3. Shout out to Blum!

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  4. 3M Xtract Discs

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  5. Drawer Slides 1 2

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  6. Incra 5000

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  7. Philips Oneblade

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    • Found a bowl I started making a loooong time ago. Possibly 7 years. Finished it today with the cheap carbide tools. They work shocking well.    Also made two loaves of bread. Thankfully my wife made the chili so I didn’t have to.   
    • My saw wasn’t starting up well and I noticed that it would only start if I jiggled the power switch. It is the rigid R4511 model, for which the switch is out of production. Took me a while to find one, and it’s from a Ryobi bandsaw. it seems a lot of Richard and Ryobi parts are interchangeable, once you find the part number. And the only difference is the switches mounted in a different bezel. obviously I’ll just remove the switch and move it over. Obviously I’ll just remove the switch and move it over. But that’s not the real point. I’m still waiting for the new switches to come. In the meantime, I took the old switch apart to see if there was anything I could do. There was. After removing the rubber seal and then the black cover over the contact points, I could see the problem. The contact points were covered in melted material. It appears that, instead of using old-fashioned metal points for the switch they’re using some sort of carbon impregnated material to carry the current. Sort of like the way keyboards are built these days. A lot of devices avoid wire contact and use a carbon conductor.  So my course was to just scrape off melted material from the visible points and from the bottom of the black carbon impregnated cover. Then reassembled the switch. Works like a champ. But I will still exchange it for a new switch since the life of this one is surely limited.   
    • Finally breaking down parts for the sliding doors. I was lucky on this board. I found figure areas that yielded the top and bottom rail pretty easily. As you can see the stiles are at a bit of an angle. This is to get me the figure I want. You can often see furniture where the next part is just taken out of whatever happens to be in hand. This can give you figure that makes doors or drawers look slanted even though they are dead square. I used to wonder why there was so much spoil, percentage-wise, reported by seasoned furniture makers. Once I got my head around it their numbers made sense. I meant to show this in the previous post although I am sure I am preaching to the choir and sometimes just type to "hear" myself talk. ZCI's are great but the friction of spoil will widen the slots. If I want to use the slots for a reference mark during an operation BUT, don't want to replace the ZCI yet . . . I place some tape over the slots, run the blade through and presto . . . an exact reference of where the blade will cut. I take the measurements for the upper tongue off of the dummy part I made earlier. Feather boards and a push shoe help me control the material and make a clean cut. Some material likes to tear out despite sharp cutters and good technique. If I see this I just use a wheel gauge or a striking knife to score the material at the location I plan to cut. An extra minute or two of time can save you from re-making a part. I am a belt and suspenders guy. Even though I have laid these parts out and marked them I do one last orientation to check for how things look. Sapele, like cherry or white oak, has a lot of chatoyance. This means things can look very different form one point of view or another. That is not big deal unless you mix parts. Then you end up with a dark-looking top or bottom rail and a light-looking bottom or top rail no matter what angle you view it from. Once I am happy I confirm my markings. Your standard cabinet makers triangle markings will keep your parts identified through out the joinery process. Here's yet another use of the 1-2-3 block. A magnet captured in stage grip tape (or whatever you use) . . . Will stick to the tablesaw top as a stand off block for cross cutting. I set the fence 3" longer than the desired length of the part and confidently cut away. The dummy part (v2 shown here) acts as a story stick. This dimension is the exact length of my stile for the sliding doors. I roughly set the adjustable stop block, dial it in and make the cuts for both doors. Ta-Da! I like doing things in a way that keep even me from screwing things up
    • I shared the build on Lumberjacks as someone was asking about blackening a finish. I hope you don’t mind me pimping the build/finish  to new woodworkers…
    • Here is the model that car was.  The front and everything else about it looked pretty awesome to me.  I will say it looked better in person than in these pictures.  It belonged to the young lady, probably in her 20's that works from home.  She was very obviously very intelligent. https://www.bmwusa.com/vehicles/all-electric/i7/sedan/overview.html?cid=GOOGLE_700000002949637_USBMW-24-016_ENG_FY24_FY_T1_EV_NA_I7_AO-GKL+Exact+Match_CV_GOOG_S-BD_0_0_i7+|+Base&tier=tier1&maco=national&ch=paid_search&veh=NA&gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwm5e5BhCWARIsANwm06hTpD_njcasGHGkR8717UgiZbpzk5z-ns1TfHO71JzkwOVXcuUUtRAaAh4QEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds I thought I was doing good having my 24th anniversary of not making a truck payment driving my 24 year old truck.
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