WWGOA LIVE! January 2018

What happens. Hey folks, here we are live. Now you might notice a little different setup going on here. I am not in my shop. I'm like a thousand miles from my shop. I am in April Wilkerson's shop, there she is in Texas. I've been down here for awhile helping her frame out her shop. She's building a new building and asked for some help with framing. So here I am. So without further ado, let's jump into some questions. We're preloaded pretty good on questions tonight. So try to keep things moving. So Mark says, "Do you have any suggestions for spraying latex paint with HVLP sprayers? I've struggled with having good coverage without runs except many coats and end up with relatively rough finish. I've experimented with flow conditioners and diluting with windshield wash fluid," which I've never heard of before, "containing methanol, and haven't had a breakthrough in technique." So I've sprayed a lot of latex paint through an HVLP sprayer. So here's my formula that's been successful for me. I dilute by about 10% with water. Then I'm using a 1.3 millimeter tip in the gun. And I'm also using FLOETROL, which I think is F-O-L-E, do you have a jug of that here? I do. I use FLOETROL, and here's the thing with FLOETROL is you add it to the paint, but it's not part of the dilution process. You're still diluting. What FLOETROL actually does is it retards the drying time. This is the stuff. It retards the drying time. So it gives the paint a much better opportunity to level before it actually dries. So dilute about 10%, 1.3 millimeter tip, add FLOETROL. And for this, just follow the manufacturer's instructions on how much volume of this to add to your paint, and you should be good. All right. John says, "I've got some wobble in my bandsaw have used your suggestion about balancing the top wheel. Was wondering with still some wobble, should I take off the drive belt and do the same to the bottom wheel?" So sure, yes. So I would balance both. And then the other thing I would look at is just the drive belt. A lot of times the drive belt that comes on any tool, not just bandsaws, is kind of marginal. And marginal can be it's got high spots and low spots in it. I used to work at a big, big, big cabinet shop, and we had a crummy, crummy, crummy bandsaw. So one of the things I did was I replaced the original V-belt with one of these after market, super smooth operating, I think they're called cog belts but they're way, way, way smoother. And that went a long way toward taking the wobble out of that bandsaw. If you look at specialty stores like Woodcraft Supply, Rockler, they should have them. And they're interesting, they come in, they're looped together kinda like, I'm picturing like a leather belt, you know, that's kinda how they connect to each other. So you're gonna buy this thing that's too long. And then you use as many links as you need for your particular machine to make it work. But I'd consider then, as long as you're taking the drive belt off anyway, I consider upgrading the drive belt and see if that helps. Carl says, "I've got a 10-inch Craftsman benchtop bandsaw. I need a rip fence. eReplacement has an indefinite lead time back order, where can I order a rip fence." Yo no se, I don't know. You just gotta, Google is your friend on this one maybe. You just keep Googling bandsaw fence for Craftsman. Maybe there's an aftermarket one out there. I don't know, that's a tough one. Maybe if somebody else has a suggestion, they can put that in the comments and help Carl out here with a place you could get a fence for a Craftsman benchtop bandsaw. Timothy, "When cutting tenons on a router table, should I use a spiral up cut or a straight bit, or either?" I default to spiral up cuts whenever I can, just 'cause they do give you a better quality of finish. So I still own straight bits, but especially now with CNCs in my shop, spiral up and down cuts have become way more prevalent in my shop anyway. So yeah, I'd go with a spiral bit whenever you can. I know they're more expensive, but the cut quality is better. And in this case, on a tenon, you definitely want an up cut not a down cut. I know that wasn't part of your question. I'm just throwing that in there extra. Syd, "When planning a project, do you sketch it out on paper?" Well, it's interesting that April's here for this one. "Or do you software? Why, what are the pros and cons of each, paper versus computer, and what software do you use?" So ironic that April's there, 'cause she's actually helping me learn SketchUp, and you're a heavy user of SketchUp. Completely. So what would you, do you wanna jump in there? So prior to this, I stuff in my head, never doing a drawing, which is a good way to make mistakes. April draws everything on SketchUp and you like it because- I can't draw really, I can't even draw a box really very well, so- Free hand, you mean. Free hand, yeah. So drawing something even as simple as an table would stump me. And you know I'm highly dyslexic so I get things backwards in my head all the time. And I can't think about step three without losing steps one and two. So what I have to do whenever I'm like trying to design something- And you design from scratch all the time. Yeah, I build everything like custom. If I wanted a table, I'd figure out high I wanted it, you know, I mean I take standard specs on some things, but I always design everything in SketchUp first. And yeah, what I have do with my learning style and the way that my brain is wired is draw one leg, draw the second leg, you know, and then work that way. And the modeling software allows me to do that. Before, I did it where I would just go in the shop and build, and I would get to step seven and realize on step three I should've done something completely different or the sizes didn't match. And the modeling software, it's a little bit of a learning curve, but once you get it down, I think it definitely pays off in the long run. And interestingly enough, we have SketchUp classes on GOA. So the next part of the question was, well let's finish the why. One, what I like about it is the fluidity of it. So I'm currently in the middle of making camp kitchen patrol boxes for the Boy Scout troop. So April helped with this project. And we just kinda swagged some dimensions, but the finite dimensions are different. So now it's very easy to take that drawing in the software, make some changes, incorporate those, what the Scout Master really wants, and the redo is gonna be really, really, really easy. So SketchUp is free software. You only need the pro version if you're selling your stuff. If you're selling plans. If you're selling your plans, not selling the end product. No. So for most of us, the free version is gonna be fine. And it's immensely powerful. It's a crazy powerful thing. So definitely software I think is the way to go. And the learning curve hasn't been too bad for me. Oh, one last thing is you can also make a great cut list from it. Once you build your project, and then break it down, and figure out okay, you're gonna need one sheet of plywood or four joints of material. So cut list is also a time saver. And the mistake of avoidance is huge 'cause you're, I think when you draw it, it's like you're building it. You make a leg, and then you make a rail, and then you put them together. So by the time you get in the shop, you've already built this thing virtually. So you're gonna have way less wasted material in the shop. And time. Okay I'm just scrolling. "What's the name of your woodworking school or classes in Wisconsin?" So it's Vondriska Woodworks is my shop in Hammond. And VondriskaWoodworks.com is the clearing house. That's for my schedule. And whether I'm teaching at my shop in Wisconsin or I'm teaching on the road, that's how you know where's Waldo. If you wanna know where I'm gonna be next, VondriskaWoodworks.com will tell you that. "I wanna to learn to draw accurate plans for projects. Are there books or resources you can recommend?" Accurate plans for projects. So I don't know, Kyle, if you're looking for then a project book or a book about learning how to draw? And if it's about learning how to draw, I'm gonna throw this back to the SketchUp conversation that we just had. So I don't know, Kyle if you're still on, tell me, just expand on that question a little bit 'cause I'm not sure what you're looking for. "Using a three-quarter inch router bit," Doug says, "to cut dado oak and get burning, bit speed?" Is the question. "Bit speed?" Possibly, so the first thing I would do is make sure that the router bit is sharp. Do you have a router bit nearby? Make sure the router bit is sharp and make sure it's clean. So I've seen a lot of router bits that symptomatically they appear to be dull, but at the end of the day, they're really just dirty. And then like this one! No this one's not too bad. So the sharp thing, my test for this is, you can do this with any cutting tool, take the cutting tool out of the device, out of the tool, and then just drag it across a fingernail. So when I do this, what I'm expecting is the tip of that cutter to kinda engage, to kinda hang up on my nail. And as I drag it like this, it should be lifting a curl of nail. And this one is actually not. So this one I would say is probably about ready to be sharpened. So if you do that test, then that'll tell you that your router bit is dull. And/or clean it. And then with bit speed, you know, honestly a three-quarter inch router bit can run it 22,000 RPM and be just fine. So I don't think that's your burning issue. I would say it's more likely a dull cutter or possibly just too slow a feed rate. If the bit is sharp, see if you can move along a little faster. Okay, where'd I leave off? Richard says, "I'm building my own router table, and I've decided to put in a lift. Which one would you suggest? They have a wide variance of price." You know I haven't done a tool tests on router lifts for like a decade. So that information wouldn't do any good. I've got a Woodpecker lift in my router table. I like it a lot. You don't have a router lift at all, right? So just experientially, I've had good luck with both JessEm products and Woodpecker products, which is not to say other router lifts aren't in the same category, but just in my own shop, I've got a JessEm in one table and a Woodpecker in the other, and I like them both. David says, "Your opinion of all-in-one shop tools like Shopsmith?" Well, this is ironic 'cause I worked for Shopsmith for a long time, like mid '80s I spent a lot of time working for Shopsmith. So at that time, you could buy a Shopsmith for like 1,500 bucks. And there weren't all these other tools that we can get to today, the imported table saws and drill presses, and jointers and stuff. So the economics of it made a lot of sense. Today, like I know a brand new Shopsmith is a pretty expensive tool, and there's such a wide variety of stuff that you can get today. However, if you have a space constraint, holy buckets I built a lot of stuff on a Shopsmith. Basic Shopsmith is table saw, drill press, lathe, disc sander, horizontal bore machine. You can make a lot of stuff with that tool. The downside is when we were selling them, the standard motto was you gotta plan your work and work your plan, because if you've changed from table saw to disc sander and then realize I gotta go make another table saw cut, you're switching back to table saw. So that can be a little cumbersome to do that back and forth. But I found the Shopsmith to be a great machine. I really liked having one. "The shelf life of Titebond glue once open?" And if you speak again, they say you've gotta be a little closer to the microphone. You were hard to hear. Shelf life of Titebond glue. I think it's a year. I would look on the Titebond site. A couple of qualifiers. If it ever freezes, that bet is off. What I've found is that, you know, at this point I'm consuming it so fast, I don't think I've had any go bad for a while, but in the past I've seen it go bad, and it'll get kinda stringy. And it actually stinks almost like it's gone off like old food, like that's kinda how it smells. But I would double check that on the Titebond website. But I think even once it's opened, I think it's still good for about a year, but don't hold me to that. "What is the best horsepower," Ron asks, "to use for a router table? I've got a three and a half horse Sears plunge router. I don't like it, I wanna replace it. I route hardwoods." I love hanging a three horse router in a router table. The Porter Cable 7518 is kind of this ubiquitous router table router. It's a five-speed router. I've got one of those in one router table. I've got a Milwaukee three horse in another router table. They've both got bazillions of hours on them and they keep plugging away. So yeah, I think a three horse is the way to go, and kinda my line in the sand is with a three horse 15 amp router. If you do raised panels for the big three and a half inch diameter panel raiser, I can raise panels in hardwoods in two passes with a three horse router, 15 amp. I do raised panels in three passes with a two and a quarter horse, 12 amp motor. So over the time, you're gonna save a lot of time by having that bigger horsepower router to drive those bigger cutters. If you're never gonna do a raised panel bit in your life, you don't need to go as big as three horse. You could do a two and a quarter, 12 amp, and you'd be okay, but perfect world, I'd hang a three horse in a router table. Bob says, "I've got a 1980s Craftsman table saw with a Flex Shaft that has broken. Any idea if this can be repaired? A new shaft costs 200 smackers." Oh boy, I don't know. I'm not even sure I know what the Flex Shaft is, does that connect the drive motor to the blade? Yeah, so I don't know, yeah, I don't know. I'd have to look at it and see. And not that I know much about a Flex Shaft to answer that. So maybe a machine shop, see if you can find a local tool and die shop or machine shop and show it to them, and maybe it's a repair they can do for you. All right, Someone asked, that's interesting. Someone is their name, maybe, or I don't know, but Someone asks, "I have a Grizzly bandsaw that has two speed 1,700 and 3,500, when should I use each speed?" 3,500 is woodcutting. I'm trying to think a second. You slow the blade down to do metal work, to do metal cutting, but I don't think 1,700 is low enough to do metal cutting. Some people advocate a lower RPM for re-sawing, kinda makes sense to me, given that huge depth of cut that running at a lower RPM might make it work better. I would experiment with that. So on standard stuff, you know, a quarter inch blade, three quarter inch stock, stick with 3,500. If next time you do a re-saw, try that lower RPM, and then try the high one, same kinda wood for each cut, and see what that science experiment tells you. Larry says, "What CNC would you buy?" Yes, there's a lot of good ones out there. And I'm getting the CNC question a lot. I've got four CNC machines in my shop right now. So the first part of it is buy the one that fits your pocketbook because you got a budget. The next part is buy the one that has the capacity that you need for the projects that you wanna do. Capacity being the table size. And then from there, to date, I've had great experience with Iconic, ShopBot, Laguna, Axiom, and I'm not excluding other machines 'cause I haven't had a good experience. I'm just telling you, those are machines I've actively used and I've had great luck with them all. So that's a start. Brian says, "I live in a very dry climate, the Arizona desert, and I have a tough time finding good dry wood so most of my projects get built with wood from big box stores. Issue I have is that as it dries, I get a lot of twist. Any tips for working with wet wood from big box stores? What moisture should I be looking for before I cut?" Could jump in on this, April, right? 'Cause you've done like legs of your kitchen table were made from two by six from right? Like two by sixes dimensional lumber. So what, and be closer to the machine because they couldn't hear you. What was the question? So, well they're asking about if they're gonna work with two by sixes and two by fours, dimensional lumber from a big box store, what should they do preemptively so it doesn't twist as they're working with it. Do you do anything with it or do you just cut? No, I mean, whenever I'm at the store, I look down it to make sure that I'm picking out the most straight pieces that I can, but then as soon as I get it, I try not to buy material from the big box stores, unless I can come back to my shop and immediately start building with it. Because then the changes in humidity even from the store into my shop can sometimes change it. But like I think that the biggest thing that I do is just look down at, am I close enough, I hope I am, so y'all can hear me. But the biggest thing is I look down it to make sure that I'm picking out as straight a stock as I can at the store. And I think if you can buy a head and let it sit in your shop, and get used to the environment for awhile, that would gain you a lot too. And you're always like in too big a hurry to allow that to happen. 'Cause you're buying wood you need today. Well, and especially sheet goods, if I buy a sheet good from the big box store I try to immediately- Well I'm okay with that, but I think on solids, here's the thing with construction lumber is hardwoods that we would typically buy, even soft woods that we'd typically buy furniture grade are usually dried to six to 8% moisture content. Construction lumber is dried to maybe 14% moisture content. So the higher that initial moisture content, the more subject it is to going hinky when you try to work with it. So if you can buy, if that's what you're gonna be using for project after project, what I would do is buy a bunch of it, put it on a shelf in your shop and let it acclimate to that environment for like a month and then start using it. So once you're ahead of that cycle and you've got stuff in inventory, that'll work out great. And that'll help overcome some of the initial moisture thing. What moisture should you be looking for? I see that is the other part of the question. If you can get it down to 10% in your shop, you're probably gonna be okay. Lower would be better. Do you have a whetstone, just a stone? Oh now I need just a stone or something, I'll use a piece of wood. 'Cause the next question Todd says, "What do I need to do to sharpen router bits?" So the first part of this answer is you need a diamond stone because diamond is the only thing that'll touch carbide. And then the technique is really very simple. This is a great example of a router bit that you could sharpen. So I'm gonna treat... This piece of wood as though it's a whetstone, this edge right here. So a diamond whetstone, fine grit, don't ask me how many microns 'cause I can't remember. If I was in my shop, I would run and look, but I don't remember how many microns are good for this, but companies like Trend, DMT, if you contact them they can let you know what a good starting point is. And then what you're gonna do is just take the flat, never the profile, you're just gonna take the flat of the carbide and pass it, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, on that diamond whetstone. And the key to this is two flutes, so you have to count one, two, three, four, however many strokes, do the exact same thing to the other carbide so that this stays balanced. Profiles, so this is a good example. This is a very highly profiled cutter, and it's got a ball bearing on it, so two things. Remember you never try to touch the profile. You only work on the flats. So this one, just like the last one, is just gonna go, shh, shh, shh, but because it's got the ball bearing on it, you're gonna have to take that off first. Take off the ball bearing, count strokes, go to the other flute, count strokes, it's a great way to touch up your router bits. I do that all the time in my shop. Where are we? WB says, "What is the best way to mount a router boss to a bench? I do not have the wall space to mount on the wall." Do this. The router boss is the same, right, as the, shoot, I can't think of the other tool. But look on, oh, let me stew on this, 'cause I did a video with the other one, the name of which is escaping me, but I had it mounted on my work bench. I never did mount it on a wall. So I think what I did is I screwed a two by eight to a two by eight to make a T so I'd have a vertical. You know, basically kinda like their wall mount recommendation, but I put a horizontal on it so I could clamp that whole assembly to the bench, take it off the bench when I was done, put it back on the bench when I was using it. Hopefully in the next like 36 minutes, I'll remember the name of that other tool. And then you can just search WWGOA for that video and see that mounting system I use. So Kyle is back and he says, "I want to learn to draw plans, so a resource recommendation for learning to draw plans." Well, so learning to draw plans, I mean I'm gonna go back to the SketchUp thing. If you wanna learn to use SketchUp, we've got two SketchUp classes on WWGOA. One of my editors, David Radke did those. He's very knowledgeable, he did a great job. So that's a great starting point to learn to draw, plant. Roy says, or no, I skipped one, sorry, skipped a couple. Here we go, Matthew says, "What should I be looking for in shopping for a drum sander for my shop, hobbyist with a smaller shop, 20 by 30?" Well first Matthew, people are gonna hear 20 by 30 and say that's not a small shop, that's wonderful! And it is, that's a great shop. Average shop size in the United States is like 240 square feet. And if you think about that, you're gonna know what that is. That's that's one stall of a garage, 20 by 12. It's about one stall of a garage. So that's kinda by default, a lot of woodworkers end up in there. Look for in a drum sander, well how big do you wanna go? So that's gonna be the first question is capacity. I started with a Performax 22 inch 22-44 because it's open-ended, so you can do panels up to the 44 inches wide. You know, this is another place where I haven't tool tested or like super, super shopped the marketplace, but I really like the SuperMax products a lot. One of the features they have is I think it's called INTELLISAND or something like that. But excuse me, when you're feeding your material, if you try to take too much off at one time, the machine reads this, I think it's an amperage related deal, and it automatically slows down the feed rate so that you're not ruining the machine or your material. That alone is a pretty darn cool feature. So think about the capacity that you want. That'll get you into what size machine you want. As small as, I think there's 10 inch drums out there. There are for sure 16-32s. And as big as my friend, contributing editor Dave McKendrick, he's got a 52 or 57 inch drum sander that he uses a lot that he likes a lot. So I think that the rap onto an aluminum drum as opposed to Velcro or hook and loop onto a drum. I think skipping the Velcro is a better way to go. You have a harder surface better registration between the paper and the drum. So you got a better surface. Variable speed on the conveyor is a great feature. I think that's about it. John says, "Do you ever vacuum out the routers in your tables or do you have secondary vacuum port under the table to keep the router clear?" Well, this is interesting 'cause I think that what you'll find, could you grab a router, April? And can we plug it in? I think with most routers, yes they're hanging upside down, but we're gonna do a science experiment in just a second here. I think that when they're running, do you happen to have one that doesn't have a bit in it? I don't, I typically use them. Okay, I was gonna run one just to try to prove this or disprove it. That's okay. I think that when a router runs, it's actually down drafting. So when you're holding it like this and run it, the fan is blowing air this way. So although it's hanging upside down in a router table, and I don't wanna run it 'cause there's a cutter in this and I don't wanna, my next step would be to put a hand over it to see if it was blowing, and I don't wanna do that. So when this is hanging upside down in a router table, it's blowing air up toward the table. So that's gonna automatically help prevent stuff from falling in there. My router's hanging in my router table, I'm trying to think, in like, I don't know, in 20 years, I don't think I've ever blown dust out of the router itself. I clean out the router table 'cause I get junk down in there, but I've never actually cleaned out the router itself. Mark says, "I bought a piece of four quarter rough cut and I'm cutting it down to make a face frame. I have a six inch jointer, should I cut it down before jointing or joint it big?" Well, it's always nice to get, anytime you're handling material for any operation, it's nice to get close to the final size just to make your life easier instead of handling big, big, big stuff on your machines. So yeah, I would cut it down so it's reasonably close. Now if you're making face frames, right? Sorry, the questions keep scrolling up as they come in, so I have to go back and find them. Yeah, making a face frame. So if you're gonna end up with inch and a half wide pieces, I wouldn't cut that whole board down to inch and a half and then start on the jointer. I'd cut them to like fours, and then start the joitner so each four inch width can make to face frame pieces. So don't get them so small that they get dangerous to work with is where I'm going with it. But yes, cut it down to make it easier to do. Roy says, "With the Shopsmith MARK 7, do you get better results using the molder head?" Whoops, sorry, the question scrolled up on me. Just give me a sec. "Better results using a molder head with three knives or a router bit to cut a tongue in groove?" Great question. So anytime you're hatching this stuff in your head and thinking it through, think in terms of cuts per minute. So if I run a router bit in a router table at 20,000 RPM, I'm getting 40,000 cuts per minute. I think on a Shopsmith, I'm gonna say they recommend you run that molding head it like 2,500 RPM, does that sound right? Or so, even if it's full table saw speed, that's like 3,500 RPM. So if it's a three knife cutter head at 3,000 RPM to make math easy for my dumb head, that's 9,000 cuts per minute. So 40,000 cuts a minute from the router bit, 9,000 cuts per minute from the molding head. You're probably gonna get a better surface finish from the router bit so you can do an experiment and try it both ways, but I think a router bit will serve you a little bit better. Leo says, sorry, my voice is really scratchy. "I'm thinking about buying a jigsaw. Corded or cordless, and is there a brand you recommend?" Cordless is great. And oh my gosh, the cordless marketplace is incredible today. We're framing April's shop, and we just got done using, of all things, battery operated framing nailers driving 16 penny nails. It's incredible, no air hose being dragged around, was amazing. So yeah, I'd go cordless out of convenience. Brand, yeah, I don't know. I own a Metabo jigsaw that's like probably 20 years old. So I don't own a cordless one, and I haven't shopped for a jigsaw for a really long time. So brand recommendation there, I can't really help you, but I'd go cordless for sure just for the convenience. Dan says, "Can I use most mortising bits I see for sale online in my drill press?" If you, well, yeah I'm not sure. I mean, you can mortise on a drill press, but you have to have a mortising attachment for the drill press. Because a mortise, gonna read this again. Yeah, I'm not sure if you mean a hollow chisel mortiser, you have to have the hollow chisel mortiser attachment for your drill press because a hollow chisel mortiser is made up of an auger in the center and then it's surrounded by the square part that actually makes the square mortise. So yes, you can do that on a drill press. It's not optimal, because a drill press isn't great for taking the kinda load that mortising puts on a machine, but yes it can be done is the answer. But you gotta be able to get that accessory for your drill press. Bob says he's got a Craftsman 1973 radial arm saw. It's in great shape, but he's considering buying a rigid dual compound sliding miter saw on the portable stand. "Would there be any reason to keep the radial arm saw if I get the miter saw?" I don't think so. I had a radial arm saw when I first opened my school, and I used it, but as soon as I went to a sliding miter saw, I got rid of the radial arm. Yes, there are things you can do on a radial arm saw that you can't do on a miter saw. Greater capacity. You can put a dado head on a radial arm, you cannot put one on a miter saw. But if your primary thing is just cross cutting, you're gonna get better results and it's gonna be safer to do on a sliding miter saw than on a radial arm. So, you know, if you wanna keep it as like a device to do rough cutting of lumber, that kinda stuff, rough cutting stuff down to size. I mean, if you've got the space to allow that, great. But if not, I'd let the radial arm go. Hang on, scrolling. All right, Eli says, "Any tips for template routing small parts and saving my fingers?" The GRR-RIPPER products, Micro Jig's GRR-RIPPER products are great at keeping your fingers away from cutting tools. Template cutting small parts and keeping fingers, well I mean, come up with a solution besides template routing small parts? You know, maybe that's a dumb answer, but there does become a point of diminishing returns where you just can't manage that size piece on a router table or whatever. So we're definitely in the world of push pads here. Keep a very minimal amount of waste outside the cut so you're not trimming a lot. That's gonna help you a lot in terms of controlling it. Gary says, "I've got an old six inch jointer with three flat blades. Is the performance of that type of jointer noticeably worse than the newer spiral segmented jointers? I'm just starting to use it with a planer I bought." Spiral heads are great. If the next part of this question is, should you upgrade, it's a very expensive upgrade to go from a conventional head to a spiral head. So I had, for many, many years I had a Powermatic jointer that had conventional, straight knives in it. It's only maybe two years ago I switched to a Laguna jointer with the segmented carbide spiral. I love it. It's incredible surface finish, especially on face jointing is where I see it the most. But that's not to say that the Powermatic was horrible, it wasn't, the reason for my change was capacity. I went from a six inch to an eight inch machine, it wasn't because the flat knives were so bad. So straight knives have been used in jointers and planers like since forever. So I wouldn't just inherently do an upgrade, but if you're upgrading anyway, then I would consider that something that's definitely worth looking at. Dave says, "I saw you on a video, and you were using a product to spray on a table saw so it wouldn't rust. Tell me what it is, wondering if it was a graphite product." So there are some older videos out there, like really older videos, that use some lubricant products that are not on the market anymore. So today I'm using Bostik, B-O-S-T-I-K GlideCote, it's available on Amazon. It's available from woodworking specialty stores. It's an aerosol product, spritz it on, let it dry for a minute, you don't have any here, do you? GlideCoat? 'Cause you use wax or something don't you? Aerosol spray it on, let it flash for a minute, wipe it off. So Bostik GlideCote is the answer to that. Don wants to know, "The router extension for making router bowls is inserted into the router collet with about eighth inch of play. When I insert the router bit into the extension, do I keep the eighth inch clearance or bottom it out?" Well, you always wanna have, I'm not sure I'm fully understanding the question. You wanna keep about two thirds of the shank of a router bit or the collet extension in the collet. So use that general rule of thumb. Hang on. If you're still on Don, let me know if that answers your question. I'm gonna read it again. The router extension for making router bowls inserted into the router collet with about an eighth inch of play. You mean it's still sticking out an eighth of an inch? See if that rule of thumb helps you, Two thirds of the shank of a router bit. Tonight's like router bit night. Two thirds of the shank of the router bit in the collet to make sure you're safely bound in there. Brian says he's trying to make some raised panels for new kitchen cabinets. "I've added to my existing kitchen cabinetry. It's hard," if there's a word before hard, I'm not sure what that is, "to find a router bit that matches the original profile. I'm thinking now of a combination table saw bevel, and then add a simple round over on the router table. Any advice?" Well without seeing the profile, I don't know, but I've been where you are, doing one or two doors to match an existing door, and it can take some pretty creative router bit use to make that happen. You can get custom profiles ground. So depending on how many of these doors you have to do, if you Google router bit manufacturers, you could trace the profile off your existing doors and get them to make you a custom router bit that's that exact profile. A lot of times, probably here's what you're up against is on a commercial basis, when kitchens are made, a lot of times the doors are made on a shaper. Biggest bit we can spin on a router table is three and a half inches. Biggest bit on a shaper is five. So this is where I ran into problems is that that five inch cutter, of course, reaches a lot further into the panel than three and a half inch cutter does. So that changed the dynamic of the profile. So that's what took so much messing around. So you might be up against the same thing, but if that's the case, if it's huge, custom router bit might not be the answer, but yeah, just keep messing with multiple steps until you find the right magical secret sauce combination. Bob says he's got some 12 inch by one inch rough cut pecan, "Plan on using to make wooden stairsteps that are 11 by 36. Would I be better off planing and then using the board in tact or ripping to three to four inch widths and gluing them together to get 11 inch width?" 11 inch pecan. Well... That's pretty wide. You know if the board is completely stable, so it's been kiln dried, it's had plenty of opportunity to acclimate to your shop, man, I don't know. The conservative approach where you can't go wrong is to rip it into narrower pieces, and then glue up your stair treads. If I was doing it, I would probably take that approach because I'd hate to see my stair treads go hinky in a year. That being said, you could probably get away with doing this in one piece, I'm just not 100% sure. I hate to add work to your workload, but probably the 100% correct way to do it is to do narrower strips, glue them together to the width you want. Then you'll have a more stable board. Evan wants to know, "Should you have router bits for different kinds of wood?" Nope, just different applications. Wood doesn't matter. John is asking, "My new 10 inch bandsaw came with a three eighths inch blade. I don't remember the teeth per inch. What would you recommend for a second blade for other work? It can only go up to three and a half inches So is the three eighths good enough for re-sawing?" So yeah, you're, in addition to this capacity, the other number is that maybe three eighths is as wide a blade as that saw'll take, I don't know. You'd have to look at your owner's manual for that. Three eighths, it's probably gonna serve you fine for re-sawing up to a three and a half inch capacity. And then my go-to blade in my bandsaw is a quarter inch four tooth per inch blade, that's what's in there 90% of the time. And so that would probably be my second blade. It'll let you do fairly tight curves, and you could go down, but I dunno, I'd stick with that, somewhere, quarter inch four tooth per inch blade would be my daily use that's in there all the time bandsaw blade. Matthew says, "How do I determine if my bandsaw blade is tensioned properly? Is it possible to over-tension a blade?" It is possible to over-tension a blade, which often leads to a really bad sound, which is pew, and the blade breaks. So there's a couple of things you can do to check tension. So if this is your bandsaw blade, saw's unplugged, when you push on the side of a bandsaw blade, it should deflect between an eighth and a quarter inch. Now I know this is very subjective because of course if I really lean on it, I could probably push it a half inch, but with a little bit of pressure, it shouldn't deflect more than a quarter of an inch. The other thing I can tell you is if it's a brand new blade, and it's sharp, and you're cutting, and it's really, really hard to follow the line, add a little tension. 'Cause what a bandsaw blade relies on to have spine is the tension on the blade. So if it doesn't have enough tension, not enough spine, when you push on the front, it's pushing away from the cut, it's deflecting. And that makes it really hard to follow a line. So if that's the case, add a little bit of tension. If you do any re-sawing on your bandsaw, so you re-saw a piece, and then look at the face that you have just cut, put a straight edge on the face you've just cut. And if putting a straight edge on there, that piece has a little bit of a concave or convex in it, that's called a barrel cut, you don't have enough tension on the blade. So it's better because of the opportunity to break the blade, it's better to start low, and then slowly dial up to these parameters I'm describing, rather than start too high. Jim says, "How can I stop the little burns or little rough spots when using oil-based varnish?" "Little bums", I dunno what that is. "Little bums or little rough spots when using oil-based varnish." So a couple of things. You can dilute varnish up to about 10%, and that'll help it flow out better, so that's one thing, try diluting. Definitely on the first coat, I would dilute, see how that goes, and maybe dilute every coat if that's giving you good results. The other thing, are you brushing on doesn't say. If you're brushing on, and I never knew this until I did some video on finishing, there are brushes and there are brushes, and it doesn't pay to skimp. So when you're brushing on a varnish, you really want to have a brush that's got what's called a chisel tip. And if you look at it closely, if you take the brush out of the package at the home center and you look at it this way, you'll actually see the bristles come up to a sharp point. What that does is it reduces your bristle contact with the material, and it really helps it lay out flatter, a smoother finish. That also, if we're in the perfect world, those bristles are tapered, so they're wide at the ferrule and thin at the tip, same thing. That'll help you lay that finish out more smoothly. And then last step is called tipping. Might be getting that name wrong, I think it's called tipping. But what you do is you get your varnish out and then while it's still wet, gently pull the brush through, and you're holding the brush almost perfectly plumb, almost perfectly vertical. So think of it almost like a squeegee. You're taking that chisel tip, and you're pulling it through the varnish just to help level it out as a last step. So try that and see if it helps you. The little bums part of the question, I don't know what that is. Drew says, "Can I use any wood for making salt and pepper shakers? I have some old oak flooring." I think that'd be fine. You've made salt shakers for sure, right? And April made hers out of pine, so- Yeah, I don't think you'd have, I mean if there's kind of a food safe question here, I don't think you'd have an issue. I'd maybe stay away from the tropical woods that are real oily 'cause you don't want that to migrate into your salt, but oak should be fine, so sure. Charles says, "Can you use eight inch dado blades on a 10 inch table saw?" Yep, so I actually hear this question a lot. So when we call this thing a 10 inch table saw, that's only the main blade is gonna be 10 inches. When you go to a dado head, it's either gonna be a six or an eight. Are there 10 inch dado heads out there? Yes, I've used them on big industrial machines, but you're not gonna put a 10 inch dado head on a standard 10 inch table saw. And the reason for that, you know, kinda think about the physics. When we're using a 10 inch blade, the curve for that is maybe an eighth inch. When we're using a dado head, it's like three quarters of an inch. So with that huge blade and that huge amount of material we're taking out, that just would not be a good dynamic. The other thing is why buy so much more blade than you need? Probably 98% of my dados are three eights of an inch deep, half the thickness of three quarter inch plywood. There's like no compelling reason for me to have a 10 inch dado that can stick out of my saw three inches 'cause I'm never gonna cut a three inch deep dado in my life. So yeah, an eight inch is a great choice for a 10 inch table saw. Leonard says, "Can one use a sharp chisel to lathe wood rather than a special tool?" Well, like if you're thinking like a bench chisel, no. Do you have a bench chisel handy? Yeah, that'd be fine, and a lathe chisel? The cutting dynamic between a bench chisel and a lathe chisel are completely different things. Thank you. Coming right behind you. I have these carbide tip ones. Oh not, do you have any standard steel? Part of, I do but they're packed away. Okay, so on a bench chisel for one thing, when we look at this angle, this is commonly bench chisels are either 25 or 30 degrees. On a lathe chisel, if you think of this being used flat ways for lathe work, this angle is like seven degrees. It's just barely off of vertical, it's barely off of plumb. So yeah, it's a whole different cutting dynamic. To use this chisel on a lathe would be a hugely dangerous thing, don't do that. Jack says, "I'd like to build a toboggan. However, I can not get any air dried lumber in Southern California. Have you had any success with kiln dried when steam building or steam bending?" I've done only a tiny, tiny bit of steam bending. So I'm not a great resource for this. When we did do it, everything we worked with was air dried, not kiln dried, so I don't know. I'm not ready to say that means you can't do kiln dried, 'cause I just don't know enough about the whole steam thing. So you need a better resource than I in order to fully answer that question. All right, well we've kinda hit the end of the question thing here. Sam is in the background here, running the boards as she always does a great job of and feeding the questions to me. So Sam, just let me know if, fill me in on the messages here if we're out of questions. While we're doing that, we're filling in a couple more, maybe, hang on. All right, Sam says, "One sec." So we'll give this, and we're down to just a couple minutes left anyway. So one of the things I always like to know is where you folks are watching from. I told you I'm in Texas. So tell me where you're watching from, I love watching that. Our next live, and I will be in my own shop for that, will be in February, second Thursday of the month, 7:00 p.m. And here's a new question. Dave says, "Do you ever use a scroll saw, and how much deflection be for best use of blade?" You know, I own a scroll saw, but kinda like the steam bending question, I'm not your best guy for this. I own it, I use it every once in a while. I don't know a lot about scroll saw blades. I know enough to throw a blade on there, make a curvy cut, and then I'm done. So I just don't know a lot about scroll saws. PS Wood, which is PSWood.com, they sell Timber Wolf bandsaw blades. They sell a scroll saw, they sell scroll saw blades. They're a wonderful resource. So look them up online, PSWood.com, and give them a call or shoot them a message, and they'll be great at helping you out with scroll saw questions. All right, so in the world of general announcements, thanks to Titebond for sponsoring this and helping to keep these live sessions free for you. Hopefully you enjoyed this remote session. April, you wanna jump in here and say anything? Wanna talk about your shop for a second? We have six minutes left. So you're getting kind of a little bit of a new building out there. Brand new building from scratch. It's gonna be 3,000 square feet. Not quite split down the middle. Once side's gonna be a woodworking shop, the other side's gonna be a metal working shop. And yeah, I've done a little bit of pretty much everything before. A little bit of framing, a little bit of electrical, insulating, sheeting, but never anything to this scale. So that's why George and I are really good buddies. And I said, "Hey, what do you think about coming down to Texas and lending me your brain." All right. "And your back." And where are you this weekend? Tell them. I'm in Houston, in Spring, Texas at the new Rockler store that they're opening up in the Houston area- And all day? Or how does that schedule work? Yeah I'm gonna be here from nine till 12 in the morning. And I'm at a Rockler store in Schaumburg, Illinois, February 17th. So if you're in the, where are you? If you're in the Houston area, you can see April this Saturday. If you're near Schaumburg, Illinois, you can see me February 17th. Another question just came screaming in, oh no, maybe not. Oh, so Sam is telling us pretty much every state in the continental US is represented, plus New Zealand, Canada, Quintana Roo, which is in Mexico, so that's pretty cool, that might be our first foray into Mexico, so thanks for that. Thanks Sam for being behind the boards. Thanks April for letting me use your Wi-Fi and also participating in the live here. And apologies to you folks for not being in my own shop, but hopefully this went okay. And other than that, I guess I will see in a month. See ya.