WWGOA LIVE! March 2018

Drawers! You had to like insert English phrases. El drawer-o's. Are you gonna be staying mostly over here? I don't know.

It probably wouldn't hurt to turn the lights on over there just in case. I can't. Well, Sam says that we're live. She just told me right here. So Ginny, we must be live.

Are you ready? I'm ready. I'm ready and the technology is ready. The coffee is ready. Ginny's got a big mug of coffee and it's 7:00 P.M.

at night. So that's just weird. Although, you're planning on staying up late tonight, anyway, right? You're gonna? I just don't sleep.

You're gonna do stuff. She's a college student so she has nothing but studying all the time. Or something like that. Yeah. All right well, we're ready to go.

Are you ready to go Ginny? So first off, a big thank you to our sponsors Titebond. Without them this probably wouldn't be free for you folks to watch. So we're very, very grateful that Titebond supports this and keeps this whole thing going. So I'm gonna scroll to questions here.

John says, for personal use, how many routers do you think are needed? Question's jumped on me a little. I've got one in my router table, one with a fixed base and a plunge base and a third pound router for edging and such. So, I'd say John you're in pretty good shape. I used to joke about the New Yankee Workshop, that Norm Abram rarely changed router bits, he only changed routers.

I'm not quite in the that position. I think, I like the idea of having one dedicated to the router table so that you're not constantly taking it in and out. And then it sounds like your other one is a combo machine where one motor will do a plunge and a fixed. I like that too. And then the smaller pound routers, if you're not familiar with those.

They look like this. This is a little Bosch Colt. This one's in a plunge base. Sometimes they're just in a fixed base. But these are very handy.

You can use 'em one handed. They're really good for smaller work. So yeah, I think you've got a pretty good complement of machines there. It's great to be able to dedicate them to specific tasks, kinda like it sounds like you're doing. All right, next one.

Mark says, what is your preferred way to remove glue squeeze out? Wipe it off, wait until it skins over, tape prior to assembly, or just take it off with a scraper or a chisel? So what I do is when there's glue squeeze out I let it sit. I never, ever wipe. Well, I'm gonna qualify the wipe it off part.

There's an occasion or two where I wipe it off. I almost never wipe it off. So what I do is put the parts together, let the glue beads form and somewhere in like 15 minutes, 20 minutes or so, it skins over and it'll start to get rubbery. My analogy I always use is like caulk. It'll get rubbery like caulk.

And at that point you can use a good, clean putty knife or a chisel and you can just slice it right off the surface. So a couple qualifiers. When I say chisel. This is one of my really good. You don't have to zoom on this, Ginny.

They'll get it, I think. This is one of my really good joinery chisels. This is a glue chisel. I only use this for cleaning glue off. I don't sharpen it on the wet stone.

I sharpen it on a belt sander. So it needs to be, you could just go to a home center and buy a real marginal chisel for cleaning glue off. You don't need a great joiner chisel for that. And the other qualifier, when I do wipe glue off? Because I do sometimes do it.

On projects like an end grain cutting board, that's a great example. I'll go ahead and wipe the glue off. And the reason for that is that after the glue is dry, you're gonna remove so much material from that uneven face of an end grain cutting board that the problem with wiping glue is you smear it around. And you leave a lot of residue behind. But by the time you get an end grain cutting board surface so it's nice and flat, you're gonna take all that residue off.

So in that application I do go ahead and wipe it. But as a general rule, edge to edge glue ups, mortise and tenon joint where a little bit leaks out, dove tail joint where a little bit leaks out, I never wipe those. I let the glue bead and get rubbery. And then I go back and I cut it off. Tom says, hey George, I'm using CA glue on ambrosia maple the grayest parts are figure.

Should I do this before sanding or just apply that list grit of say, 220, as a finish. I'm gonna be using general finish armor seal. I would do it while the wood is still raw. So I assume what you're doing is you're using CA to kind of firm up any funky parts that are in the wood. And I would definitely do that before any finish goes on.

I would do that while the wood is still raw, get that all sanded on. Treat the CA glue then, like the wood. So it all gets sanded to the same point, the same level. Then put your finish over the top of that. This is, let's see, as long as we're on CA glue let's do a little.

Now I'll give you a zoom, zoom, zoom-a-zoom, Ginny. This is not ambrosia maple. This is soft maple. But as long as we're talking about CA glue and repairing stuff. If you come in, Ginny, on this knot down here.

And tell me when you's there. This knot, this is silver maple which we also call soft maple. Look at the absolutely beautiful grain right there. This knot had a bunch of little spider web cracks in it and it's gonna be a desktop and this is the front of the desk, so that's a work surface right there. So I wanted to get rid of those.

That's an application where I used CA glue. I filled in the little spider web cracks and then what you wanna do is bead the CA glue up higher than the surrounding wood. And then once the glue is completely dry I came back with a cabinet scraper and leveled that off. So now it just looks like a knot and it doesn't have those little, those fine little cracks in it. This is my desk I'm building.

All right, let's see if we got another one. CA glue. Mike says, how can you get a straight edge on plywood using a square if the plywood edge the square is resting on is crooked? Well, you can't. So order of operations.

If at the end of the day what you're looking to do is cross cut that sheet of plywood you're gonna have to come up with a way to produce one straight edge. Let me, so Ginny do you remember, you used a straight edge with a circular saw when you built your desk. That's ringing a bell. And I think, if you go by where those Red Milwaukee boxes are and look against the wall, I think it's there. 'Cause what, if we could find this thing.

Not that. It should be a piece of metal with plywood. Nope. With plywood glued to it. I mean, with plywood screwed to it.

Probably more back in the corner behind the mortiser. You are in approximately the right spot. The reason I'm asking Ginny to find this is if we can, the thing that the straight edge is made out of is pretty cool. No luck? I don't think it's there.

Only if a padlock qualifies. I don't think it's back here. Okay. So what Ginny and I used for a straight edge when she had to cut a bunch of plywood down, is a steel stud from a home center. And boy did that work great.

They're available in eight foot and 10 foot lengths. So you end up with a steel channel that's nice and straight 'cause it's a steel stud. So, what I would do is use some kind of a straight edge like a steel stud, guide your circ saw on that so you get a straight edge on the plywood and then square from that. I mean your thinking is right here. If the first edge is kerflewy, then there's no way that you're gonna get a good edge off of that.

So you've gotta get a good reference edge. You've gotta get a good edge to start with and then work from there. Stan says, I asked a question about burning cherry and the sandpaper on my 1632 drum sander a few weeks ago and you were dead on. I installed a more coarse grit paper and slowed down the feed rate, no more burning. So that's good, good news.

Now the issue I'm having is the stock frequently stalls in the drum standard creating snipe at multiple places. I've tried cleaning the conveyor belt. Could it be time to replace the conveyor or is there something else you would recommend? So, one thing I find with that. So, 1632 sander, we're talking about a surface sander.

Let me think a second. 'Cause I've got one. This would be a great opportunity to run a machine. So let's do, let's do, no. Let's do this.

Let's move in that direction. We're gonna kick some lights on. We're gonna run a sander. Let's see if we can kinda simulate what Stan's talking about here. Again, I think we have.

I've got an extension cord here. We've got stuff. We're gonna be able to make this happen. Walk this way. This is where we're headed.

All right Stan, so. A couple a things. If you point at that machine I'll just keep talking. I'll do a. All right.

What can happen. This is the machine that Stan was asking about, a 1632 surface sander. And there's a bunch of tools laying here because I'm just getting dust collection specifically to this machine. But I'm gonna rob it from this bandsaw over here. There we go.

Let me make sure I actually have power, power, power! Okay. So, this is the machine Stan was asking about. Let's do this for ya. Do this right in your road.

Is that better? There, the conveyor here is what pushes the material through. And then Ginny, I'm gonna ask you to get me that white remote that's laying on that table right there. The conveyor is what propels the material through. So it's possible, Stan, a couple things.

One would be maybe the conveyor needs to be replaced. Or maybe it needs to be tensioned. So as you're feeding material and you get this stalling action, one of the things I would do is look at the drive motor is right here. And what I'd wanna know is, when this thing stalls on ya, is the drive motor continuing to spin? But the conveyor is no longer moving?

So let's do a pass here. And I think, Ginny, if you come. If you zoom kind of on this little out feed area. So there we got the conveyor going. We'll get some dust collection on this thing.

All right, no stalling here yet. I kinda wanna see if I can make it stall. So. We'll go one more pass here. All right, we got a little bit of a stall.

A little bit of a stall on that last pass. And what, I was very intentionally being way more aggressive than I would normally be. I have 120 grit paper on here right now and what happened when that stalled is the conveyor was still feeding but the board had stalled. So one of the things that I find on my sander is that when I'm surfacing this face but the bottom has not yet been sanded, sometimes the conveyor might slip. When both faces have been flattened by the machine, the conveyor has a much better bite.

So I think part of that is just the surface might be a tiny bit irregular, the original face might be a tiny bit irregular. So, generally my work around for that is I'm more conservative then with my first passes, taking a lighter pass. Until I have a good, flat face. Then flip that over, start working on the other face and then that allows me to be more aggressive. So a couple things to check.

One is, when it stalls. Look at the drive motor. See if the drive motor's shaft is turning but the conveyor is not. In which case, I would tension the conveyor a little bit more. If the conveyor is just consistently slipping under your material, then it's possible that you need to replace your conveyor.

All right, head back to home base. Ginny says, yes. Where are we? Bruce says, I just purchased a used Craftsmen contractor table saw. Is the alina cut fence any good?

I have no idea. I don't know what a alina cut fence is. I've never used one. Can you, Ginny, go walk that way and get a bandsaw blade? I think they are coiled up.

No, turn left sooner. Turn right now. No, your other, go walk past the CNC machines. Yeah, weave through there. And I think there's bandsaw blades possibly laying back there all coiled up.

Yes, no, maybe? Anything? Bueller? Bueller? All right Ginny's bringing us a bandsaw blade because Matthew's question is, how do you store your bandsaw blades?

I love getting this question. Yeah, please don't throw 'em! Because this is a great thing to show. This is a great visual. Okay.

Moving the work bench. For this, Ginny, you gotta be kinda. Well sorta head to to with the camera. So first off, let's have a bandsaw blade. Much like this one.

All right, so bandsaw blade the first thing I want to do is coil this up. So what you do is you step on it, you grab it, you swig it, you pivot it. And then it coils, just like that. Okay, one more time in slow mo. All right, I intentionally did that fast just to be a jerk.

I'm dominantly right handed. So I'm stepping on it with my right foot. My right hand, I'm turning inside out. I'm getting my thumb to point outside my hip, grab the bandsaw blade. This hand is gonna come all the way around, 360 degrees while it's going down toward the floor.

So right foot, inside out, 360 degrees. Na, na, na, na, na. That creates the coils. Now we're not done yet, because especially a larger blade, this is a half inch blade. A larger blade, this has a lot of spring to it.

And if that's just hanging on the wall on a peg board and the door slams this thing could pop like a bear trap. So what you wanna do next to finish this, is a wire tie, a little bit of masking tape. You need something on here that's gonna confine that and hold it together so it can't spring, all right? So, beauty of video. You can, once we have this archived, you can stop, rewind, look at this over and over again to get that coiling motion down.

But that's my. That, Matthew, there is my answer for how I store bandy saw blades. Wha. How's your framing? Are you happy with me here or do you want me to move?

Okie and dokie? All right. Bill says, have you used your Shaper Origin yet and what have you made with it? Well, I'll get this. So, because this would be too hard to guide you to.

Coming right back, Bill! Here we go! Coming right back! Right back. Right back.

Ginny's out of coffee. You wanna go in my office and zap some more coffee? You can. I drank all of it. Oh, that was the last of it?

I'm so sorry. What a horrible father I am. I did not prepare enough coffee. So Bill's asking about the Shaper Origin. This is a cool, cool product.

Here's the deal. This looks like a handheld, why don't you come at me? Yeah, thanks Ginny. This looks like a handheld router. Which it sort of is.

Except what it really is, is a handheld CNC and let's spin it around here. What happens when you use this is that, I'm on the opposite side of it. Normally I'd be where you are. Holding it from this side, holding it from your side. You guide it, following a path.

And then this router motor moves independently of this base. And it's controlled by a tool path that you've created here. Let me get outta this screen. So, when the tool path is showing up here and you're following it, the router motor is independently adjusting its position X,Y. That's this way and this way.

And Z, up and down. So it turns this into a handheld CNC. It's incredible, it's incredible technology. The way it works, what I don't have here and that's why we're getting this message on the screen, is tape goes down on your work surface. And the device reads that tape.

And that's how it knows where it is in space. So Bill, what I've done so far is I've played with it. I've done a lot of lettering with it which is really straight forward and really easy to do. The desktop that I showed you earlier, that's my goal is in one of the corners of the top I'm gonna cut my initials in as a negative using this. And then I'm gonna cut a positive, an inlay, and put those in.

So that's gonna be my first real big project with it is to actually work on my desktop. So, it's been a blast to mess with but I need a few more hours in the day to get a little bit more time on it so I'm more comfortable with it. Titebond sells more than one kind of glue. Glue, glue. This is Mike's question.

I use number three for all my glue ups, does it matter? So, we get a lot of glue questions. Which is good. You want to use the right product. Titebond original, Titebond two, Titebond three.

So, what Mike's asking is, he just uses three all the time. And there's nothing wrong with that. You're getting possibly more than you need from three which is better than getting not enough from original. So not enough would be, you're building a planter that's gonna live outside and be full of dirt and you put it together with this. You don't have water proof or water resistant with this.

So the lie in the sand is original is good for cabinets, indoor furniture, that kind of stuff. Two, is water resistant. So something like patio furniture, an Adirondack chair. Two would be a great choice for that. Three is water proof.

So if you were doing, this is what I use on end grain cutting boards. This is what you would use, if I was doing a planter that's gonna have wet dirt in it all the time, I would use three. Now that being said, if you wanna use three for everything you could use this for your cabinets and indoor furniture as well. You're gonna be fine. So to answer the question, you're over doing it with three which is a good problem to have.

Kirk says, is there a simple rule of thumb or math formula to figure the amount of expansion or contraction in inches that I can use to calculate how much a panel glue up will grow or shrink across the grain? So, yes. Let me see if I still own something. I'm gonna go in here. And I shall just come to you, Ginny, rather than you come to me.

So this is a pretty cool gizmo. This is a Lee Valley product. Wood movement reference guide. So what one does is find your species. So let's do red oak.

There's oak, red. And what it's telling you then. A, B, ABC. Shrinkage, chart movement value and the movement ratio. These numbers, when we relate 'em to what's going on here, will give us expressed as a percentage or a raw number, how much wood movement you're gonna get.

So then you can say, well okay, the piece is X number of inches wide. Because of its width it's gonna move a certain percentage therefore that percentage of width is, whatever number it is. So, this chart would let you effectively calculate and there's sample calculations right here that you can go through using these numbers to see how to use 'em. But in any case, this chart from Lee Valley would let you calculate definitively how much wood movement you're gonna get over dry times of winter to humid times of summer. All right, Kirk?

Mark says, George, what is your favorite type of hinge to apply to cabinets? Well the favorite part is kind of an, it depends. In my introductory cabinet making class, so stay right there, Ginny, I'm coming back. In my introductory class, we use standard face frame hinges. And the reason that we use those is because they're really, really simple to install.

Over lay style door. Very easy to put the hinges on the face frame and attach 'em and get everything lined up. So at this level of cabinet, at this level of instruction, that works out really well. Then, but if I'm doing cabinets for me I'll show you what I like. If I'm doing cabinets for muah, then I like euro style hinges.

That's what's on this cabinet. What do you notice about the hinges on this cabinet? Well, what one might notice is that you can't see the hinges on this cabinet. They're euro hinges, they're concealed hinges. When we open the door you can see 'em.

Am I in the right spot, Ginny? Okay. You can see 'em here. But when the door is closed you cannot. So then one step further.

Watch when I close this door. I love this. Those are blum hinges, B-L-U-M. And they're blue motion is what that's called. That is the ultimate in soft close door.

You can't slam that door closed. I really like that a lot. So like I said, if I'm doing cabinets for myself, if I'm doing custom work for somebody then I'm almost always gonna go with euro soft close hinges like these. Okay. I'm gonna get some junk out of the way.

Well, it's not really junk, I guess. Okay, well that's half past, huh? So halfway through here. A couple of things. One, again, thank you to Titebond who sponsors this and helps bring lives to you for free.

Free is a great price, I think. The other thing, if you're not getting the WWGOA newsletter, you can. The newsletter itself is free. It comes out, I want to say once a week or so. Don't hold me to that frequency.

But that way when we get new posts on the website you're made aware of that. So you can sign up for that. You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And then I'm gonna go back to questions. Sid says, I'm building a dresser out of walnut.

How close can a mortise be to the outside edge? I tried a quarter of an inch but it seems too little wood is left. Is 3/8ths better? Or is there a general rule of thumb? Mortise on a dresser.

Trying to picture where the mortise on a dresser is going. But I think, I don't know. I would be okay with a quarter inch but then I wonder what the problem was. Like, was the problem that, if the tenon is too tight that you're pushing in there you admittedly don't have a lot of skin on the outside. Or was it a stress issue that then it fractured just from the piece moving around on its own?

I would have thought a quarter inch between the mortise and the outside wall would have been okay. Because I've used that on mortise and tenon joints I've used on picture frames where it's three quarter inch stock, one quarter inch tenon. Everything is mortise and tenon together at the corners. And it worked fine there. So I'm surprised it didn't work.

If it's not working for you then yeah, bump that up to 3/8ths of an inch to give yourself more wall towards the outside. Kevin. I have the DeWalt planer. It seems to bog down when I plane wide boards. Would a helical cutter head plane it better compared to the knives that came with it?

Well, I don't think a helical head is gonna buy you like the feeling of more power. The big thing with the helical head is increased cut quality. I would say. I mean, I've got the DeWalt 734 and I pretty routinely do 12 inch wide stock on there. You do, admittedly, have to take light passes.

You can't take off a 1/16th of an inch at a time. So I would pay attention to how flat is your material, how much material are you taking off per pass? Are the knives sharp? And I think primarily here it's about how much material per pass you're taking off. I think I'm probably somewhere between a 64th and a 32nd per pass.

Especially on wider stock with any bench top planer. They have universal motors, not induction motors so they don't have the power that a bigger planer with an induction motor has. So you just gotta take it a little bit easier on feed and cut. But I wouldn't. I don't think upgrading to a helical head is gonna buy you un-boggedness.

I don't think that's gonna stop it from bogging down. Rick says, is there any use these days for biscuit joiners? You mentioned in a previous video that edge joining is stronger than the wood itself then no biscuits or dowels are needed. So when would you use biscuits? What a great question.

I'll tell ya, I do use biscuits. In fact I used 'em just the other day. And one of my primary reasons, for me there's a couple things. One of my primary biscuit applications is alignment. If you could come in on this, jean beiev.

Thank you. Let's say we have a plywood field. Probably not CV plywood, but whatever. We have a plywood field to which we're gonna attach a solid wood edge. When the edge goes on I wanna do everything I can to make sure it comes out flush.

If the edge ends up too high, I have a lot of work to do to make 'em flush. If it ends up too low, that's really bad because plywood veneers are so thin I'm probably gonna sand through the veneer before I get these flushed. So I would use biscuits in this application to register these parts together and help make sure that they stay nice and flush. Another place that I use biscuits fairly often is in applications where I'm putting parts together like this and I don't wanna take the time to cut a dado. I don't wanna setup a dado head.

So I can biscuit biscuit or festool a domino to get loose tenons in there and then put those parts together and then have a really, really strong joint. On the desk that's behind me. Let me show ya. It's actually festool dominoes in here but it's the same concept as though I were using biscuits. Good thing this is sitting here.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! That's not glued. All right. Where are we? So what I did on this one, rails and legs.

There are festool dominoes in here. But this could just as easily have been a biscuit joint because I didn't want to take the time to cut mortise and tenon and for this project it doesn't require the strength of mortise and tenon. A biscuit joint would have been, biscuit joint, would have been fine. So all the rails on this could have easily been put together with biscuits. And then if you come to this one, Ginny.

This is a, this is like what I was just showing ya. These parts are the rails that the drawer slides, honey you gotta zoom out a little so they can see the context here. There you go. These rails are where the drawer slides will go for the drawer that's gonna go in here. So they're simply butted into the front rail and the back rail.

And I don't wanna run screws through those rails so I've got, again, I've got dominoes in here. But this would have been a great application to put biscuits at the end of this into the face of this in order to hold these parts together. So yeah, there's still plenty of application for biscuits. I especially like 'em with gravy. A little chicken fried steak.

Quit rolling your eyes at me, daughter. Chicken fried steak, gravy, biscuits, yeah! A fried egg, yeah! Who needs arteries? Let 'em close.

They're overrated. John says, referring back to the question about straightening a long edge. Wouldn't it create a much nicer edge to use your router instead of a circular saw? Sure, it's a great idea. It just depends on where you're going with that.

If that first straight edge cut is just a preliminary cut and then all sorts of other cuts are still gonna happen. Like from the circ saw it's gonna end up at your table saw, mine is right over there. Then why bother with a router? A circ saw would be faster. But if that's the finished edge on your plywood, yeah, a router would do a great job.

It would be better. How are you planning to finish your desktop? I'm gonna use my standard formula which I just did on a bunch of cabinets over here today. Which is a base coat of Zinsser seal coat. Seal coat is actually de-waxed shellac, is what the product is.

And then a top coat of aqua coat. Aqua coat is water based lacquer. The specific one I use all the time is, it's called Table Top Cross Linking lacquer. A really durable finish. I've put it on kitchen tables and desks before.

I really like it a lot. So the rationale, the reason I do this formula and I've been doing this for a bunch of years already, is you're probably aware that if water or a water based finish goes unto wood, a lot of times it fuzzes, it raises the grain. Well, that desk is sanded nice and smooth right now. I don't wanna raise the grain. So the shellac will seal up the wood.

And then the water based finish goes over the shellac so the water based never hits the wood. So I don't have the issue with grain raising. The other thing with the water based is it's really clear. And what our eyes, including mine, are used to seeing in most finishes is just a little bit of an amber tone. And in fact, with that desk I wanted to amber up just a little bit.

The shellac will do that. Now, if you don't wanna do that. If you don't wanna go that route you can use products like transtint aniline dye and you could add the right aniline dye directly to the water based lacquer to get that amber and then just go ahead and put the water based lacquer on there. And you could achieve the same color effect. But what I do like about my process is, like I said with the shellac as a base coat, then I don't get an issue with grain raising.

The stuff I sprayed earlier today is all red oak. And if the water base had gone right on there, there would have been a lot of sanding after the fact to get the grain to lay back down. Mike says, how do you maintain spacing of inset drawers? I finished inside and outside face of drawers and they still shrink at least an eighth to 3/16ths of an inch. Spacing is then uneven and looks terrible.

That's a lot. How big are your drawer fronts? 'Cause that's a lot of shrink. It makes me wonder. I mean, because a 12 inch wide piece of red oak, if it's been dried to six to 8% moisture content, which is kiln dry.

I would expect a 12 inch wide piece to move maybe between an eighth and a quarter of an inch. And that's, the expansion and contraction thing is lineal. So if 12 inches moves an eighth, six inches would move a 16th, three inches would move a 32nd. So, that's a lot of movement. I wonder if, do you own a moisture meter, Mike?

I would meter your wood and see where the moisture content is at before you start making the drawer fronts. 'Cause that seems, unless they're really, really wide drawers that seems like a lot of shrink. That being said, if you're doing inset drawers all the time you can't stop the wood from moving. So it's gonna, if you're at the humid time of the year. If this is August and it's made to fit 3/32nds cap top and bottom, it is gonna shrink away from that and that gap is gonna change over time.

There's nothing we can do about that. Don says, not having a lot of experience with water based top finishes. I'm working on a desktop made from pine. How many coats of top finish would you recommend? Well there's a lot of it depends.

It depends on the finish. It depends on how you're putting it on. If you're wiping finish on then it goes on thinner. I spray all my finishes on. So I spray with an HVLP on a turbine and I do two coats of top coat on a product like this.

So for me, then I would do, if all you're doing is the water base, I would do three. I get one coat out of my shellac then I get two coats out of the top coat from my spray gun. And that's, I guess kitchen tables and stuff, that's been great for me. Plenty durable. James says, I'm making an exterior door out of walnut.

What would be a good selection of wood to make the door frame out of? The door is an inch and three quarters thick, 36 by 80. So you mean the jam? The frame for the door? If you're gonna paint it I would use poplar or birch or maple, that would paint like a dream.

And it's very, and they're all three hardwoods. So they'd have plenty of strength. So yeah, I would go poplar, birch, or walnut for paint grade doorframe would be great. Gary says, I have a wooden makeup table that I have prepped to paint for my grand daughter. There are a few areas that ornate and I was gonna spray.

But none of the paint suppliers, whoops. I scrolled too far. But none of the paint suppliers have spray cans that match the quarts of paint I was going to roll. There are a few HVLP sprayers that are quite inexpensive out there. Would I be wasting my money?

HVLP is a great way to go. Let me show ya something. Entertain the folks at home, Ginny. Tell 'em a joke, or something. Tell 'em about college.

Tell 'em something. It's really hard. It's not hard. It's the easiest time in your life. It's midterms.

All right. So what I went to get was this thing. This a very cool product. Preval and I'll source this when I answer the questions. When I sit down and answer the questions later.

This is a can, this is an aerosol canister of compressed air, I guess. It's got a hose on the bottom. This is a glass jar. You put your finish in the glass jar. You screw this on top.

And whatever's in that jar, you just turned into a can of aerosol spray paint, spray shellac, spray lacquer. Whatever's in here is gonna get sucked up through that and spray out the nozzle. So this might be worth trying. Certainly less expensive than and HVLP and it's a great thing to have in the shop. If I have to go someplace and do a touch up on finish that I had already applied.

Pour a little water based lacquer in there. Take that to the job site. This is a great way to go. Some home centers have these, but like I said, when I sit down and answer questions at 8 o'clock my time, I'll find a link where that can be sourced for you. However, if you're doing a lot of finishing an HVLP is always, I spray all my stuff.

So it's not a bad direction to go. I just got a CNC which was made in Colombia. What bits should I get for a wide variety of jobs? What material? I'm not sure what you mean by what material.

If you look at Freud's website, Amana's website you'll see that they sell, a lot of them sell starter kits for CNC. Starter, cut router bit kits for CNC. That would be a great way to go. You're gonna get a ball nose cutter, a V-bit, a straight bit, spiral cutters. So that'll give you a good assortment of where to start.

Yeah, I don't know what you mean by what material. So, if you're still watching Bill, you can clarify for me on that one. Either the same Bill or another Bill says, I purchased my first joiner. Way to go! The stand I got is too tall, causing me to put weight on the boards with my hands higher than my shoulders.

That seems crazy high. I'm capable to take a reciprocating saw and lower the table. What's the recommended height the jointer plate should be? I would want my joiner bed to be about even with the palm of my hand when I'm standing like this. Am I good spot for that, Ginny?

So, same with a work bench. That's a good rule of thumb for your work bench. Just stand like this and that's a good height for a bench. That's a good height for a jointer. It's about the same height as your table saw.

That's a good spot. Christopher says, I found a table online that uses half inch hardwood glued to a half inch plywood in a brick pattern. Hardwood bricks were approximately six by 24. Will the plywood prevent movement on the hardwood blocks? The plans don't call for any spacing.

Ugh, that seems hinky to me. 'Cause six inch bricks are pretty wide. Now what, the other thing that affects this is when material is super thin that also mitigates its opportunity to expand and contract across the grain. So it sounds like, plans. I would contact whoever is selling the plans and ask 'em this question, what's the work around.

'Cause this seems weird to me. Anytime you're gluing solid wood to a manmade substrate, that is asking for trouble. So one question then would be, half inch hardwood. Oh, so he does say. Half inch by six by 24 bricks.

Man, I feel like those six by 24 bricks are gonna expand or contract and lead to a problem. I would check with whoever came up with the plan and ask 'em how they handled that. Rick says, have you ever used a milling table on drill press? Nope. Matthew.

Oh, a hand tool question. This is weird for me because I'm not a huge hand tool guy. The difference between a rabbet plane and a shoulder plane. When would both be utilized? Yeah Matthew, I'm gonna be the wrong guy for this.

I own a shoulder plane. I was gonna dig it out of my drawer but I don't think I own a rabbet plane, so I don't know. I'm just not enough of a hand tool guy. Ask Matt Cremona. Matt Cremona and Jay Bates are great hand tool guys.

Can you sand plywood on a drum sander? You can. You gotta be really, really, really careful. I just sent, I just did a bunch of work with Baltic birch. And I sanded that on my drum sander, my surface sander to clean it up.

And it worked fine. But you just gotta be real careful about not taking too much off and sanding through the face veneer. And keeping in mind that face veneer on Baltic birch is quite a bit thicker than face veneer on red oak cabinet grade plywood. I probably wouldn't even bother. I probably wouldn't even try sending cabinet grade plywood through my sander.

I think it's too thin. Tim says, is it better to use a dado blade or a router table to control the amount of blow out at corners? Either one is gonna blow out. So it's not really about the tool, it's about what you're doing to backup the cut. You just gotta make sure you got something behind, something on that exit side to prevent chipping.

And it's gonna be the same when the dado head exits in this direction, or a router bit exits in this direction. You're gonna get blowout either way. Making euro cabinets with melamine. Edge banding with soft maple that must be stained. What order do I finish and attach the banding?

I would glue the banding on and then do the staining afterward. And with melamine, if you get a little bit of stain on the melamine and you go after it right away while the stain is wet, it'll wipe right off. Even if the stain, typically even if the stain dries and you go after it with mineral spirits. Because melamine is a plasticized surface. If you're not familiar with melamine.

This is the stuff. Particle board core. With plasticized faces on both faces. So yeah, even if like, this is magic marker on here. If I took, probably not mineral spirits but lacquer thinner would take that magic marker right off.

So even if you get a little bit of stain on there it's gonna come off. That way you can put the banding on and then you can, while it's still raw, you can sand all the banding pieces flush with each other to make sure they line up and that's a good way to go. Tips for machining hickory. It's hard and brittle. Yes, it is.

Especially during lock miter joints. Sharp cutters and you gotta have, you've gotta zero your infeed fence. You've gotta zero clearance your infeed fence. Which on lock miters, any wood you should zero clearance the infeed fence anyway. We have a video on that zero clearance the infeed fence business.

So I'll, when I answer question later I'll put a link to that. But yeah, you've really gotta. Sharp bits area always good. With hickory they've gotta be, if they're at all dull you're gonna have a problem. I've seen you use several different types of hearing protection, what is your fave?

I'm sure I brought 'em. I know I had 'em. Let me, they might be in the pocket of my jacket. Or they're in my car. So the ones I'm using all the time now or are they hanging around my neck, they're not.

Are ISOtunes Pro. Earbuds, they connect to my phone so I can listen to music while I'm working. If my phone rings I can answer. They also provide 27 decibels of hearing protection. And then the really cool thing is, they have a noise canceling feature which is pretty amazing.

So actually, earlier today I was talking to the other daughter, and at the same time, sorry, Ginny. And at the same time I was spraying finish. So the turbine was running. I was spraying finish out of the gun but the noise canceling on the ISOtunes cuts that noise out. So she can hear me talk but she can't hear that tool running in the background.

It's pretty amazing. So yeah, ISOtunes Pro, I've been using those for quite a while now. They're amazing. Is there a simple finish you generally use? All the finishes available are mind boggling.

Does it depend on the wood? Not really. I understand that the use is also determined. So what is your go to finish for simple projects? Shellac is a wonderful finish.

It's very benign to work with, denatured alcohol is a solid. And it will work with anything. Shellac is an amazing product. As a top coat though, it's not, it doesn't have very good water or alcohol resistance. So if you were doing just say like, simple toys.

Shellac would be a great way to go. But something like my desk where I want more durability it's gonna be a base coat of shellac, water based lacquer as a top coat. I decided maybe two years ago now, I wanted to get away from solid based top coats and just stick with water based. And I've been using water based lacquer ever since and I love it. Trying to make some dowels on my router table using bull nosed bits running through both sides.

Unsuccessful, any tips? Yeah, don't do it with a bull nosed bit. Do it with a round over bit. I'm pretty sure we have a video about this on the website. So what you do is, you start with square stock and you do this with say, if you wanna make.

I've gotta think. If you wanna make a half inch dowel you use a quarter inch round over, four passes. But you start the cut in from the end. So the ends of your spindle stock are always gonna remain square. And that gives you a surface that you can set up against the fence and down on the router table.

Then you can feed, rotate, feed, rotate. So you never cut all the way from end to end. You leave little, I don't know, support parts, blocks out there on the end. All right a couple more then we gotta scoot. I'm gonna ask this.

Please let us know where you're watching from because you know I always like to hear that. We've got about four minutes left. Any suggestion for self closing spring loaded hinges on small louvered closet doors? Not a specific brand. Louvered closet doors.

Inch and 3/8ths by six. Well, that's not small. 6' 8" is taller than me. Yeah, you want. That's not really a cabinet hinge.

You're gonna need to find something probably at a home center or a hardware store that lends itself to that. Yeah, I don't have a specific, sorry Jeff. I don't have a specific hinge for ya there. Gary says, I just bought a Laguna 14-12 bandsaw. It recommends relieving tension on the blade if the saw will be left overnight.

Is it enough to loosen the quick tension bar or would it be better to remove the blade all together? Well, I'm a horrible bandsaw owner 'cause I never take the tension off. But if Laguna says take it off, take it off. And I would just do the bar in the back. Let's do a pivot here, Ginny, for people who don't know what this is.

So, on a lot of saws when you see this on the back. Whoops, I'm sorry. I'm talking too fast. When you see this on the back, that's a tensioning device. So in the upward position, now the blade is under tension.

There, I took the tension off. The answer here is, if Laguna has a specific recommendation, I'd call Laguna's customer service and ask them. I would think that at this point, I could remove the blade if I need to. So that's probably enough de-tensioning. But I would double check that since Laguna's owner's manual, I would double check with them.

But I would think that that's enough. Shaw says, any wood you would not use for cutting boards? Anything that's got a toxicity to it. So I'm trying to think of one off the top of my head. It's great to have a book or look online about characteristics of woods.

And if there are woods that are gonna migrate junk into your food, I wouldn't use 'em. I'm drawing a blank at this second. On any that I specifically wouldn't use. But you don't wanna use anything that's open grained, either. So pine would be a bad choice, oaks are a bad choice, red oak is a bad choice, white oak wouldn't be as bad 'cause it's more closed grain than red oak.

But stick with closed grained hardwoods. Cherry, walnut, maple, sapele, chetola, those are imported woods. Where do you go to get good, quality plywood or wood in general in western Wisconsin? I get all my stuff from Metro Hardwood. Which is in the Twin Cities area.

They deliver out here, they deliver to Hammond. All my solids and my sheet goods come from Metro Hardwood. Rick says, I make small dovetail boxes of wildwood cut on my farm. Drying wood down to a stable level is a problem. How accurate are moisture meters?

So that's gonna be a function of the meter. I've got, shoot, what brand? A Lignomat. I've got a Lignomat meter that works great. How can they accurately determine moisture content internally when the probes can only contact?

Well mine don't. Mine aren't, I have a probe-less meter. So it actually penetrates the material a little bit. But you're right, if its got probes on it. That's why some moisture meters come with multiple probes.

Like short ones and then longer ones so you can poke further into the wood. The deeper you go the deeper you're getting that reading. All right, we're down to one more. If you're gonna purchase a CNC would you purchase a Laguna, Axiom, or Legacy? Yeah, sure.

They're all good machines. The Legacy I haven't run. Axiom and Laguna I have. But I've seen the Legacy at shows. I would base it on the size of bed that you think you're gonna need.

The amount of money that you have to spend. Is there a machine in a retail store that you can go and look at, touch, and feel before you pull the trigger on a buying decision, on a purchase. But any one of those three brands you're not gonna go wrong with. So, that is it. It's eight bells on Thursday night.

Ginny's actually got some place to be. So she's watching the clock. And thanks so much for tuning in. Now remember, next month is April and I will be in town this time frame. We are always the second Thursday of the month.

Seven o'clock central time. Be here or be square. Ginny, and parting words of wisdom from you? No! All right, well thanks once again to our Titebond sponsors for helping keep this free for you.

And we will see you in about a month. See ya in April, bye. I don't know how to close it. The little button on the side. Or just shut the power off.