Dan's Hobbies » tablesaw

Featherboards Galore

Dan — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 04:50:57 +0000

Whats a new bandsaw good for you ask? Well its good for a lot of things, but one is making feather boards. I made the feather boards bellow out of some leftover willow I had laying around. They work on the router table, the tablesaw, and the bandsaw. O the joys of simple projects.

Raised dog dishes Pt. 5 & bad mojo

Dan — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 04:59:12 +0000

After Today, I think I’m going to avoid the shop for a few days. I have some bad mojo hanging over my head, because last night I did something I almost never do. I broke the cardinal rule of woodworking; measure twice, cut once. When I purchased the wood for this project, I picked up a beautiful 12″ wide board so I could make the top out of one piece. Last night, everything started out smoothly. I ripped the board to length, flattened it, and jointed an edge in short order. When it came time to rip it to width, I wasn’t paying attention, and read the fractional part of the measurement of the length line on my scratch pad. Thus I ripped it to 10-1/8″, instead of 10-11/16″.

Thankfully I had enough extra stock that I could fix the problem. Thus after much cursing & pouting, I fixed my blunder. I ripped the top into 2 narrow piece, and then added a 3rd board milled from the extra stock. While it doesn’t look that bad, it’s not as nice as it could have been.

Remember: measure twice, cut once.

A simple push stick

Dan — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:08:53 +0000

I’m in between big projects, so I’ve been keeping my self busy with little shop maintenance projects. Monday night I cleaned every saw blade I owned. While waiting for a particularly nasty blade to loosen up, I looked over at my saw and realized that I really didn’t like my push stick; so I decided to make a new one. After a little tinkering in Sketchup & an evening in the shop I came up with what you see below. It’s made from 3/4″ Baltic birch, and is roughly 15″ long by 8″ tall . I’ve played with it a little bit and I like it a lot better than my old one. The long base creates a large gripping surface, which does an excellent job of keeping the stock tight to the fence.

Router Table (Pt. 6)

Dan — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 18:54:29 +0000

Friday, I finished up the three bottom storage drawers. The drawer joinery, is another one of details that my design deviates significantly from Norms. For utility drawers like these, that aren’t going to see a lot of daily use I like to use dado & rabbet joints. They’re easy to make on the table saw, & provide a strong mechanical connection.

The following rendering shows a drawer constructed using this joinery method. The drawer sides have a dado cut into both ends, while the front & back have rabbets cut on their ends that fit into the side panel dados. The false front is glued onto the inner front panel.

Rendering of a drawer with a false front, that's held together with dado & rabbet joints.

The following shots show the steps I use to make drawers using dado & rabbet joinery. For reference, the drawer sides are 1/2″ ply, the bottom is 1/4″ ply, and the false front is 3/4″ ply. Before you start, one thing I recommend, is to place indicator marks on key faces. It’s really easy to get a board turned around and cut a rabbet or dado on the wrong side when your running a batch of boards. Indicator marks help prevent this, assuming you remember to pay attention. Trust me, I’ve learned this the hard way many times over.

Step 1 : Make a dado on the bottom inside edge of all the sides. Since I'm using plywood, I don't have to worry about wood movement.

Step 2 : Make dados on the inside ends of all the side boards. For a clean look make sure to cut the dados a little further back from the edge than needed, that way then can be planed or sanded flush with the front after glue-up.

Step 3 : Make rabbets on both the outside ends of the drawer fronts & backs. Since you cut the side dados first, you can sneak up on the rabbet width and thickness, and thus achieve an excellent fit.

Step 4 : Once the side joinery is complete, do a dry fit, and measure the exact length and width the drawer bottom needs to be.

Step 5 : The final step as always is glue up. I prefer to only apply glue to the dados because I get less squeeze out that way. Once the clamps are in place, set the drawers on a flat reference surface, and adjust the clamps as necessary to ensure the drawer sets flat.

Whats wrong with this picture ?

Dan — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 05:14:51 +0000

The following photo is a close up of the arbor on my 10″ Delta Contractors saw (model TS350). I purchased this saw new in 2004 at Lowe’s, and until today it’s done everything I’ve asked of it.

Give up? It’s not a consistent diameter, the threaded section is 0.610″, the non threaded section is 0.557″, & the standard mounting surface is 0.6245″ (what it should be). So what does that mean? Well that nice Freud dial a dado set I just purchased is essentially useless on this saw.