Cordless Circular Saws (Woodworking.com)
If you are wondering if cordless circular saws are ready for prime time, this was a pretty good conversation. The opening round came from a woodworker who built bookshelves from ¾" plywood and wondered if any of the saws out there could handle it.

A lot of brand names got tossed around and a couple did not get good reviews. The ones that got thumbs-up from different people were: DeWalt, Porter-Cable and Panasonic. More interesting were the different thicknesses of plywood that people said the cordless saw could cut. One person, who didn't recommend the saw he bought, said 5/8" was a struggle. Another thought that ¾" was asking a lot from a cordless saw.

One participant, however, said ¾" shouldn't bog down a cordless saw and someone else mentioned that He could get more than 50 lineal feet of cutting from his saw, but didn't mention how thick the ply was. Finally, one woodworker claimed that there was a night-and-day difference between the 18 volt saw and the 14 volt saw the first woodworker was considering.

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Lessons Learned (Rec.woodworking)

It's always nice to know that when you really screw something up, you're not necessarily alone. That's why this list of lessons learned caught our attention. Clearly the woodworker in question was having a bad day.

1. When drilling a block to store your router bits, don't be a cheap [expletive deleted] and use framing lumber.

2. When drilling a block for said router bits, allow more than a hair of
clearance.

3. When moving your workshop from the basement to the garage, remember that the garage is more humid. The swelling will lock your router bits to the block.

4. Sawing and chiseling a block to free your locked-in router bits is wasted
time that could better be used destroying other projects.

5. Even desperation and lack of decent supplies is not an acceptable excuse
for using your good drill bits and sole countersink bit to prepare your router
mounting plate (1/4" steel). Steel is very hard on bits.

6. When purchasing a router or any other equipment, check all the screws and
tapholes. Metric fasteners are [difficult] to find.

7. One's spouse does NOT like to be awakened by the sound of a drill press going
through a steel plate.

Well, those are all good lessons. One helpful participant wrote that he always puts a little 3-in-1 oil in the holes of his router blocks so they won't get stuck. That raised the concern that it would make the router bits slip but apparently that wasn't the case. Finally one woodworker joined the fray with his list of lessons, all of them considerably more painful. Over the course of a year, he ground off some fingertips with his jointer, lost some more fingertips with a round-over bit in his router and took out a chunk of his thumbnail on his table saw. He now has a complete selection of push sticks, featherboards, holddowns and jigs. Some lessons are learned the hard way.

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Work Arounds (Woodnet)

Ok, you've got to accomplish a project and you just don't have the tools, the budget to buy the tools or the time to go get them. Unless you are Norm, you've probably all been in that position at least twice a week. This guy wants to do some glue up for some legs on a project. He can't get a good glue line and doesn't have a jointer, a planer or any skills with his hand planes. So what does he do?

 

Here's a list of suggestions:

Then, of course, someone mentioned that jointers aren't that necessary and that touched off a bit of controversy, but the jointer and anti-jointer factions have already been well documented in the last issue of the eZine.

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Walnut (WoodCentral)

When we were talking with Tom Hutchinson for Tool Maker Insider this week, he mentioned this guy he really admired who knew a ton of stuff about wood. In fact, this expert had just helped put together a great book on the different useful woods in the world. Tom said his name was Jon Arno, which was quite a coincidence when we looked over this conversation about different kinds of walnut, because Jon got mixed up in it.

The original woodworker wondered aloud what the difference was between walnut and black walnut. No difference, were the first responses, explaining that they are one and the same. The guy who posted the question also wondered about all the heartwood in the walnut trees in his orchard, but thought it was because they got more water and were more carefully tended than wild walnut.

Then Jon joined the conversation, explaining that orchard walnut trees, i.e. trees raised to yield nuts, were more likely European walnut trees that had been grafted to native black walnut roots. The European walnut, he explained, is lighter in color and softer but still great for cabinetwork.

The first woodworker got back on and said they were grafted trees and he was having a heck of a time turning them into lumber because he was losing band saw blades on nails and spikes driven into the trees. He mentioned getting a metal detector and a moisture meter.

Jon expressed sympathy, especially since the trunks of the trees are the best for woodworking because the graft between the native walnut and European walnut created beautifully figured wood called claro walnut. He also wrote, "Never owned a moisture meter. I operate on the axiom that it can't get too dry. I've left lumber sticker stacked for literally years."

"I think the claro walnut is why I persist in milling these logs," the original woodworker wrote. "I may have to cut around an occasional nail, but 75 or 80% of the log is useable." Sounds like he will have some interesting lumber in a couple of years.

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Mortising Help (Woodworking.com)
Many of us still cut mortises with a router, some chisels and a prayer to St. Norm. You certainly don't see a lot of people insisting that a mortiser is an essential tool in a woodshop. Nevertheless, people that have a dedicated mortiser swear by them. In this discussion, one woodworker wants to improve the design of her mortiser and asks for help. She's trying to find a way clamp stock firmly in place while she cuts the mortise and isn't sure how. She also wants to take the small base off her new JET mortiser and put something bigger on it.