I recently upgraded from my 14 inch Delta 1HP bandsaw. I was originally considering an 18 inch bandsaw until I heard about the Powermatic offering. I liked the idea of the resaw capacity of a larger bandsaw, but the compactness of this 15 inch.

The two bandsaws are shown side-by-side, and then I show the various features of the new saw. There’s a lot to like about this new Powermatic offering, but I also don’t shy away from showing some of the negatives.

Many of the portable power tools that I purchase come in a tool case. The tool manufacturers presume that I’ll be taking the tools on the road. A reasonable assumption for many. But my tools are used near 100 percent in my workshop. Sometimes they venture into my house, but I don’t need the case for those instances.

In this video I offer a reason for throwing the tool cases away and creating custom workshop storage to better utilize the prize (i.e., limited) shop space. I show how I’ve converted two large drawers into organized storage space for some of my tools.

Awhile back I finally got around to making a compact storage box that can hold 16 saw blades.

This video shows the box as I describe its construction and use:

So I finally decided to make a purpose built box to store it in. Due to the awkward nature of the components that make up a tenon jig, there ends up being a lot of unused space in such a box. To take advantage of this wasted space, I added some built-ins to store some additional tools within the box.

Here’s a short video that guides you through the box:

I was preparing to locate some of my push blocks and feather boards in a drawer when it occurred to me that there was space on my overhead blade guard arm for a storage container. Rather than putting these items in a drawer, which would take more effort to access, I instead built this storage tray.

Here is a short video that provides an overview of the tray.

I built this with available supplies that I had on hand. The bottom is made from 1/2 inch plywood and the rest is built with 1/8 inch MDF. Since the tray isn’t very large and everything is attached with a combination of glue and pins (using my pin nailer), it’s very rigid. If I used plywood for all of the construction, the unit would have weighed much more than it does.

Since the plywood had some slight warp, I decided to attach 1-1/2 inch strips of plywood along the bottom. This made for a very rigid structure and made the plywood absolutely flat. I attached the strips using biscuits, more for their alignment ability than any strength that they provide.

With the foundation of the tray built, it was time to attach the feet to the bottom of the tray. These were cut from some 1 inch poplar.

I then took them to the drill press to cut part of a circle on each piece The curve will be the part that rests on the 2 inch tube of the tablesaw overhead support.

I cut the corners off to give them a little flare.

And after adding a chamfer on all of the edges, the supports were finished

I simply glued the pieces to the underside of the tray. Even for shop stuff, I like symmetry in all that I do. As shown here, I used a couple pieces of wood to act as spacers while I positioned the clamps. Using spacers guarantees that both supports will be located the same distance from the edges of the tray.

The tray is attached to the overhead arm with some pipe clamps that I spray painted with flat black paint. I also painted the lag bolts.

In preparation for installing the tray, I drilled the four holes in the supports and pre-tapped them by inserting and removing a lag screw.

Now it was on to cutting and installing all of the 1/8 inch MDF side pieces. They’re attached with glue and my pin nailer.

I know, it’s heresy to use a plane on MDF (or plywood), but I use a block plane for this all of the time (the blade is easy enough to sharpen). Here I’m taking the edge off of all the MDF pieces.

On to the rectangular resting places for my two shop made feather boards. This area was built-up with a bunch of small 1/4 inch pieces of MDF, glued and pin nailed.

Here’s how the feather boards will be stored

Now I install the bits of MDF that surround the rectangular recesses

Finally, I made this attachment that will take four dowels. The dowels are angled at 35 degrees so that when the tray is attached to the tablesaw, at a 25 degree slope, the dowels will still have a bit of an uphill tilt, helping to prevent the other feather boards from sliding off.

Here I’m gluing the block to the front of the tray. The 1/4 inch piece of MDF with the two clamps is only serving as a stop to hold the block in position while I glue and nail it in place.

Here’s the tray, nearly complete, with a test dowel in place.

Finally, I fill all of the small holes from the pin nailer.

Three coats of flat black (to match the other components of my tablesaw) were applied to all of the surfaces.

Then I cut the four dowels and chamfered their ends with a file

And here’s the final product, installed, stocked, and ready for use

Shelving, drawer fronts, utility cabinet tops. These are typical items that get built with plywood or other sheet goods such as melamine. The convenience of using sheet goods is great, but one downside is that quite often one or more of the edges must be covered. In this post I explain the process that I follow to apply hardwood edging to sheet goods. In this case I am covering the edges of melamine drawer fronts with poplar.

This video shows me going through the process described here. Also, see my related video on flush trimming faceframes to cabinet sides.

Whichever type of edging that you chose, dimension it to be approximately 1/4 inch thicker than the thickness of the sheet goods that you are using. My drawer fronts are made from 1/2 inch melamine, so I sliced off 1/4 inch pieces from 3/4 inch thick poplar stock.

You want the edging to be thicker than the sheet goods so that after the edging is applied it can be flush trimmed to the surface of the sheet goods. It would be near impossible to align edging that is the same thickness as the sheet goods.

Glue-Up Preparation – thinking not allowed

I always do a dry run of my glue-up, regardless of the apparent simplicity of the items to be glued. I don’t want to be in the middle of the glue-up to find out that the clamp I was depending on was broken, or couldn’t be found. And often you don’t realize all of the cauls, clamps, jigs, etc. that will be needed until you actually do the glue-up (or dry run).

After the glue leaves the bottle the time is counting down, and that’s not the time to be thinking about solutions to problems that might arise. So I try and simplify the process so that all I have to do is spread the glue and crank the clamp.

In this case, I need to be assured that the edging is overhanging both sides of the drawer front. If I were to just apply the glue and manually position the edging so that ~1/8 inch overhangs on both sides, that positioning would last for about 5 seconds. We know how slippery wood gets once the glue is applied.

I place a couple pieces of 1/8 inch thick spacer material on my table and then lay the drawer front on top. Then when I place the edging against the melamine there is a ~1/8 inch overhang on the top and bottom. But now I need a way to maintain this spacing as I manipulate the panel during the glue-up. What I do is nail three very small brads into each edge of the melamine.

Using a heavy duty wire cutter I clip the heads off each nail, leaving ~1/8 inch protruding from the melamine.

I then press the edging into the brads thereby registering it just where I want it to be (1/8 inch above and below the panel).

After aligning both pieces of the edging, I mark their length and cut them to size. In this case I used a hand saw because I didn’t want to fill the shop with unnecessary sawdust, and it’s soothing to do so.

During my dry run I realized that I needed to raise the panel so that it would be centered within the cauls. I did this by stacking some scrap on the bench. This stack became my calibrated stack for all of the subsequent panels.

The glue is applied and the clamps are doing their thing. This will sit for about an hour before I move to the router table.

Flush Trimming at the Router Table

I cut a piece of 1/4 inch MDF that is narrow enough to allow the panel to slide over it – the MDF rides between the edging that is glued to the panel.

A mortising bit (not a straight bit) is installed in the router and its height is set ever so slightly below the surface of the melamine. Then the router table fence is adjusted to prevent the bit from touching the melamine – insurance in case some instability in the various materials allows the bit to enter the plane of the melamine surface. With the fence set properly the worst that can happen is a small dip in the edging. The melamine surface can never be disturbed.

Hopefully these pictures capture what I’ve written above. It’s also discussed in the video.

Before flush trimming the edging, I run each edge (four times for these two pieces of edging) across the router bit using a climb cut. This substantially reduces any chance of tear out, and is safe to do (in my opinion) when such small amounts of material is being removed with such a large panel. There’s zero sensation of the panel wanting to be pulled from my hands.

Here you can see the edging after the climb cut.

After all four surfaces of the two edgings are flush trimmed, I take the panel to my table saw and cut them to final length (minus the width of the two edgings that will be applied – 1/2 inch in this case).

This guarantees that the edges of the melamine and end grain of the applied edging are perfectly flush. The last two pieces can then be glued to the panel following the same process used for the first two pieces.

Here I’m applying the edging to the ends of the panel, and gluing them in place.

After these pieces dry I flush trim them at the router table just as I did with the first two pieces. Then it’s just a matter of sawing off the ends of the edging and planing them smooth.

And here is the final result. Perfectly flush edging with no damage to the melamine. I’ll do some light sanding and then apply my finish.

I’m in the process of building a handful of large cabinet drawers for some existing shop cabinets that I built some years ago. When I was at my local hardwood & sheet goods dealer, looking for some nice 1/2 inch hardwood plywood, I saw that they had some imported maple. I learned that it was Chinese, and everyone in the shop let me know where my expectations should be. It’s good to know it’s not being pushed as viable alternatives for the home grown stuff.

At first I was going to buy Baltic Birch, but they are no longer stocking B/BB grade (one good surface, one with the football patches). Apparently this grade is getting too expensive, so all the local dealers around me (Southern California) are only stocking BB/BB (footballs on both sides).

Next I looked at the 1/2 inch shop grade maple, and that’s where I spotted the Chinese crap – excuse me – stuff. Out of curiosity I asked the price: $23 per 4×8 sheet verses $37 per sheet of the local stuff.

I needed two sheets, and decided that this would be an experiment. If it was a total disaster I was out $50. Being the optimist that I am, I was seeing this as a learning experience no matter which direction the project took.

From the start my eyes told me that these sheets would not be earning me Best In Show for shop grade drawers. Not only did the sheets have a gentle curve (exceeding what I would ever accept from normal plywood), but they had undulations. This was going to be fun.

But I was willing to put up with surfing grade plywood because I would be cutting the sheets into much smaller components, so I figured that I’d get flat enough pieces out of each sheet. I can’t see how anyone could use these sheets for large case work. The end product would be horrible, not to mention the awfulness of having to cut such wild plywood.

I should also mention that although there were no football patches on either side, there were lots of patches, but they were done with a wood filler. I’ll leave it to your imagination.

Regarding dimensions, the Chinese have decided that shaving 1/32nd of an inch off the 1/2 inch thickness was being too generous. Instead they opted for 1/16th of an inch. So 7/16ths thick plywood is to be considered 1/2 inch in the rest of the world.

Something I didn’t pay attention to at the sheet goods dealer was the quality of the plies. This stuff consists of 9 plies (including the surface layers). That’s pretty good for 1/2 inch plywood. Knowing that this is not Baltic Birch, I was expecting to come across some voids, and perhaps some ply overlap. But the amount of overlap and voids presented in this plywood is impressive indeed.

Here is a view showing the edges of three sheets. The bottom sheet would be the ideal (you’re only seeing a little bit of the plywood here – trust me, it doesn’t last). The top two sheets is representative of what you see all over the place. Thankfully the Chinese have impressive plywood presses that can make anything flat.

This next picture is taken a few inches further down, and you can see examples of the types of voids to be expected. Impressive.

For comparison, here are a few pictures of some typical home grown plywood, showing the quality of the plies.

The first picture is of some fir shop grade plywood.

And here’s a view of some 3/4 inch maple plywood. Not a lot of plies, but they sure look good.

And here’s a couple sheets of some 1/2 Appleply. This product is really nice. I’ll probably be buying this instead of Baltic Birch in the future. The faces look great. A 1/2 inch 4×8 sheet goes for $66.

I was able to wrangle the Chinese wood through the table saw, producing the requisite amount of components for the drawers. I managed to avoid most of the voids where it counted. Almost none of the panels, the largest being 16”x 26”, were flat. But they were flat enough considering that they are pulled flat when formed into a box, and that they will be installed in cabinets with metal slides.

But since panels are not flat, you tend to get burn marks on the edges, regardless of the quality of blade that you are using. The shop had a nice burnt cookie smell when I was done.

My next concern was how they would take dominos. Would the plywood edges shatter when approached by the Domino machine? As you can see here, the plywood took to the Domino just fine.

Likewise, when I routed the dados for the plywood bottoms, would the remaining wood (the part that remains below the drawer bottom) stay attached to the plywood. As seen here, I had no troubles cutting the grooves.

Here’s a picture that shows what happens if you cut through one of those sections that have a lot of voids. The individual plies have no glue and can easily break away. I should also note that the show faces, if I’m allowed to say that with a straight face, will have a tendency to peel off the plywood if given the opportunity. So use very sharp blades when cutting this stuff, and don’t allow any rough edges to catch on anything.

So would I buy this stuff again? Most likely not. For $37 I can get American made shop grade birch plywood that doesn’t have these problems. I don’t use enough plywood to justify the potential savings in $$$ by going with the Chinese imports. If you’re a production house and need to spit out a bunch of very cheap box type items (like shipping crates), then the Chinese plywood will work OK.

For us normal folk, stay away from the cheap imports.

I wonder what Sam would think to see a bunch of his chair patterns hanging on the wall in a museum?

The Huntington also has a Green & Green exhibit, including a large collection of furnishings from the Gamble house. They also have a Maloof rocker on permanent display.

Here’s some pictures that I took that show most of the collection: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjyoTuAP

In this video I discuss how I attach face frames to my cabinets, and show how a simple router jig can be used to flush trim them to the cabinet sides.

Although I’ll be keeping the dust collector for reasons explained in the video, in the end I wish that I had bought a competing product from another company.

In this second part of my review I wrap up some of the frustrations that I’ve experienced with this new dust collector and summarize my overall opinion.

The next video is a follow-up to my original review. I discuss how Laguna supplied me with a new pre-assembled unit and show what was fixed and what wasn’t.

In this second part of my review, I share my opinions of the few accessories that are available for the saw. There’s one accessory in particular that you want to avoid at all costs.

I decided to use some leftover 1/2 inch plywood to make a storage box for my table saw accessories. The box will be mounted on the existing shelf of my saw.

Here’s a video that provides an overview (watch on Youtube for HD version):