Woodworking

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Yes. Grew up having one around. Dad was an old time pattern maker and always had a shop going at home when I was a wee squirt.
 
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  • #32
We had ours well over 20 years. I remember having to change the belt(s?) in it once...still worked when we gave it away or sold it (don't recall).
 
I had a chance to buy an older Shopsmith once but the guy backed out .Instead I bought a 4HP 12" direct drive cast iron top table saw with more value in cutters ,shaper heads ,dado blades and Freud blades than what I paid for the saw

Circa 1968 Craftsman that sold new for $1800 ,set me back $600 for the whole lot .Some of those blades retailed for over 100 a pop .Right place ,right time ----
It's not an Oliver but does pretty good for what it is .
 
image.jpg image.jpg image.jpg I've been doing woodworking to keep myself occupied. Here is my latest project. The slabs came from Stephen and Rob.
 
Jay, do tell.

I might find time this year for wood working. My employee ID supposed to get his mill up here in spring.
 
Long edge joints like with slabs, first thing is you want the wood to be dry, or about as low a moisture content as your area will allow. There's kiln and natural air drying. I think preferences and some disadvantages with both ways, but that's a slightly different topic than edge gluing, so just be sure you are dealing with seasoned wood. Otherwise, no matter how good a joint you have, as the wood needs to much continue to dry, it will split at the ends where the joint is. A shame to have a nice tight joint that opens up. With not properly dried wood, end checking can be prevalent as well.

Edge jointing so there is a minimal glue line and for strength so it doesn't pop apart, requires both edges to be really flat with no high spots between the ends, whether you do that on a jointer, tablesaw, or planing by hand. High spots between the ends increase the tendency for the joint to open up. Glues are strong nowadays, but no glue is stronger than thick wood that wants to pull apart. Slightly sprung so the wood has a very slight gap in the middle decreasing outwards, and is full sitting on the very ends is actually the ideal, because when you clamp it together, it pulls the ends even tighter together which adds some strength there, the most vulnerable point of failure from wood movement.

After your jointing method, place the edges together sitting up on one outside edge on your bench. You can check for high spots by gently pivoting the top board on the lower one and it will tell you how the wood edges are meeting. Do that from both ends, and you can exert slight hand pressure at the top middle of the top board to steady things and not have the top board fall off. You can also check for rocking to see if where the wood is sitting faces are all meeting evenly. Ideally the edges should be stable with no rock, but invariably you will get a little or a lot of that with long glue ups, because either your jointing method was faulty, or one or both boards have some twist in them. When there is twist and the meeting faces rock, when you pull everything together the unevenness will twist the surface out of being plane. You can use a little rocking to you advantage though, because if there is twist, some rocking in the opposite way from the twist will correct the twist over the entire wide surface when you glue together. It's a somewhat advanced technique, but it does save the trouble of taking twist out of a glued up wide surface with a plane or sander. That's not a problem if the degree of discrepancy from flat is minimal and you have the wood thickness to work with, but twist as reflected from where edges meet can really make for cupping and reverse on the other side when you get the whole thing glued up. You'll end up having to take off a lot of wood all around to make flat and end up with the same thickness everywhere. Also, when you have the boards sitting together up on edge, take a long straight edge and make sure the top board isn't leaning away to one side or another from the lower one, or you will have to correct that by affecting an edge to bring things back up to square before gluing up. That happens when there is twist in the boards and they meet at the edge, things get whacked out. Precise machining in woodwork really makes life easier, if set up to do it.

Woodworking is a multi-stage process, and the secret to coming out with a well done thing at the end, is having each step along the way done with as much exactitude as you can. Problems progressively accumulate if you don't. If the outside edges of the boards are natural edges like on Steve's nice table, obviously you can't check how the glue edges will meet by having the boards sitting up together on your bench, so you'll have to figure it out by laying flat, a bit harder to see and determine, or jury rig something up so the lower board can sit up on it's outside edge and you can place the other board on top of it. Whatever you do, make sure the ends touch solid with no gap there. Three board or more glue ups are exactly the same process per each meeting board edge, whether you do it and glue up in stages, or glue the whole thing together at the same time. If you get each edge flat and true, the whole surface will be when put together, or close to it.

When you do get to gluing up slabs or whatever where it's a long joint, alternate your clamps from one side to another to try and keep the surface flat, Check with a straight edge over the width at various points, If the surface isn't flat at various points, make up some large wooden wedges with a sharp leading edge, and bang them under the clamp bar at the joints at the convex side of the irregularity, and it will push the surface up to being flat how you want it until the glue dries. Verify with a straight edge. That's a simple but cool trick that not many know.

Biscuit joiners are really great for holding together edge joints, and for giving alignment when gluing up. Indispensable really if you are doing a lot of it. The old way was using dowels or having a spline, but the biscuit method is very quick and easy.

If some or all :lol: of this is confusing, I'll be happy to try and clarify. Oh yeah, make sure you get everything pulled up tight and out of sight before the glue sets up, or it's crying time.
 
Thanks Jay. I got the slabs a little over a year ago from Stephen and Rob. I stickered them here in Vegas in the back yard. Don't know if they are totally dry or not. The glue up went really good, I put about a dozen dowels in it to align things. I would have alternated the clamps but they wouldn't reach the angled edge from the bottom side. So you can see I clamped them up to the bars and I also put a couple of cauls on it after I took the picture. It came out really straight from all that with no twist. I jointed it with my jointer and as I didn't have a assembly table long enough to check the straightness I put the edges together for a dry fit to see if I had any gaps. The knots had really cracked big and I had some big missing parts of the knots. Filled those with clear epoxy. It was my first time with the through mortise and tenon with a key so I had to practice that on some scraps, also my first time using dutchmen and so I had to practice with that a few times also. Trying to sell it now. That seems to be the hard part of this stuff.
 
Sounds really good, Steve. Edge joining is tricky, you did a good job. As you mention, the angled natural edges does make for some extra difficulty gluing up. You got it covered though. They make double bar clamps where there are bars on each side of the surface being glued up. It does make for a bit easier, and with the angled edges, putting in an angled block where the clamp ends meet the edges, with the double bars it won't slide away. You can bang in those wooden edges from either side to flatten the surface. Yeah, selling, not much the fun part. There is a market for your table though, lots of people would be very pleased to own it.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...table_clamps_53_double_clamp_fixture_for.html
 
I actually sold the table for $1400 to my Sister and BIL. They have a cabin in Strawberry and want it for it. I'm supposed to deliver it, but there is snow there all next week and they are a little off the main road. I'm giving the slabs i got from you Willie another year drying. I checked on them a couple of weeks ago. The top one is a little cupped but the rest of them are straight.
 
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