(Mis)Adventures In Dyeing

Posted Tue, 05/08/2012 - 14:40 by Benjamen Johnson

After watching this video about staining vs dyeing over at WoodWorkWeb, I decided to give dyeing wood a chance. After making a Peruvian walnut bracelet for my daughter, she wanted me to make her a pink one. I was dammed if I was going to paint something I turned in my shop pink. I had two other options: find a pink/red wood to use or dye a lighter color wood. So trying to increase my chances at success, last time I was at Rockler I picked up some cardinal red dye and some bloodwood as a backup plan. How hard could dying be? Read more »

Tools: mason jar

Tags: Rockler, WoodWorkWeb

Materials: Ash, distilled water, dye, maple, red oak

Making My Own Riving Knife

Posted Tue, 05/01/2012 - 14:57 by Benjamen Johnson

In February Tom Hintz of NewWoodworker.com posted an article with a video about kickback that got the woodworking community talking. In the video he pushed a board through his table saw without a riving knife and twisted it at the end of the cut. The board and push block flew out of his hands and his hand almost kissed the saw blade.

This really got my attention, I've been using my table saw without the factory guard since I got it because the guard is cumbersome and wasn't designed to be removed and replaced easily. I perform many different operations on my table saw and I really don't want to spend 10 minutes monkeying with the poorly designed guard. After seeing this video though, I started looking for a way to retrofit my DeWalt 744 with a riving knife. Read more »

Tools: bench grinder, file, jig saw, oscillating sander, table saw

Tags: Safety Week, Shark Guard

Materials: 12 ga steel, paste wax

Toy Car 3: Sports Theme

Posted Wed, 04/25/2012 - 14:02 by Benjamen Johnson

Click the picture to see gallery

I planned on making another toy car for my nephew and I wanted it to be different. My brother-in-law loves the Vikings, so by default his children do too, and the Vikings colors are purple and gold.  I figured I'd make a car out of yellow and purple heartwood. Purple heartwood is a favorite contrast wood of many woodworkers because of its deep purple color after it has been exposed to air a few days (it's brown when you first cut it). Supposedly if you don't seal it it eventually turns brown again, but I've had some purple heart in my shop for years that is still purple. Yellow heart might be less familiar, but it has a very even yellow color and smells bad when you cut it. I thought these two woods would contrast well. Read more »

Tools: drill press, hole saw, router table, scroll saw, table saw

Tags: toys

Materials: purple heartwood, two-part epoxy, urethane, wood glue, yellow heartwood

Lathe Tool Handle

Posted Fri, 04/20/2012 - 19:13 by Benjamen Johnson

Before I bought my lathe, I made a deal with a friend that if he made me some insert turning tool shafts, I'd give him the free bed extension that came with the lathe. He had access to tool steel and a metal shop and I really didn't see myself turning anything longer than 17" -- so it was a good deal for both of us. Read more »

Tools: lathe

Materials: Ash

Table Saw Fence Update

Posted Thu, 04/19/2012 - 15:14 by Benjamen Johnson

Yesterday I went to make some cuts with the new auxiliary fence on my table saw and noticed when I set the fence 1-1/2" away from the blade the scale read 2-1/4". Oops, I forgot to reset the scale. I was all prepared to drill some new holes for the scale indicator, but luckily DeWalt must have foreseen the possibility of people adding an auxiliary fence, because the scale marker can be moved by about an inch.

Related Posts

Tools: table saw

Tags: DeWalt

Tops, Three Different Ones

Posted Wed, 04/18/2012 - 18:56 by Benjamen Johnson

I was watching a video by George Vondriska about using CA for turning and saw him turning a top on the lathe. I thought this would be a cool project to try. So the other day when I cut some blanks out of 8/4 ash for some handles, I cut an extra square blank for turning tops. The one on the left was my first attempt. I think I made it a little too top heavy. The one on the right was my second and best performing attempt. After the first two tops, I tried getting a little fancier, but this top didn't spin nearly as well as the second one. I think I took off too much material from the middle. Read more »

Tools: lathe

Materials: Ash

Fixing The Bow In My Table Saw Fence

Posted Tue, 04/17/2012 - 15:15 by Benjamen Johnson

For a while I've noticed that when I rip a clean edge on my table saw and put it up against my fence, there's a gap between the board and the fence. I'll take a square to the edge and find out it's perfectly square, shrug my shoulders, and continue what I was doing.

This happened again a few days ago, so this time I put the square against the fence and found that it was bowed -- see the above picture. The fence is a piece of extruded aluminum between two mounting brackets, so trying to replace it was out of the question. What I needed to do was find a way to mount an auxiliary fence to the aluminum fence without getting in the way of normal operations. I had just the answer: T- slots. Read more »

Tools: router table, T-slot router bit, table saw

Materials: MDF, T-bolt

What To Do With Circle Scraps

Posted Mon, 04/16/2012 - 15:05 by Benjamen Johnson

I've been cutting some circles on the scroll saw for a few other projects and have a bunch of scraps left over. Now I have a hard time throwing away any wood thats larger than a toothpick, but I really couldn't see that I could do much with these scraps -- that is until I had an idea. I use 45° cut-offs all the time for marking angles and setting up cuts, but what about keeping some other common angle cut-offs. For instance, just the other day I really needed a 60° triangle and had to make do with a protractor instead. Read more »

Tools: miter saw, scroll saw

Materials: Baltic birch plywood

Homemade Dowel Cutter

Posted Tue, 04/10/2012 - 17:55 by Benjamen Johnson

A few weeks ago, over on G+ Matt Ricketts posted a dowel cutter he made. This was a timely post for me because I was looking to make a few purple heartwood dowels for a toy car I'm in the process of finishing. His dowel cutter was a series of holes drilled into a piece of steel and "teeth" cut with a dremel. To make a dowel you simply chuck some square stock into a drill and push it through the hole. I decided to try building my own.

Building the jig is simple, so I won't go into any more detail of the construction than I show in the slideshow. What I will share are some tips I found to get better results. Read more »

Tools: dremel, drill press, hand drill, miter sled

Materials: maple, purple heartwood, steel, yellow heartwood

Finishing Turntable

Posted Wed, 04/04/2012 - 18:21 by Benjamen Johnson

In a recent issue of the Highland Woodturner, Curtis Turner (what are the odds?) showed how to make a simple spray painting turntable out of MDF and some dowels. I thought, "hmm, that would beat the heck out of some nails pounded into a board that I usually end up cobbling together whenever I need something like that." Plus I figured I had an extra lazy Susan bearing I had purchased for my tablet holder which I didn't end up using.

I started by tracing 8" and 12" circles on some scrap MDF with a compass, I chose these two dimensions based on the size of the scrap I had available. Then on the 12" circle, I drew concentric circles of 10", 8", 6", etc to aid in placing the holes. To finish locating the holes, I drew two perpendicular lines through the center. Later, when I figured I needed more holes, I drew more lines at 45°. Read more »

Tools: drill press, oscillating sander, scroll saw

Tags: finishing

Materials: dowel, MDF