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153K views 414 replies 154 participants last post by  clieb91 
#1 ·
Walnut Wood - I just need to know...

Does anyone else - when working with black walnut - think it smells delicious? I just want to eat it whenever I'm cutting it. I was recently cutting out a ball blank from a glue-up of walnut, maple, and wenge, the latter two of which don't really have a smell when cut. But the walnut! My dull band saw blade was more burning than cutting, and I was just about drooling all over the table. It smelled like warm cinnamon chocolate bread pudding. I almost ran to the bakery in defiance of my new year's diet. What torture!

What other woods do you love to work with for the smell (or taste! :) alone? Which ones stink too much to enjoy?
 
#85 ·
Just having one of those projects...

I'm building a little rack system currently, and I just keep failing miserably. I wanted to do something a little nicer than usual, so I made some 1/4" walnut pegs, and was planning to face the front edges of the rack with 1/8" walnut strips, and drill and peg through that with lighter wood that matches the plywood of the sides and shelves. To hold the shelves in, I'd drive pegs through from the outside, walnut pegs through ply sides, the inverse of the fronts. For whatever reasons - cost savings, space savings, 'coolness' factor, I went with very thin plywood. Not only did I keep screwing up measurements and cutting things wrong, causing me to have to change the shapes in the plans in ways I didn't like as much, but eventually the thinness of the ply caught up with me, as clamps were bending it all over the place, and pegs were just smashing through the side walls of the shelves, even after using Rockler's pro doweling jig. Wrong selection of materials, and lots of dumb mistakes.

In part 2, I stopped by my local plywood shop, and got 1 each of 3/4" and 1/2" baltic birch ply in 5'x5', having them cut it to 30"x30" panels so I could work with it more easily, and fit it in my hatchback (on laughing :). The rack walls are about 24"x24". I realized upping it to 27" would take care of the profiles of the shelving, and still leave me 3 8" tall shelf sections, so I fixed my plans, and promptly screwed up again, cutting all of the panels to 24"x24" before I realized what I was doing.

In part 3, I put those panels back in my wood storage shed, and prepared to wait until Monday to go get another piece of the baltic birch ply (almost $60… sigh). As I did so, I noticed I had 5 2'x4' "handi-panel" sheets of 3/4" ply - 2 construction - though nice - and the others regular birch ply with okay faces. I decided to just use those. I cut out 24"x27" panels this time, then as I cut in the stair-step shapes I needed, I realized the panels, unlike the baltic birch ply, were way out of true. I had carefully checked the baltics, and they were dead-on 90° - impressive - but these were crap Home Depot grade boards, with something like 3°-4° angles at the corners. Also, the rough edges made me trim my one 24" dimension down to 23 3/4", sort of messing my design up a bit.

In part 4, I've decided to go tomorrow to get another baltic birch board, and just carefully do it the right way this time. I've had lots of practice at it now. I can still use the 8 ruined boards and their many cutoffs, but it'll be awhile before I find a use for this many small pieces of plywood, especially small pieces of 3/4" ply. They'd make for some pretty beefy little boxes ;)

Ever have a project like this? I feel like as I age, I'm descending into madness. I measure and check more than twice for each cut, but nothing saves you from just having the wrong idea in your head. I checked that 24" measurement 3x, but it should have been 27". sigh…
 
#86 ·
About a billion times.

I have a theory on this for myself.

Whenever I write out a plan of procedure (list of steps to take) and have a measured drawing… success.

Whenever I work without my list or plans… often failure.

I am the master of over jointing and planing boards.
 
#91 ·
Hooray for windy days in LA

After a little get-together with friends last night around a backyard campfire in the 'burbs of LA, and them hearing about how I'm collecting wood from wherever I can find it around here now, one of said friends left a message for me today. He was outside of an El Pollo Loco (Mexican fast food chicken place) that I frequent, and alerted me to 'an entire tree' that had fallen over in today's crazy wind storms. I was over there in 10 minutes, new Irwin hand saw in tow. The city had conveniently already been by to cut it all up into pieces, so I loaded all the biggest stuff in my dying hatchback, and then set to work cutting up endless amounts of the tinier stuff. I filled my '00 Ford Focus hatchback cargo area from floor to ceiling, driving the remaining pieces into all cracks to make a rather impressive tree wall . Backing out of the parallel parking space was interesting :)

That's the dirtiest I've been since before moving to LA in '03. I was covered in sap, and the sap was covered in dirt and leaf debris. I stuck to everything until I could dump Goop-Off on me later. I'm going to be sore tomorrow. I had to go back for the last piece - the 3'+ tall, ~18 diameter stump that was still half in the ground. I wrenched it out, and realized how heavy wet logs of that size are. Even lifting from the knees, I could only hover around an inch off the ground before all of my muscles would give out. It must be over 200lbs. I had to drag it across the street between bouts of traffic, and then fight like I haven't fought in years to hoist it into the car. Back home I just pushed it out, and rolled it end over end (it's Y shaped) around the back of the house. I have an awful lot of 'tree' now, especially with that fallen Eucalyptus I spirited away from a development last week.

Anyone know - can you paint Anchorseal/Rockler's end grain sealer (both wax emulsions) right over cuts still oozing tremendous amounts of sap? I'll have some pics up in my Wood IDs series later to see if anyone here knows what I found. Hooray for windy LA days!

The down-side - I forgot the saw after my first run, and it wasn't there when I came back for the huge stump. There was a guy there dragging tons more of the tree out of his yard. I don't know how I missed seeing it through his iron fence, but it more than doubled the pile. I grabbed many more sawn-up (maybe by him) pieces on that trip. I'm going to have to head back to Home Depot for another of the Irwins. I bought about 6 saws the other day, and gave them all a test on the Euc, and that one was the best - fastest and easiest to cut through wet lumber out 'in the field.' I'll have to do a little review of it here.
 
#96 ·
What a way to test out my new lumber rack!

Last night I ran to home depot for 4 pressure treated 4×4s, 8 2×4s, and 5 sheets of 23/32" construction ply. Today, in bursts of uncharacteristic stick-to-it-ness, I actually put together the whole rack. On my lunch break from the office, I ran home and cut out 8 4' 2×4s, 8 23-7/8" 2×4s, and cut the 4×4s not only to height (about 69"), but also cut in a 10° angle, and used Sketchup to plot the angle on the front leg to meet up with the back. I'm going to be putting on a rain canopy of some sort - maybe corrugated plastic. After work I got all the countersinks drilled in the long 2×4s, the pocket holes in the short 2×4s, then watched "Lost," heading out during commercials to make marks on the 4×4s, and then out in the dark with a headlamp on after the show, I worked until around 1AM getting the whole thing screwed together as quietly as I could with neighbors on either side of me, and an otherwise dead silent neighborhood. Naturally, I kept knocking over piles of 2×4s, dropping my plastic clamping square on the cement, and just generally making a terrible racket, despite my caution.

With all of it put together, normally more like a 2-3 day job for me (around the workday hours), I stood back to take in bits and pieces of it with my tiny LED cone of light from the headlamp, thinking how nice it will look in the morning. Then - and this is why I rushed it out - I started cutting up branches in the garage with my large pullsaw, again, as quietly as possible, so I could load them into the rack, out of the way of the gardeners who come tomorrow. I didn't want them throwing everything away in my green waste bin. At some point, I heard voices next door, and thought "Oh good, they're still up - I can't be bothering them." A bit later I heard a racket right outside the garage, from right where the new rack was. It sounded like someone was coming over the 6' cinder block wall, landing on my rack, falling off of it into the large garage door (2×4 frame with corrugated metal nailed into it), then running away. My first thought was that the neighbors threw something over the wall to try to shut me up. Maybe I was making noises they could hear. I worked a bit longer, sawing, lost in thought, then decided to check - nothing out there.

I worked another 15 minutes, and then heard more distinct voices, so I opened the door, and looked out, and there was a red laser pointer dot on my lawn, moving all around, scanning for something. I walked out and looked all over. I had no idea where it was coming from. Then I heard voices around the side of the house, and saw the gate there was open. I went over and asked "Hello?" You know, exactly what you shouldn't do in a horror movie :) A man replied "Hello." Three flashlights were hitting me in the face, blinding me. I asked "Who am I talking to?" "The police." They asked me if I'd heard anyone come through my yard. I told them what I'd heard, and realized that was why the gate was open. The person jumped the wall, landed on the rack I had just finished building about 20 minutes earlier, rolled off, hit the garage, then ran through my back yard and out the gate. The cops scanned all around my yard, in my garage, and then went through the side fence to where the new rack was. I wondered what must they think here in LA finding something like 3 trees worth of logs and branches laying everywhere :)

One cop wanted to see over the wall, so he grabbed the ratty old pallet I rescued from a fast food restaurant recently (bottom half of this post), leaned it up against the rack I just built, and started trying to climb it like a step ladder. I said "That's not going to hold you. It's falling apart." The other cops laughed and said "Just climb the rack." I thought "I just built this a half hour ago, and now it's part of a police chase!" So climb it he did. It has 4 shelves, and a moment later he was standing in the center of the top one, shining his light all over the neighbor's yard. I thought to myself "Rack, please don't break." The other cops went around to the other yard, while he sat there on the vantage point of my rack, surveying for probably 10 minutes. I had mentioned at some point that I had just built the rack that night, and he said "Not bad. This thing is strong. I'm about 280, probably 290 with all this gear on." The rack wasn't even flexing. I made it beefy to handle the load of lots of wet logs.

He asked "What kind of woodworking you do?" I couldn't think of a solid answer, so I gave the most truthful: "I'm mostly in the learning phase right now." Not too long after there was some commotion next door, so he jumped down, and ran off yelling back to me "Thanks, buddy!" And that was that.

Now I'll need to wipe dirt and footprints off the top shelf, and then tack on a rain canopy of some sort :)
 
#109 ·
Hatchback toy update

I decided to update my old toy version of my '00 Ford Focus hatchback to more accurately reflect the typical look of its big brother these days. I've made a couple of trips for Eucalyptus that have looked very much like this, complete with long branches sticking out the window :)









Big version:





 
#119 ·
Bryan Nash Gill's Hemlock Relief Print

Artist Bryan Nash Gill has created a series of 12 prints in the traditional block printing style by inking the cross section of a very large stump of hemlock - from the mill next door to him - and then hand-rubbing large sheets of handmade paper into all the growth rings. The prints look beautiful, but at $4k/ea., I think I'll make my own ;) Now to find a 3.5' diameter chunk of hemlock…

Some shots of the creation process
[via Craftzine]

And as way leads on to way, I've picked up a new term today as well: dendrochronology. Neat!
 
#120 ·
I bought a truck tonight!

No pics yet or anything, but after looking at an '06 Ranger at the Ford dealer with 42k on it, I kind of fell for an '05 Tacoma with about 85k on it at the Toyota dealer. A little older, a bit more used, but it just had a lot more I wanted. It's a certified pre-owned with 3yr/3k bumper-to-bumper, and 7yr/100k drivetrain warranties, power everything, AM/FM/CD, access cab - 2-door, but has a small back, and little half-doors that make loading things/passengers back there easy - lined bed, knob-lock tie-down clamps, and my favorite weird extra (maybe it's common?): a 400W max grounded power outlet with spring-cover built into the right inside wall of the bed area. This means I can plug in my electric chainsaw whenever I find a fallen tree, or large branch, without needing an inverter! Now I don't need one of those. It's a shiny deep royal blue (color was the least of my concerns, but it's quite nice), handles very well, and has new, rugged, off-road tires.

I don't know a whole lot about car pricing, but I managed to get him down from $17k to $13k. What's the consensus? Sound like an okay price? Everything was in perfect condition - no dents, scrapes, dings, broken plastic, scuffed whatevers. It looked pretty much like a new truck to me.

If you'll permit me a moment of reflection for the old '00 Ford Focus hatchback that's pretended for 9 years now to be a truck. You were a trooper, and you never once complained, nor broke down whilst hauling my absurd loads. You will be missed. Let's reflect a moment on just a small subset of your honorable service…

Ah, my old Rigid shopvac, and a bunch of 8' lumber. I think those melamine shelves were 9'. How did you do it?



The Delta 6" jointer I got from Rockler at 50% off! What a day! We got there at 5AM, and got the 7th of their last 8!



My old Halloween '05 Star Wars AT-AT costume! This was the year my new truck was born!



Here's how I looked in the costume. What a nerd!



Supplies for the wood storage shed, a project I keep meaning to post here (soon, hopefully!). We made so many runs like this, or far worse, while building that thing. Btw, if you were wondering, 26 is the ABSOLUTE LIMIT to the number of 96" 2×4s you can cram into this thing. Seriously, a 27th cannot fit (w/ windows shut):



The giant treadmill! I never thought we were going to fit that one. The guy at Sears was gobsmacked when it dropped into place. It was an oversized model that could handle up to 300lbs (I was 280 at the time! I've lost quite a bit since then).



Then there were the paperbark limbs from the tree cutters that fogged up your windows.







Those same tree guys told us to come back the next day for an entire other tree (possibly an olive).



There was that enormous fallen Eucalyptus we took home in 3 or 4 trips, full cargo area each time:





And of course the highly sappy Pittosporum undulatum, or Victorian Box, aka Australian cheesewood, which blew over by the El Pollo Loco Mexican restaurant, which we picked up in 2 very dirty trips. The huge trunk base you handled on the second trip was the largest piece of wood you've ever carried, easily over 200lbs, maybe even 250lbs. You will not, my old friend, be asked to do that again. Not by me:





Let's not forget the huge branch of that as-yet-unidentified tree we found late at night while out scouting for fallen trees after a very windy day. It took us 2 trips like this, a great deal of elbow grease to get those limbs in your cargo area, and even more to get them back out!





Yes, you have been a real trooper. I will do my best not to cry when I trade you in. I imagine the guy at the Toyota dealership might weep a bit when he sees how much sap is dried into your roof fabric, though :)

As a final note about the possibilities this new vehicle will afford me, I will say only this: 4X8 SHEET GOODS, FINALLY!!!
 
#132 ·
New truck pics - 2005 Toyota Tacoma TRD Off Road

Here it is. Certified preowned, but no dents or dings or anything.



It's 5 years old, but the engine looks pretty new.



Obligatory guy and his new truck photo:



"Access Cab," woo!



Let's go find some dead trees!



Few more pics in the flickr set if you need them.
 
#133 ·
Now you are ready to haul some "found wood". You can give that poor car a rest now. :)

With this "increased capacity" and your propensity for finding wood I am not sure where you are going to be able to put it. But it will be a fun challenge to deal with, I am sure.

Have fun and keep on truckin'.
 
#137 ·
I must be doing something wrong!

When my truck (bought new in 1979) gave up the ghost last year- and just 2 more payments to go- I moved "up" to an 86 Mighty Dodge Ram pickup.

Nice Truck, Gary
 
#144 ·
What LA does with its wood (and lawn trimmings)

I've been trying to figure this out for a bit, and last weekend I cracked the case. Where do the logs and trees the tree trimmers cut down, and the stuff in the green waste recycling bins go? I tooled around Google Maps, searching for dumps and landfills, and found things like this that just didn't seem to fit the bill. Finally I found this PDF file. It includes 20 pages, most with photos of everything that goes on, with figures on how much of each type of green waste is hauled in per day, and pictures of the each stage of the operations, including resawing and furniture building at the end. Most is turned into mulch for customers. I love the cleaning station, which is an elevated, metal mesh tunnel with a conveyor running through it. Workers stand on each side, plucking trash from the continuous influx, and dropping it through holes to huge dumpsters below them. The yard is surprisingly small, but then, I guess LA isn't constantly felling trees.
 
#145 ·
Interesting stuff Gary. What woodworkers need to figure out is how to divert the workable logs to us instead of them ending up as mulch.
I work for a city in Colorado (Aurora) that has a population of 310,000 and a dedicated Forestry division as well. I'm trying to figure out how I should open the conversation with the Forestry representative where I end up claiming all (or at least part of) the maple, oak and walnut that gets taken down.
It may not ever work out but the only way to find out is to ask!

Thanks for the information and the great posts on all sorts of topics.
 
#150 ·
I finally have a proper wood lathe!

Mom visited last week, and with some ideas of things she wanted me to build, we checked out Anderson Plywood (LA, CA) - she loves zebrawood :) - and my favorite place: Rockler (Torrance, CA). While at Rockler, she fell in love with some turned bottle stoppers made by Robert, who I think might be a manager there, and decided she wanted me to make a bunch for her and her friends, starting with a set of 3 for one friend in particular.

They only had 2 chrome wine bottle stopper hardware packs left, so we got those, and chose 1 bottle stopper blank each of osage orange ($1.49), black and white ebony ($4.99), and tulipwood ($3.99).

Somehow this lead to a long talk about lathes and turning, and the small capacity of my Sherline mini machinist lathe, and suddenly she asked if I'd like an early birthday gift (birthday's in August!) of the on-sale lathe we'd seen in the front of the store. It was the JET JWL-1220 12"x20" wood lathe. Of course, I said yes :) It's normally $450, but this was the floor model, occasionally used for demos, and had light finish wear, though no actual machine wear, so they wanted to get rid of it for $380. I later found out the little yellow key for the on button was missing, so I'll need to get a replacement, though one from a different machine worked, despite not fitting correctly. Also, the little tool rack on the back is missing, but it's just a stamped metal piece with one 90° bend and a few drilled holes, so I think I'm just going to quickly fashion a replacement to hold the live center, drive spur, knockout bar, wrenches, and whatever else. Now I need a press brake!

I have nowhere left in the garage to put it, which is forcing me to do a tremendous, and much needed cleanup and reorganization, but meanwhile, of course I had to set it up on top of my table saw and give it a twirl. I don't really know what I'm doing with larger things yet - and by that, I mean > 2.5" radius :) - so I've already caused my first 3 attempts at it - all in some really crappy European olive tree wood that's splitting faster than a deadbeat dad - to fly from the chuck across the garage. Nothing's hit me in the head yet, thankfully. I have the Oneway Talon, and the #1 jaws for it.

I've tried drilling out a hole in the bottom with a Forstner and clamping outwardly from inside it, and I switched to a blank of Eucalyptus from the tree I found awhile back, this time turning the blank's outside between centers, and flipping it around to turn a large tenon, flipping it back around to clamp that from the outside. In all cases, the wood has given way when I've gotten to turning the inside. Either the jaws tear out of the Forstner hole, or shear off much of the tenon. I'm currently looking through how-tos, like this one.

One of the problems is that I'm turning smaller things, and don't have much wood to waste on hollows, or tenons. Maybe these smaller things need to be glued to something bigger first, though that probably means I have a lot more waiting for them to dry out better first. I'm not excited about all the work and waiting of the glue-ups, either. Any thoughts here? I'd say the olive might be too soft, but I don't think it is. It's somewhere around birch, I'd guess. The Euc is much harder. I'm surprised that tenon sheared away, especially as I was taking light internal cuts with the internal tool, and wasn't far in yet. Maybe I should have switched back from the #1 jaws to the chuck's original ones, and used a much larger tenon - most of the bowl width, to provide a lot more clamping area to spread out the forces. I think the ultimate answer may be that I simply need to sharpen up my tools, and turn at a much slower speed. I have been taking it very fast, as I can get a really smooth finish that way.

I'm still too busy to take a bunch of fun pics, so here's one I took just before we unloaded the lathe. It's a heavy little thing. Oh, and that heavy-duty retractable cord reel is on sale for 50% off now at Rockler. Score!

 
#158 ·
Progress on those Hollywood Juniper limbs

22 days ago I posted about the decimation of my Hollywood Junipers (Juniperus chinensis). My plan was to go through and 'limb' them, or at this scale, to 'twig' them. Little by little, I've been going out there for 15 minutes or so at a time, sawing each little twig off with a stroke of the Irwin carpenter's saw, then scrubbing the sap off my hands. What a giant pain, but I admit it was fun. I love the feel and sound of the saw, the smell of the junipers, getting dirty, and watching the pile of humorously narrow branches grow.

This was the pile left me after the tree trimmers had their field day:



The tarp was to keep out the gardeners. After about 15 minutes of sawing twigs the first day, I had this, and realized I had a long road ahead:



I got a lathe - care of mom on her visit (detailed in this blog post) - and had to try out a tiny piece of the juniper to see what was hidden inside. I made a randomly-shaped thing to test out angles and curves:



I really liked the marble-like translucence:



A few weeks later, and maybe 5 20-minute-average sessions, with a power-session of a couple hours on Memorial Day, I had a pretty sizable pile of detwigged limbs. The greenery in the background is composed of twigs trimmed off by the 15" Irwin carpenter saw and limbs that were already too tiny to be useful. I'm the idiot covered in sap.





Here are the two largest limbs - not much, but a nice size for smaller turnings. Maybe I'll try a juniper vase or two. The translucence could be pretty neat. They have very red heartwood.



Lots of knotty, burly regions on this one. I'm eager to see what's inside.



And the worst part: the sap. It takes about 5 hard hand-washings, using fingernails to power through the dirt-covered sap on my hands. There's a line that forms just behind the saw's teeth, in a line across their gullet tops, which has a thickness - maybe 1/32" sticking off the saw - and nothing can pick it off. I've tried fingernails, carpenter nails, wire bristle brushes… they all just slide right over it. It's like hardened glass. The only thing that works is gum and pitch remover, sprayed on, left to sit for a few minutes, wiped away hard with a rag, and then I repeat that, agitating the puddles of remover for a few minutes each time, with about 8 repeats to get back to clean. It's impressive stuff, this juniper resin. At least it smells great.



That's all for this update. Now there's a ton of work in cutting them up into little vase, bottle stopper, pen, and miscellaneous blanks. I probably don't need to seal them. I cut up a branch a year ago, and none of the pieces have checked yet. It doesn't seem to want to.
 
#166 ·
Most elaborate dollhouse ever: Moscow?

I continue to be amazed by how many amazing things there are out there by which to be amazed. I find new ones every day online, and have for the last decade. One I found this week is a 1/500th scale miniature of all of Moscow, built in 1988, and maintained ever since. It looks to be all balsa, or basswood. If the city changes, or a new house is built, they correct the model. It's stayed current for the last 2 decades. Tons more pictures here.









I'm off now to start my 1/1000th scale miniature of Los Angeles. How hard could it be?
 
#177 ·
The whimsical art furniture of Jake Cress

I found this talented woodworker's site tonight through a post on Make Magazine's blog. He makes very well crafted furniture in the Chippendale style, but also creates art pieces with meta-humor baked in. Some appear self-animated, the rest are a fun juxtaposition of solid craftsmanship and glaring oversights.


"Oops" in mahogany


"Crippled Table" in walnut and hickory


"How to Build Furniture" in cherry


"Self Portrait" in walnut
 
#186 ·
some ramps for my truck, almost

To save my back the next time I luck into some huge logs, I found and purchased some Highland Ramparts brackets from Pep Boys, while there replacing my new truck's dead battery. I've seen gardeners in the area loading and unloading rider lawnmowers and everything else with these things, so me and a log on a hand truck should be fine, despite my ample size.

I also picked up the required 2×8s, each 8' long. Unfortunately, measuring my truck's unfolded tailgate height just now (33"), and using the lookup table in the Ramparts' included instructions, I should be using 10' 9" planks for a 14° angle, which is about as steep as you want to go. I modeled it in Sketchup, and it's a pretty sharp angle, though doable with a handtruck.

But those are huge planks! My bed is only about 6'. I don't want 4' 9" - almost half their length - sliding around over the edge on a long drive to pick up some lumber. Also, anything over a 2' 0" height (7' 9" long boards) should have intermediary support. I imagine something like a 2×4 or 2×6 screwed on edge to the bottom through the top of the flat board to create T-beams. Now the idea is even more unwieldy.

I guess I didn't just solve my loading problems after all. I knew it was a high bed. Originally I was looking for something like my dad's Toyota from the 80s, small and dark blue, and not unlike this one, though that's an '88, and his must have been from between late 70s, or very early 80s. As a kid I could easily sit on the tailgate, whereas the truck now I have to leap up into a bit. Still, I would have put quite a strain on that little truck's shocks getting all those huge eucalyptus logs home :)

I think the winch + unfoldable/steep ramp idea is gaining traction.
 
#194 ·
JACKPOT



In early February, 2009, in rough seas 14 miles off the coast of Sussex, England, Russian cargo ship Sinegorsk lost its load of 1500 tonnes of sawn timber, which washed ashore on the beaches of Kent. The police issued warnings, but scavengers came out in force.

Daily Mail has several great shots of people braving the icy surf and a high wall to claim the lumber, which is apparently still the rightful property of the original owner, according to law. Police were powerless to stop the looters, or didn't care hard enough :) The article and comments shed a little bit of contradictory light on the maritime laws.

I think this is one of those times when you rent a flatbed truck, or in this case, a "lorry."
 
#212 ·
list of favorite woodworkers

While searching up something else on the Google last night, I stumbled upon an exactly 900 day old post on our very own LJs site in which user ToolCrib asked the question Who are YOUR top five most influential woodworkers?. ToolCrib (Garrett) then went on to compile that list to his own site here. I thought I'd repost that effort on the 900th day as a little look back at who everyone thought was inspirational a few years ago, but then I fell asleep early, so here it is, 901 days later :)
 
#214 ·
Internet intrigue! What have I wrought?

What a day I'm having!

Okay, so September of last year I was gearing up to buy a band saw. I liked the Craftsman 18" Wood/Metal deal for $1300 (and eventually got that one). Above the picture on the saw's page were clickable, hierarchical categories, something like "Power Tools > Saws > Band Saws." You could click on each to go to broader categories - pretty standard. I noticed in the address bar that these category names were echoed in the URL as variable names. On a whim, I modified them in the URL and resubmitted the page, and it worked. My new categorizations showed up. I posted my modified link for my friends on another site to show them which saw I wanted, and they all laughed at the categories, and that was that. Here's a screencap, with the parts I was screwing with highlighted (warning: vulgar language :)

Last night, someone here at LJs asked me which band saw I had, so I typed "craftsman saw" in my address bar and as Firefox does, it showed me the most relevant, previously-visited links. I saw "Craftsman 18-Inch Wood / Metal etc" and clicked that one, copied the link, and commented back to the LJ commenter. Only then did I realize that the spaces in my vulgarities - which I had forgotten all about, and didn't intend to post here - had broken LJs' markdown, so what I had commented was a link to the page, followed by a broken stream of swearing. I couldn't edit it. I slapped my forehead and commented again explaining the humorous situation, and apologizing for any unintended offense.

Then I thought I'd post that to reddit.com - a user-submitted news site from which I've gathered LJs a few members recently (woodworkers there who didn't know about LJs). My submission is here, and the headline I posted used to go to my modified Craftsman saw page at Sears' site, though it is now broken. It's broken, because the smarty-pants nerds at reddit had a field day with my link, trying everything from SQL injections (which would let them modify Sears' inventory, etc - thankfully these attempts all failed outright), to getting code to run through the site (also, thankfully failed attempts). And naturally, they made many more tweaked titles, including changing grilling machines to be baby grilling machines, and listing computers as "Porn Enablers." This was funny (nerds can have quite twisted senses of humor), but worse was that Sears' site, to alleviate many requests coming in, will cache pages, such that people coming in from non-tweaked URLs - i.e. the public - would start seeing our goofball headings. Major headslap.

Some folks from reddit used Sears' live online support to have chats wherein they pranked them by asking questions like "How far can this thing launch babies?" for a baby carrier modified to now be called a baby launching device, and each was appropriately met with bewildered and horrified tech representatives. I started at this point to wonder what the fallout would be from my harmless little game. Was I going to end up arrested?

Soon my post, which had amassed nearly 1300 upvotes (very high for the site - most popular things are in the 10s, or low-to-mid hundreds), and which was sitting at #2 in the list on the front page (stories move up by popularity and upvotes, and down as these things wane) disappeared entirely from anything but a direct link to it. I was #2, then gone. I made a new post to ask if I'd been censored, and one of the site admins came in to comment that yes, he had been forced to take it down. Apparently Sears' lawyers were on the phone all morning with Conde Nast's lawyers (CN owns reddit), and forced them to remove my post from the front page. So my new post - asking about the censorship was on track for #1 with a bullet. It was #37 front page, comments pouring in (nerds are often very opposed to and outspoken against censorship). I refreshed. It was #12, many more comments listed. I refreshed again. GONE! Censored again!

I know the guys running reddit hate censorship, but what can you do when you have Sears and Conde Nast level lawyers on your back? So soon the links were all breaking. People at Sears were scrambling to turn off caching of links, and to even remove items! That's right, I can't even find my $1300 saw on Sears.com anymore. Direct searches don't list it! Removing the junk from the modified URL and resubmitting just brings you to a dead page. This seems a bit of an overreaction to me. I get the grilling machine thing, but what woodworker wouldn't want a manly saw that proclaimed its dominance with a little bit of proud swearing? ;)

Well, then it got worse. TMZ picked up the story, and last I checked there were 140 comments there, most of which believed this was all started by a disgruntled former employee. Then Fox was on it from there :(

I'm kind of thankful that pretty much everyone is crediting the wrong sites and people for this internet mischief. I don't want it all to crash down on me! I'm just a silly goofball. I can't do jail time! As fun as it's been to keep up with this all day, I think I'm going to go hide under my workbench. Don't tell anyone you saw me.
 
#215 ·
As a fellow redditor I'd be happy to start your legal defense fund;)
Seriously though, good luck - people do stuff like this all the time but not so publicly. Hopefully sears will have a good sense of humor, and bad publicity is better than no publicity. Their web traffic went up - maybe a few people bought big f*ing band saws?
 
#228 ·
Burl Wood... "Nutz" :(

This makes me laugh almost as much as it makes me cry. There's a guy in my neighborhood with a big black truck parked on the street, and a pair of blue TruckNutz hanging below, which I must pass and notice every night when I drive home from work. I do admit that the sheer obnoxiousness of it does at least make me smile.

But c'mon… beautiful wood burls? Is nothing sacred? I can only hope it's injection-molded plastic wrapped in some kind of heat-shrink plastic print. I have a hard time imagining they're CNC milling these from real wood.

EDIT: Phwew! Crisis averted. The video explains the 'water transfer print' method they use to print anything on their product. They have quite a number of print styles.

Okay, now back to actual woodstuffs :)

EDIT #2: Water Transfer Printing is a pretty interesting process.
 
#238 ·
New Rule: Face shield mandatory (when turning barked pieces)

Just a quick note. I found some logs (again!) and quickly sliced up a half log for the turning. It had some loose bark I tore off, but also some seemingly strongly-affixed pieces that I decided to leave on. Too hard to remove. I was only at around 1000RPM (2nd out of about 6 speed settings on my Jet 12×20), when wHaCk!

A piece of heavy, hard bark about 3"x5", and around 3/16" thick smacked me really hard in the face. I was wearing a polycarbonate full-face shield from Home Depot, though, and was saved. I'd say it was moving over 50MPH, based on the force - basically the speed of a decent overhand pitch. It could have been bad. It was dead center, right over my nose and eyes, but it's hard to say where it would have hit without the face shield. Maybe I'd lose a tooth, or get an eye all cut up or punctured, or maybe just a bloody nose, but it would've hurt pretty badly. As it was, it did knock my head back a few inches, and sent me tripping back a few feet. I was also dazed for a few seconds, completely unsure of what had happened. There had been no warning. Just suddenly a loud crack, and a glimpse of something black and rectangular occluding my view before I went windmilling backwards.

This comes on the heels of a similar event days prior that sent a piece of bark flying up the surface of the turning tool and into my thumb. Felt like I hit my thumb with a hammer. This turning can be dangerous stuff. The face shield worked, though. I was entirely unharmed, and after shaking it off, I went back in and finished up the work.

SAFETY FIRST
 
#239 ·
I am glad to hear you were not seriously hurt, Gary. At a 1000 rpm anything coming off the lathe has the potential to be a dangerous projectile. But I am glad to hear you finished the turning.

Be safe but have fun!
 
#258 ·
Archival footage: Wood turning in Germany, 1926

This video from 83 years ago follows a German woodworker as he selects a log half, cuts out a bowl blank on a large band saw, and then turns 3 separate parts to create a lidded bowl. It's neat to feel such a kinship with a guy at his lathe some 13 years before his country would enter into WWII. I wonder if he made it to the war, and what he thought of it. There's something a lot more tangible about this video than the still black and white photos of men with saws over their shoulders standing by huge, fallen trees - my usual window into woodworking during this period.

I watch the wood chips pile up on his left arm, just as they do for me here in my own present time. I wince sympathetically when his hook tool catches at 6:08. I note the injuries on at lest 3 of his fingertips, dark marks around his cuticles. With some small amount of introspection, I realize he's a much snappier dresser than I. Also, his lathe is bigger, and he has a more complete set of tools.

Wait… what was that? Was that jealousy? I think I need to get me one of those hats.

 
#278 ·
Brian May's guitar

I just learned from a reddit post (I know some of you are also redditors) that Queen guitarist Brian May built his guitar, "Red Special" with his dad in 1963 when he was sixteen, mostly "from an 18th century fireplace mantel that a friend of the family was about to throw away." He's been using it on tour and in albums for over 3 decades.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Special

The manufacturing subsection at the link is a fun read for woodworkers and guitar enthusiasts alike.
 
#279 ·
I remember reading this in a guitar magazine when I was a teenager learning how to play. I didn't know the mantel was that old, I just knew they used one for the guitar. I also didn't know the rest of the details, like how he used motorcycle parts for the tremolo bar… far out.
 
#286 ·
Tape Measure Hero

I haven't been around for awhile. I've been super lazy. I have worked on a few small things, and I'm starting to get it into gear again, getting the garage cleaned up and organized and making things once more. I will be returning to the fun here soon, probably just after the holidays. I miss this place and my fellow woodworkers :)

In the meantime, I give you some tape measure tricks:

 
#297 ·
1 YEAR ON LUMBERJOCKS!

Hooray! I've been here 365 days today. Special thanks to LumberJocks Bureaucrat and notottoman for reminding me with messages on my home page. I thought I had months to go and would have missed it!

My resolution (do we do that here? :) is to actually create more and get my shop a lot more organized. I've been making some headway on that recently, but there's a lot left to do yet. As my next post will indicate, I'm still in the stage of building things to organize myself so I can have the room to start really building things :)

Also, thanks to the many great folks here who've helped me out this past year. I've learned so much. It seems like not a week goes by that I don't look back at the previous week and think "That was before I knew the right way to do that!" Thanks again, to all of you, and here's to another great year ahead!
 
#311 ·
Rockler's March "2010 Master Catalog for Woodworkers"

Anyone get this in the mailbox this week? I was impressed. Every monthly Rockler catalog is 147 pages long with a simple, stapled binding. This one has a square, glued binding with no staples, and is 195 pages long. Too, every previous catalog I've received over the last 3 years is in the company's blue and maple-ish tan coloring. Sometimes the heading bar and Rockler text inside it are a reverse of these two colors, but usually not. However, this one is all-white, of a much heavier pound stock than the usual cover, and features an embossed and foiled blue and copper text/logo combo at the top. After a couple dozen previous issues, this one made me say "Wow!" out loud when I pulled it out of the mailbox. I always enjoy flipping through them anyway, but this one feels like a trophy version of the usual deal.
 
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