Planer Videos

So I'm on Amazon.com, drooling over tools and I add a planer to my shopping cart. I just can't pull the trigger. I step out to the garage for a moment and come back to find my wife ordering it for me. I love that woman. www.evolvingworkshop.com

This will be the first of who knows how many episodes detailing the build of my new Roubo workbench. Today I detail my ideas for the design, and walk you through the initial milling of several hundred pounds of ash.

Erik and I had the opportunity to have a great conversation with Marc Spagnuolo, of The Wood Whisperer, about his woodowrking background, his company, and generally anything that crossed our minds. Marc was a great guest and even recorded the conversation for us due to our technical difficulties. Thanks Marc!!!

Rick and Erik wrap up their conversation on beginners' impovs and substituions.Also, we are looking for guests on the show to talk about their experiences as beginners in woodworking. Even if you have been doing it for a long time, we'd love to have you on the show.

Our Veterans, Where are They? As a few of you already know, I went to my first woodworker's club meeting last week. It was great! Although I was probably one of only two people there that were born anywhere near or after the 1970's, I still had a great time. In fact, looking at the crowd that was there (probably over 150 people), I was wondering where all of these woodworkers hiding? Why don't we hear from them in our digital woodworking community? Router Cabinet Design? I just saw a maple base cabinet come up in my neighbor's trash. This cabinet has a nice drawer on top of the door - you know, like a kitchen floor cabinet would. I was thinking about picking it up and using it for that router table that I so despirately need. But then I was thinking, 'Hey, why doesn't someone make a router cabinet that is one giant drawer?' Then you could change the sawdust bag easily and change the bit easily. I don't know if that's something that everyone is looking for, but that's the first thing I thought of. Too bad I don't have room in the garage for a cabinet, or I'd have picked it up. My First Box This weekend I built my wife a box. This was my first box, but even without taking any measurements at all, I was able to make it completely square with an inlay and miter keys. Take a look here and let me know what you think.

Fox Valley Woodworking Club Meeting I had another woodworking club meeting last week. This one's content may not have been as exciting for me as the previous one, but I did get some very valuable time with the club's vice president. The club president is out of the country, on business, but the VP and I agreed to sit down with the pres. when he's back, to discuss ways to get the younger generation more involved in the hobby/craft. What I Learned This Week Something that may be obvious to some, others may have learned it simply by occurance, but I really didn't expect this to happen. What I found was that wood residue stays on blades. Like I said, it may have been obvious... Walnut and Purpleheart getting 'smeared' on the faces of maple boards. What am I reading now? Box by Box by Popular Woodworking. I picked it up last night and am already getting some great ideas. Bridge City Toolworks CT15 Stainless Steel bevel angle tool for the small price of $289! Compare that to the bevel angle tool I almost picked up at Woodcraft last night for $16.99. Local (to me) woodworker's blog 'Spackle & Sawdust' by Patrick Jaromin At least he's local to me. Less than 5 miles from my house is local, right? Coming to grips with replication Well, it looks like Wendell Castle has already done something very similar to what I wanted to create. Lately I've been calling it the 'Dali Table' because it reminded me of Dali's melting clocks. Not that it was going to have anything to do with a clock, but that I wanted the table to look like it was melting - liquid. Well, I went on over to Wendell Castle's website and took a look at some of his desks and tables, and was really surprised to see an almost complete replication (if you can call it that, since he did it first) of what I wanted to do. The proportions of certain features of his 'Table with Leg' aren't what I had imagined, but it was so similar, I almost don't want to make the table now. Am I being a baby about this? I emailed back and forth with Neil Lamens, over at Furnitology, about this and he had some very interesting things to say about it. Castle's sculpture background firmly planted him in Art, and thus he creates/created furniture as art. While the rest of us create, mostly, for use and if we can make it look art-like, well, all the better. A little bit on Safety This past week Kaytrim (aka) pointed the 'Twitter Crowd' to a LumberJocks discussion topicon workshop safety. Please be careful when bare handing wood with power tools! The Sawdust Chronicles is available! Erik Pearson and I are now recording episodes of The Sawdsut Chronicles, a podcast for beginning woodworkers, by beginning woodworkers. Our aim: help newbies understand craft terminology and techniques, make the craft less ambiguous and intimidating.

Links Drying Times Document Fine Woodworking Index CD Fine Woodworking Content CD What I learned this week... I love the Bandsaw!!! Mark your waste. Don't look like an idiot. Newbies don't know scrap!

When last we left him, Rick Waters, aka 'Splintered Board' ? the self described 'Woodworker Un-extraordinaire' ? was about to continue his project in completing the most difficult, most dangerous, possibly the most disgusting project of his woodworking career ? the Baby Diaper Changing Table. Said table has quickly and rightly become Splintered Board's nemesis. With such heinous acts against the woodworker as: repeatedly demanding more and more wood; requiring many extra hours of design; consistently jamming up an 18" thickness planer; having so many pieces that the woodworker can't possibly keep track of them all; weighing so much that the constant shuttling back and forth to the school woodshop is breaking the woodworker's back ? this table has now resorted to pulling out the big guns. It has now called in the woodworker's wife to comment on the lack of progress! Splintered Board has no choice, this table is going down! Meanwhile, locked away in the bowels of the 'Mancave of Sawdust', Splintered Board tackles another project. This first commission (pro bono, naturally) proves to be no challenge for Rick's fledgling skills. And if that's not enough, in this episode, your hero, Splintered Board will share a tip on wood identification, some anecdotal information about a pen-turner, and the possible future of THE SPLINTERED BOARD PODCAST! Thanks, Greg, for the great intro!!! Links for this episode: Please take a few minutes to fill out this quick survey! Check out this ToolMonger blog entry on the Angle Ease. Please visit Greg Crites' website VeinArmor.com If anyone can help identifying this type of wood, please let me know.

A Bone To Pick With Home Depot I?ve got a bone to pick with Home Depot. In a neighboring town, less than 5 minutes from my house, we have a Home Depot and a Lowes in adjacent parking lots. While Lowes is not really harder to get to than HD, I choose to go to HD because I find more of a selection of products ? even if the average knowledge of the typical employee has diminished greatly over the past 5 years. If I shop there so much, what problem could I have with them? Well, it?s like this. As many of you know, I?ve been chomping at the bit to buy either a joiner or a thickness planer. I?ve decided to buy both. I received many HD gift cards (by request) for my birthday and Father?s Day, plus I have a $10 off coupon for large purchases, plus if you use your HD credit card for purchases over $299, there?s no payments/no finance charges for 12 months. Still all good things right? Wrong! Let me show you what my problem is. Go to Home Depot?s website, go ahead, I?ll wait. OK, now search for ?joiner?. The Rigid 6 1/8? stationary joiner/planer comes up as one of the first items. Mine says that this item is ?Online Only?. No big problem right? I?m online anyway, and it?s free shipping, so why not order it online? Go through all of the mess of checking out, but don?t actually buy it. That would be silly. Extremely silly. Because, hey! What about those gift cards? Can?t I use them for this purchase? I?m gonna cut through the BS that I had to go through to find out the answer and just tell you how it is. The way HD works is that the stores have whatever merchandise they have. They can order whatever merchandise they are out of. But when it comes to items that are on their own website that say ?Online Only?, that is a different story. The website ?Online Only? items belong to HD?s ?warehouse? and cannot be sold in stores or ordered to be sent to a store so you can use your HD gift cards on them. I couldn?t believe it ? still can?t ? but it?s true, apparently. So in this age of the ubiquity of ubiquity, or maybe as Dave Noftz would say ?ubiquityness?, where all information is ever-available, where anything for sale can be bought from anywhere and have it sent anywhere, where damn near everything for sale can be purchased with a gift card, gift certificate, or other newer mode of alternative payment, why is it that I can?t just use my HD gift cards to purchase something from HD? I?m still going to buy my joiner from HD, but it may be that last purchase I make there. Just as my wife almost chokes over saying the word ?Target? now, let alone shopping there anymore due to a dispute over their new return policy. I?m not trying to threaten HD, it?s not like they would even care if they lost one customer ? even if that customer has pumped close to $10,000 into their cash registers in the past 18 months. But, they might want to reconsider their online payment options. So, the short of it is that you will probably be hearing me mention Lowes a lot more often now, instead of HD.

Music in this episode by: Kelly Dean Zoe Keating Rubber Band Banjo The Jointer Has Landed! Notes on Jointer setup: 1) I've heard the jointer referred to, in the reviews section of HD's website, as mislabeled as jointer, when it should have been labeled 'Box of grease. Jointer included.' Well, I would label it as 'Hernia in a box' or 'Be-careful-not-to-break-your-back-or-crush-your-hands-or-feet-while-offloading-this-from-your-car' 2) The instructions were written by someone who meant well. But they really should have done some proof-reading. The instructions often include 'as shown in illustration' when it was definitely not shown in the illustration provided. 3) The setup, at least when dealing with the motor installation, should be simplified - drastically. There's not much worse than to install a heavy motor on an angled piece of metal, strap a heavy belt to it, then told to pull the motor along the angled mount until the belt it tight enough, then tighten the bolts. Picture this for a minute. That's about the most idiotic thing in the world. I had to rig up a system of clamps to get the motor to stay in position while I tightened the bolts. Truly not an ideal setup. To Ridgid's credit, there was an optional way to do it. The way I did it was to have the assembly upside down. Which is how the assembly already was positioned from the previous steps. The other option was to upright the assembly and have gravity pull the motor into place. The last thing I wanted was to have the motor fall into place, and then land on my face when I was under the thing trying to pull on it and tighten the bolts! 4) I think it's just absolutely awesome that they included two angle mounts that, when used together, form a cross that sits on the bed and helps you to angle the fence for beveled cuts. What I think is just down right lame is that there are two of these guides and only room to store one of them on the jointer's frame! Woodworking in America Woohoo! Woodworking in America is coming! Woodworking in America is coming! Aww, crap! I'm booked solid in November! JK Surprisingly enough, I'm not kidding when I say that I'm trying to schedule going golfing with my friend, but we're already looking at the middle of August! Sheesh! My schedule never used to get filled up that fast before I was married... Alas, not going. I do have a very special announcement to make right that will take place right around that time. But I won't be making that announcement for a few weeks. (Muhahaha, let the anticipation build!) It'll keep me away from joining everyone this year, but I hope to go to some large woodworking events next year. Just like I joined my local Woodworkers Club (Fox Valley Wood Workers Club), but haven't been able to make it to a single meeting yet (I've missed 2 and will miss a third tonight), mostly due to the woodworking class I'm taking. But anyway, I just wanted to let you all know that I'd love to join you all and meet you face to face, but I think it's going to have to wait. Shame to, it's in Kentucky. Though I can't stand Kentucky (no offense to you Kentuckyans, I've just had a lot of bad experiences there), it's not that far of a drive... Class This Week OK, this was the first REAL week for my woodworking class. The first two weeks were familiarity with the machines, the third week we had no class because the instructor was out of town. Now this week, we started our projects. Remember the first junior high dance you went to? Where all of the guys were on one side of the gym and the girls on the other. A lot of people standing around looking at each other, the floor, their hands, waiting to see who would be the first one to 'make a move'. Remember that? That was tonight at class. At least, that was the first 5 minutes of class. Then everyone jumped into action. Sorry, but it wasn't me that made the first move. It was the captain of the football team. Damn! He always has more guts than me. No, no, it wasn't like that. I was, um... sorting... out... my wood! Yeah, that's it, I was lining it all up so that it looked like I knew what I was doing. Aww, what do I care? No one's looking at me. Well, except the cute girl in class. Sheesh! Who am I kidding? She's not that cute. OK, let's ditch the high school mental reunion! I jumped right in jointing the edges of my boards, then thickness planing them as well as I could. It turns out that most of the boards have cupped and twisted in the past 7 weeks, or so, since they've been sitting in the garage. Go figure.

www.shopsmithacademy.com presents "Seeting Planer Knives. Author/craftsman Nick Engler shows how to remove, replace, and set the height of the knives in the Shopsmith Thickness Planer.

Noise in the Workshop. This is part of Safety Week 2008, and is a brief discussion about the noise produced by different machines in the workshop.

Starring Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson and Nigel Planer (but not Christopher Ryan), this performance sees the lads perform a hilarious rendition of the Who classic.

Dressing Timber. In this episode, we are having a look at dressing timber so that it is flat/straight and square, ready for a project. In this case, we are using some reclaimed Jarrah from an old deck, but the principle is the same if you are preparing timber that is DAR (dressed all round) from a timber yard, or hardware supply shop, or even if you have prepared your own board from raw timber.DAR stock can still have warps, cupping and twists, so it is definitely beneficial to go through the motions of actually dressing the timber yourself to ensure it really is straight and true (and square!).The two units used here are the Jet 6" deluxe longbed planer (jointer in the US), and then the Triton 15" Thicknesser (planer in the US).