I must confess I never really saw the need for a drill press. I have a very nice Bosch cordless drill with lots of power. I can drill pocket holes all day long and I have made 32 mm holes with Forstner bits in poplar and birch without problems. I have a great jig for shelf pin holes and frankly thought my holes were perfectly straight for the task. I have even used it to cut 1/2” plugs from Bocote (but not optimally).

Recently while making wine balancers for Christmas gifts, I needed to drill 12 holes through 3/4” thick hard woods with a 1 1/4” Forstner bit using my cordless drill. Those of you who are experienced with drill presses may feel free to start laughing now. I did manage to complete the task, and the drill did survive, but just barely. It took a long time on each hole while having to pause and cool the bit and lubricate it. By the end I had a mild burn from the heat of the exhaust air vented from the drill.

So Santa brought me a 12” Ryobi bench top drill press (Wood magazines “Best Value” last year). I don’t anticipate using it as much as my router, table saw, or even my cordless drill. But when I need it there won’t be any other substitute. In short sure drill presses make nice straight “repeatable” holes, but the real value is the power and speed control.

So to “lightly sand” the four pieces I reached for the random orbital sander with some 220 grit paper. This was my first time working with Jatoba. It is very dense but as it turns out it sands really really easily.

So I took my orbital sander in hand and cleaned up the large faces including the profiled face. I then did a second dry fit (I’m obsessive that way). Then I kicked myself which hard as I am not a flexible as I once was.

All four pieces were no longer the same thickness even though the came from the same board. And with the exception of one joint; the mating edges were cut from the same couple of inches in the same board. I had not sanded evenly. And the sander had lingered more on some spots of some boards than others. To make the situation worse the edge profile made my stupidity really obvious.

So in conclusion: Friends don’t let friends use a power sander for the finish sanding!

Thanks for reading.

-Mike

Thankfully wood is a forgiving material and the angle doesn’t have to be accurate to 1/100th of a degree. Thankfully it can be sanded if the mating boards aren’t the exact same thickness. Etc.

So while I have never and will never cut the PERFECT miter I am getting better and no longer cutting the WORST miter.

What I have learned so far in pursuit of the PERFECT miter.
Make sure the blade is perpendicular to the table.

Make sure the miter fence is perpendicular to the table. For that matter make sure you use a fence with your miter gauge.

Carefully calibrate the miter gauge. Especially at the angle you intent to cut. If you’re cutting a 45 pick up a decent drafting square and use that against the blade and miter fence. I have several and found the one made in Germany that was part of my original drafting kit to be the most accurate.

Test cut, and then test cut again. That nice piece of white pine is still much cheaper than that piece of Jatoba wood that you have spent the morning edge profiling.

Try and cut any edge profile first. You don’t want to carefully cut miter and then have tear out at the router table.

Use clamps to hold the piece to the miter fence instead of your hands. A photographer I like once wrote a that “the greatest challenge is keeping that trembling big bag of water we call a body still enough and straight enough to get the shot.” The same goes for miter cuts you hand moves and the piece slips ever so slightly. I prefer to clamp it with wooden clamps in case I goofed and cut the clamp.

Sneak up on the length. For my most successful frame to date I started with the pieces about 1/8” to 1/4” to long (not intentionally mind you). Then I trimmed the ends very very carefully no more than 1/16” at a time till each one was the right length.

This post was longer than expected; I suspect because miters challenge me even more than I knew. So I am off to either further fine tune my miter gauge or try to get that picture of big foot :).

As always thanks for reading.

- Mike

But now I must confess that there are two tools for which I now have a new appreciation of there immense usefulness.

1) A low angle block plane. I know what a plane does, but I never appreciated what it does. Recently I made some dadoes for shelves. I tested the fit the with a piece of scrap showing a good snug fit. OOPS the test scrap was apparently just a bit thinner than board from which the shelves were cut! As I tried pounding the boards in with a hammer, it occurred to me to grab my low angle block plane. A few quick passes on each end of the shelves and viola perfect fit. I now love this little plane.

2) 10” wooden hand screw clamps. I never figured out what I could use such an odd looking and frankly a little odd to use clamp. I found a couple on sale once and hadn’t used them. Until I need to put some edge banding on a long piece of plywood. How do you balance a long piece of plywood on one edge? By clamping both ends with one of these very useful clamps! If need be then clamp these clamps to the bench.

Two little inexpensive tools that can solve problems no other tool can. These two will see much more use in my hobby now. I look forward to more such pleasant lessons.

Thanks for reading.

The saw did not start again. Check the circuit breakers, and they’re all fine. Check the extension cord: it has power. Reset the circuit breaker on the saw: still nothing. Next apologize to my neighbor for the rather harsh language I was using as they passed my garage. Sorry, Rhana. Check the voltage supply to the motor: even the battery on the VOM is dead. And sure enough after replacing the battery, there is no power going to the motor. So now I take the switch apart and it is toast! Fortunately I live in a large city so its off to the Delta / Porter Cable parts supply unfortunately on the other side of town. On the way I stop at my favorite sawdust store. They have switches just not quite that one. He also informs me that the switch is probably the most frequently broken part on table saws.

Anyway an hour and a half to get the new part. A little more time and it is installed. Now back to the important question of why did it blow. My stock splitter / blade guard was installed (so I can still count to 10), but the splitter was slightly to the left of the blade particularly at the front closest to the blade. So the kerf closed, the blade bound, the motor got to hot and the switch blew. So I shimmed the splitter and will start tomorrow instead.

Lessons learned the hard way

1) Misaligned splitter → closed kerf → bound blade → hot motor → blown switch → unproductive day

2) And switches blow easily

3) Always use your splitter and always check the alignment

Thanks for reading.