Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
The American Craftsman Podcast Ep. 22 | Magnum Opus
40 Plays4 years ago
On Episode 22 of The American Craftsman Podcast, hosted by Greene Street Joinery, we discuss our Magnum Opus as woodworkers.
Beer of the Week (MacNutty Macadamia Nut Brown Ale): https://loughgillbrewery.com/products/macnutty#:~:text=Tax%20included.&text=This%20brown%20ale%20is%20brewed,a%20luxurious%20dark%20brown%20colour.
Tool of the Week: (Picard 87 Pattern Maker's Hammer) https://www.kctoolco.com/picard-3-5oz-pattern-makers-hammer-english-pattern-with-peen/
Greene Street Joinery is a custom design & build shop located in Monmouth County, New Jersey. We build multigenerational furniture with an eco-friendly and sustainable mindset.
Inspired and guided by the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement, we believe in the use of traditional craftsmanship and simple, well-proportioned forms; sustainability and ethical practices; and importantly, taking pleasure in our work as craftsmen to create quality pieces of enduring value.
Follow us!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/greene_st_joinery Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greenestreetjoinery
Support us on Patreon!
https://www.patreon.com/Greene_st_joinery
Visit Us at https://www.greenestreetjoinery.com/
And be sure to Subscribe to our channel for more videos like this one!
Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-american-craftsman-podcast/donations
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Recommended
Transcript
Intro & High School Football Memories
00:00:23
Speaker
We're rolling. We're rolling. Alright, why don't you welcome everybody? Welcome everybody. To episode, is it 22 or is it 23? It says 22, but I think we're falling behind.
00:00:40
Speaker
I don't, but I don't remember 22. I would remember 22. You know why? Because those were my high school glory days. That was my number in high school. Put me in coach. We would have won states if coaches just put me in.
00:00:57
Speaker
I got declared ineligible right before the first game. So I practiced all the year before, all summer long, and then right before the first game I became ineligible. Why? What happened? Well in Texas they have very strict recruiting rules and because I didn't have any parents
00:01:19
Speaker
Technically I had they didn't have parents who lived in the district So, you know, they used that they had that rule so that you couldn't play, you know for another team another school away from where you live so the team
00:01:34
Speaker
Even though it was only 1A, which was the smallest 11 man team, they were the year before I went to Texas, they were state champs.
Texas Football & Community Insights
00:01:45
Speaker
Wow. And they actually went back to the state championship game the next year, but lost. See, so we we made it to the was it the semifinals, I guess the game before when I was a
00:02:04
Speaker
Senior was I a junior I forget
00:02:08
Speaker
We were good. My freshman year, obviously I played freshman football, but the varsity team sucked. Then we got a new coach. I forget if that was my sophomore year or my junior year. But for two or three of those years, we got this new coach in, Coach Smith, and we were good. We went to the playoffs every year. And then the year after I graduated, they went to, I think, the state final game and lost.
00:02:35
Speaker
Yeah, I remember it was a lot of fun. You know, we would get like these charter buses. Now you got to remember this is such a rural community where like China Spring didn't even have like a main street or anything like that. I don't even know if the town had a stoplight.
00:02:56
Speaker
So it was it was quite an experience for me coming from, you know, New York and living in
Traffic, Beer, and Humor
00:03:02
Speaker
those areas. And every time we play a team, it would be driving to a whole other city or a town. Texas is huge. Yeah. You know, here, like there's a high school down the street over here and then up the road right here is a whole other town with a different, you know, that has lit or whatever. Two thirty. You can't move around these parts between.
00:03:22
Speaker
the junior high school to high school, the grade school kids. It's it's a nightmare. You'd think Russia was bad. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, enough with the act of the party. Man, what do you know? We've been going for 45 minutes already. Um, let's get right into it. Let's get into the beer of the week. All right. All right. We got an Irish import today.
00:03:48
Speaker
Mac Nutty, Macadamia nut brown ale. We've had this out in the snow. If you're, uh, if you're watching, well, right about my head, you can kind of see a little bit of snow out there, but had these stuffed in the, uh, in the snow bank. Contains nuts. Yeah. Macadamia.
00:04:08
Speaker
Loaf? No, there's probably some Irish way to say this. I was waiting for you to try and say it. Loafgill. Yeah. L-O-U-G-H-G-I-L-L Brewery. Sligo, Ireland. Yeah, I didn't know how to say any of those words. I know we have a couple Irish listeners out there, so please let us know how you say that. Yeah. Roasted, they roast the macadamia nuts in their own kitchen along with top quality mall tops.
00:04:34
Speaker
for a rich, nutty flavor and luxurious dark brown color. I think I'm going to like this. It's got a squirrel on it too, which is right up your head. Cheers. I like this label. It's got some texture to it. Yeah, good grip.
00:05:00
Speaker
It's good, not nearly as cold as I thought it would be from sitting in the snow for like an hour.
Woodworking Tools & Stress Management
00:05:05
Speaker
And it was in the fridge all day.
00:05:07
Speaker
Well, what are we going to do? Man, it's a tough life. We'll get back to this later on. Right now it's your turn for two of the week. Ah, yes. Yeah. I already, I already got lost track of what the hell we were doing. Just one sip in. That's what happened. You know, Jeff turned 32 over the weekends. Yeah. Yeah. The gray sales start to diminish.
00:05:33
Speaker
Man, I found this back hair like coming off my shoulder last night that is like, it's white. Yeah, well, white hair, that's all part of the look. I used to have black hair. Yeah, my beard. I'm starting to get a lot gray in my beard. Anyway, it's over this week.
00:05:52
Speaker
I picked a little something that I've been wanting to get for a long time and finally got about a week ago maybe. Actually courtesy of our buddy Manny. Sent us a nice little gift. So I got this from KC Tool. This is a little cross peen hammer from Picard. Hold it Picard. Which is a German company.
00:06:13
Speaker
Has you know like it looks like an ash handle long thin handle, and it's just a little I don't even know how many ounces. This is I think it's only like two or three ounces with a
00:06:26
Speaker
You know, a flat face side and then I guess this is the peen. I don't know. Yeah, it's like a chisel shape. Yeah. Honestly, I don't know what you use that for, but I've been using this to adjust my spokeshave irons. I use it to tap in some tea nuts and some stuff. So it's just a nice little delicate hammer. Yeah, you know, I would go for that.
00:06:53
Speaker
Mean I'm all about the finesse. Yeah, I mean it's nice You can choke up on it and you have a lot of control or I mean you get a lot of a lot of power out of a little thing like this I guess Handles nice and long. Yeah, like you get what is it? You get a lot of head speed with like a long handle So like you can get a lot of power behind it if you needed it I don't know. It's like you want to like go out and like crack open fossils with this backside it almost reminds me of like
00:07:18
Speaker
To do metal work, you know, some body work. You could tap out. Yeah, and some things with it. Yeah, I know. Like they use like ball peen hammers and stuff for that. So it must be. I guess this is called a cross peen because it's just like a looks like a like a blunt chisel. It does. Yeah. Yeah, I like it. I like that. Those are the kind of tools that after you've used them for a while, they they just get better. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know,
00:07:45
Speaker
The real reason I got it is to adjust the spokeshays because
00:07:49
Speaker
You really just want to give a little tap on the blade to advance it because there's no like a wheel adjustment like there is on a regular plane. So you could tap the corners and put a little skew on it and it's nice with a spoke shape to have like one side heavy and one side light so you can do a finishing cut. And you need that metal head, not the plastic one. Yeah, like a mallet doesn't work. There's no finesse to that. Like this you can really...
00:08:16
Speaker
Just tap and fine tune. I used it a bunch for that already. So it's one of those things where I'm sure I'm just going to continue to find. Yes, I could see being good for the even though we have the little tool, the sleeves for the shelf pins. Oh, yeah. Even even hitting the little tool. Yeah, because this it's.
00:08:36
Speaker
I don't know what it is. It's easy in the hand. With just a little movement of your wrist, you can really tap some stuff. Looks like it's got good control. It's got a small little head on it. And it's got a super long handle. The handle's like 13 or 14 inches long. Yeah.
00:08:52
Speaker
Yeah. You know, when you hold it on the end, you can really feel that it provides just the right amount of. Yeah. Like imagine doing that with the rubber mouth, even the little simplex 30 shout out to the simplex 30.
00:09:08
Speaker
I don't know. There's just something about it. Yeah. So if you have any need to adjust spokeshaves or you have other, if you have Japanese style chisels, I was between like the Japanese little, I forget the name of it. They have a little hammer.
00:09:26
Speaker
Right, for adjusting the plane. Yeah, it doesn't have a peen on the back. It's just like a rectangular head with usually one face is flat and one is convex. I forget the name. It starts with a D, I think. Dolgu or something like that. That sounds amazing. I was between getting one of those and getting one of these. And I ended up going with this one. I'm totally happy with it. Yeah.
00:09:50
Speaker
Yeah. So if you have a need for some sort of like finesse type of tool, that's really what it's for. Yeah. Tax stuff like that. It's almost like a tack hammer with no magnet or whatever. Yeah. My uncles were upholsterers. Yeah. I grew up around those magnetic hammers. Yeah. As a kid, those are the coolest things. They would have the tax in their mouth and they would just back and forth with the hammer.
00:10:16
Speaker
That was like the guys that used to do the lath in the houses. Oh, yeah. They just put them in their mouth. And then a lot of those guys ended up
Listener Questions: Projects & Techniques
00:10:24
Speaker
with mouth cancer because, you know, the nails had, I guess, no lead in it or something. Anyway, we'll have a link in the description as we always do. You can check it out. The Halder Picard, little cross peen hammer.
00:10:40
Speaker
Yeah. Well, we're going to go from the light and, you know, not serious to straight to the gripe of the week. You got a serious one this week? Yeah, it's serious, man. It's not petty. No, this is not petty. As Jeff alluded to, we had a good snowstorm here in the Northeast.
00:11:03
Speaker
We got off pretty easy compared to some neighboring towns. What we got maybe 10 inches Yeah, our buddy Tim up there in North Jersey true trade got about 30 inches of snow. Yeah. Yeah, but This is my gripe
00:11:19
Speaker
I, you know, get out there. Now in New Jersey, they have these strict rules. You gotta, uh, plow your sidewalks and access for mail and everything like that, which is only the right thing to do. Otherwise they'll give you a fine. So I do all that and then they come and they plow the streets.
00:11:40
Speaker
three, four, five times, which I guess is a good thing. But the apron in my driveway is about four feet deep in snow. It's a block of ice. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's impossible to get through because we have these, you know, freeze thaw cycles where it just turns into a four foot wide
00:12:04
Speaker
Iceberg at the edge of my driveway. Yeah, like I've tried to bust them up even with like a metal shovel and it's hard. See the problem is here we don't get that much snow so they don't have like the infrastructure in place but like you know places like upstate New York they'll they'll have
00:12:22
Speaker
One of those snow blower kind of trucks with a truck a truck next to it or behind it And it just dumps the snow into a dump truck and then go dump it somewhere right here They're just pushing it right into everybody's property. Yeah, so the street I live on
00:12:37
Speaker
We only have one parking space. So my wife always parks there. I park on the street So I went out twice during this storm once, you know, it started snowing Sunday night, maybe What five six o'clock? Yeah a little bit earlier. Yeah, so late afternoon Sunday started snowing then Monday morning around 9 o'clock I went outside we had about
00:13:02
Speaker
five inches of snow at that point. So I shovel the shovel, the drive, the around my wife's car in the driveway, a little path, the the side, the walkway up to the door, the porch and like all the way around my truck. So it's completely clear. You could walk. Yeah. Then I did that again at like four o'clock, which the bulk of the snow had fallen at that point. Yeah. Yeah. So then I wake up
00:13:29
Speaker
uh, was it Tuesday morning yesterday and they had plowed like the one side of my truck plowed it completely in. So like you couldn't even get to the, but there's nothing you can do. I mean, I'll tell you living in Brooklyn, they would plow white. Your car would disappear. You'd have to chip your car and try not to dent your car or scratch it.
00:13:55
Speaker
Yeah, I always managed to hit it with a shovel and I'm like, and you know, my truck, I just got that new truck. So that's my big gripe of the week. I mean, I, I dread it. I dread these snowstorms. I really hate it. Yeah. Um, and there's no, there's no way around it. They have to plow the street and they don't, they just, they go about it the cheapest way possible, which is just blasting down the street and shooting that, that stuff four feet off to the side.
00:14:26
Speaker
And I'm sure I'm not alone in that gripe, but there you go. There's my gripe. We're going to get on to the questions. Got a good bit of questions this week. Yeah. This first one, I was surprised to see it's from somebody that's in a town real close. I mean, it's almost a neighboring town. Matawan, New Jersey. It's from Aaron Lyle. And he's asking, what was your first woodworking project you can remember?
00:14:57
Speaker
um well i guess loosely defining woodworking when i was a finished carpenter um i guess the first thing i ever did that even resembles woodworking is like you know built-in shelving and stuff so the first
00:15:16
Speaker
First job I ever worked on, so as a finished carpenter, obviously I came in on this first job and I was there for a good amount of time because if you've ever worked on a custom home as a finished carpenter, you're there doing a lot of trim. We had all kinds of work in this house.
00:15:34
Speaker
You know, it was custom milled trim and faux beams, beadboard, all this stuff. And I did the closets. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Second floor. Not that one I showed you. That was my first like big closet. But this was just like, you know, cleats with plywood shelves with hardwood fronts. And I just remember like trying to figure out how to fit these. And this house was from the
00:16:01
Speaker
I don't know, maybe the 30s or something? Granted, we were redoing it, but you know, these closets weren't square. So I'm trying to figure out how to fit, you know, three quarter inch plywood shelves into these whacked out out of square little, you know, closets where the door is only 20 inches wide. So you're trying to get in there and fit it all in.
00:16:25
Speaker
And I don't have, like, bad memories about it, about it being, like, you know, overwhelming or anything, but just that it was hard and that I had to figure out how to do it. Yeah, yeah. Well, from from what we do now, my beginnings were very modest. Weren't they all for all of us for the most part? My first project that I remember was to build a TV stand.
00:16:54
Speaker
I was living in an apartment in San Francisco and I wanted to stand to put my TV on and it was like remember those big ones with the tubes out the back and the VCR underneath. Oh, you were living large. Yeah. So it was the design was essentially just a cube with a shelf and I had to cut it all with a handsaw.
00:17:19
Speaker
what kind of material plywood, three quarter inch plywood.
Tool Discussions & Best Practices
00:17:23
Speaker
Yeah. Cut it all with a hand. So cutting plywood. And I had no drill or screws or anything. All hammer and nails. And what I remember now
00:17:36
Speaker
is not knowing how important the back is. Oh yeah. This thing just, just rack over and collapse. It didn't collapse, but I couldn't quite figure out why, you know, it was rocking way from back and forth. You know, so you had to put the TV on there and just the right spot. I didn't realize the back is what would hold it all together. That's like
00:17:59
Speaker
Your house, what's holding your house together is the plywood sheathing. It's not the studs. Yeah. Because without that plywood, your house is just going to fall over. Yeah. So that that was it. And I remember I painted it, painted it red. What kind of plywood? Like finished plywood? No, no. Like CDX kind of plywood. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. That's something else. That's what I remember. So listen, if I can do it, anybody can do it. You got to start somewhere.
00:18:28
Speaker
Yeah. That was a good question. A little trip, not a trip down memory lane. Yeah. Here's one we got from Jimmy C. This came in through the website. If you guys didn't know, if you're listening and you don't have an Instagram or a YouTube or anything, you can always go to our website, greenstreetjoinery.com and go to the contact page or at the bottom of the homepage, there's an email.
00:18:51
Speaker
Thing where you can drop us an email or send us an email green street joinery at gmail.com If you have a question you want to put it in that way So Jimmy C wants to know I do woodworking as a hobby that I love and it's a stress reliever slash mental break from my day job What do you guys do as a mental break or stress relief from your job as business owners and woodworkers?
00:19:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good question. To tell you the truth, we don't have a lot of stress lately. No. I think it's part of our outlook. Jeff and I are generally pretty positive.
00:19:28
Speaker
And I think that's just built into our DNA. If there's a problem facing us, we're more oriented toward just getting a solution and charging. So there's not a lot of stress that way. And Jeff's pretty young, so he's still got a lot of energy. I'm sure, you know,
00:19:57
Speaker
Like when I was Jeff Sage, I used to do woodworking even when I wasn't, you know, working on the job. Now I play music. That's a great diversion. I get massage regularly. That's that's always a goodie. And I think, you know, just trying to take things a day at a time without, you know, that's not the the 12 step
00:20:25
Speaker
one day at a time thing. It's just like reading our self-help books. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. I'm going to help myself. That's like, you know, that's like if I broke my leg, I wouldn't set it myself. Yeah, me neither. So I think, I think you go, you're barking up the wrong tree. If that's where you're looking for your, your mental health cues. I don't,
00:20:51
Speaker
pull my own teeth, do my own taxes, or self-diagnose my mental illness. Yeah, I got a professional for that. Yeah, I mean, I'd agree. Like, I really don't have a lot of stress. I get acute stress. You know, I think that's a good way to put it. Like, there are times when I am stressed, but I'm not stressed all the time, which if you are, you know, probably reevaluate what you got going on. Yeah, I know it's easier said than done a lot of times, but
00:21:22
Speaker
There's a we have a question later on that touches on like hobbies and stuff. So I guess I won't get too deep into that. But for me, it's just like sort of relax. I like alone time if I'm stressed, like I don't want anybody to bother me. I don't want my wife talking to me or like I have a two to two and a half year old son. Like he's taking a nap or something like just chill out. Yeah.
00:21:44
Speaker
veg out on the couch what maybe watch a YouTube video or I'm a big YouTube watcher not necessarily woodworking but all kinds of weird stuff read a book whatever something like that yeah I can second that I I need my alone time you know like even like an hour a day like after after we close up the shop
00:22:07
Speaker
Take a shower, eat dinner. I like to spend a good hour alone. I usually take it up to about 7 30. I like watching Jeopardy. And, you know, some days I'm king of the world. Some days I heard that Ken Jennings has been doing a good job. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty good. Pretty good. I mean, I like Jeopardy, but I rarely catch it. Yeah. So that's it. And then, you know, just try and take it easy.
00:22:34
Speaker
Yeah. The key is to is to head the stress off and not allow. Yeah. Don't just don't allow yourself to get stressed. Yeah. We have a pretty.
00:22:44
Speaker
I don't know. We've cultivated a stress free environment. That's it. I mean, that's part takes work and maintenance. Like any relationship, whether it's, you know, a marriage, a work relationship, those things, they take time and energy and work to get the best out of them. And yeah, we've been pretty lucky.
00:23:06
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, prime example, this cabinet that we were working on with the coffee bar. We had a little trouble getting the client to to give us an OK on the hardware, which which delayed us. And then a snowstorm hit that kind of day. Yeah, then the hardware didn't show up because of the weather or whatever. UPS said FU basically. So we're a week behind on this job.
00:23:33
Speaker
Could we sit here and say oh man now we're gonna lose out on a week's work cuz there was not an extra week budget and no no but yeah we built another project basically yeah we had we have small jobs we just plugged one in yeah and we built it and it's finished and it's up on the up on the racks.
00:23:51
Speaker
So what am I going to stress about? We're going to make a little bit less money on this job than we would have otherwise. You know, it's not the end of the world. Right. That's exactly it. So we're not losing money. No, at least we don't think so yet. So we'll, you know, we'll forge ahead.
00:24:08
Speaker
That's it. That's a good question, because it's always it's always important to keep keep, you know, positive and especially in today's times, a lot of people are having a hard time keeping it
Planes, Confidence & Techniques
00:24:20
Speaker
together. Yeah. With the quarantine and, you know, covid fears and all these other things, people have lost their jobs with the economy shutting down and lost, you know, family members. Sure. Don't be afraid to go talk to somebody. That's it.
00:24:35
Speaker
All right, you know, here's another question. Every now and again, I'm surprised by something. But that's because, you know, we've been doing things for so long. They become wrote to us. Yeah. But we forget like my not knowing that a back would hold up.
00:24:52
Speaker
a TV cabinet. We forget from where we came. So this is from Danny S and he's one of our patrons. Thank you, Danny. One of our newest patrons. He says, I seem to have a hell of a time getting undermount drawer slides to work well without a whole lot of fussing with them. Is there a specific process you guys use? So they work on the first try. I've used Blum Tandems and KV MUVs. Um,
00:25:22
Speaker
I think as long as you you keep in mind like those couple specific things, it's pretty cut and dry. Yeah. So you want to take your opening and minus three eighths of an inch. That's it. We're talking about bloom tandems here because that's what you said. Yeah. Yeah.
00:25:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's the same for overlay too. So with bloom tandems, I can't speak to the KVs. I have some experience with KVs in the past and grass and the grass are the same as the bloom as far as I know in terms of this three-eighths inch. So let's say your cabinet opening is 24 inches, your drawer box is going to be 23 and five-eighths. So when you subtract three-eighths of an inch from the opening, that's your drawer box width.
00:26:03
Speaker
Then you need to have a half inch. You're basically the the the sides front and back of the drawer box need to stick out a half inch below the bottom. Yeah. So essentially you have a half inch. Wait a second. Yeah, they get news from my wife on a house we put it off. Oh.
00:26:31
Speaker
We interrupt this show for an important news bulletin. Jeff's looking to buy his first home. There's one for sale nearby. Yeah, right across my mother-in-law. That might sound like a bad thing, but it's a good thing. Yeah, I like my in-laws.
00:26:52
Speaker
So yeah, you need a half inch all around on all four sides from the bottom of the sides and front back to the bottom of the bottom, if you understand what I'm saying. The bottom of the drawer box, yeah. And then you need the notch on the back, which you can get the specs on that from Bloom. It's basically, I don't know, an inch and three sixteenths wide or something like that. Yeah, and that's, you know, it could be a little sloppy even and they still work fine. Those things don't have to be super snug on there.
00:27:22
Speaker
I mean we use the ones for thick sides, the three-quarter inch side, so basically you just notch out up to the side there. Yeah, I mean you can find all the specific specs on the size of those notches on the Bloom website or on the KV website and then for the little hole that there's a little pin that goes into the back of the drawer that keeps it from tipping out. The easiest way to do that is just set the
00:27:48
Speaker
the drawer on the slides, press it in, it'll leave a little mark and just drill a five-sixteenths inch hole, you know, whatever, halfway through the thickness of the back of the drawer and it should be good. The clips go, you know, tight to the front and tight to the sides. We use them exclusively, those blooms, and we really love them because they're so easy to work with. And they're made in North Carolina or South Carolina. So maybe, Danny,
00:28:17
Speaker
give us a shout let us know exactly what the problems are maybe there's just one little you know measurement that you've missed or something like that but basically we build the drawer box and we set the bottom of the drawer box so that there's a half inch
00:28:34
Speaker
reveal this is the hardest thing it's hard to explain so if you're looking at a cross section it's a half inch and then your dado for the bottom right basically right yeah the draw the slide needs that half inch to operate correctly yeah it's essentially like the thickness of that mechanism is a yeah yeah and maybe where you're having issues is that
00:28:56
Speaker
you're doing inset maybe the sides of the cabinet aren't flush with right then you need to pad things out flush to the opening of the face frame yeah or if the if the sides are towing in or out it'll create friction yeah so let us know what specific problems you're having and I bet we could help them yeah yeah we have um
00:29:20
Speaker
Most of the stuff in the shop is side mount just because it's cheap. We have a couple of drawers that we just did with undermount so we could show you. We're yankee thrifty. In the shop we don't get to experience all the splendor of the undermount. Only sometimes, occasionally.
00:29:43
Speaker
You want to read the next one? Yeah, it's from our buddy Patrick S. I've been chatting with him quite a bit. He's out in the UK. When I'm talking to people from England, I'm always like, what do I say? England, Britain, UK. He said England is what he would say first. So he's out in England. Stokes and co-joinery on Instagram.
00:30:05
Speaker
He wants to know on solid wood cabinet doors, etc. I'm keen to only do the shooting in by hand. Wondered if you could recommend the best plane for the job and also whether a low angle jack like the Veritas or Lee Nielsen would work well in that application. So I asked for some clarification because obviously there's a little bit of a nomenclature difference there. He's talking about basically flushing up the face of a door where your rails and styles meet. He doesn't want to use a sander there. He wants to do it all by hand with a plane. So what do you think?
00:30:35
Speaker
I have that Lee Nielsen low angle jack, the big one. What's it about 10 inches? Yeah, it's. Is it the number 62 and a half or 62? Yeah, I love that plane and I've used it just for that purpose as well. It cuts great with the grain, against the grain, across the grain and grain, face grain.
00:31:01
Speaker
I like it because it's got good control, a lot of bearing surface with that. So that's something we could speak to concretely, we'll say. Yeah, I mean, I'm always going to be partial to Lee Nielsen just because I just prefer their stuff. It's all subjective. A lot of guys like De Veritas, a lot of guys like Lee Nielsen.
00:31:24
Speaker
Everything I've tried, I prefer Lillian Nielsen for the most part. Now something that I've been seeing a lot lately is really a low angle plane is no different than a standard angle plane unless you change the angle of your irons because a low angle plane is better than 12 degrees and the blade is home to 25 degrees so you get 37 degrees. Does that make sense?
00:31:48
Speaker
Yeah, 37 degrees and a standard bed plane is was it 40?
00:32:00
Speaker
40 degrees? 45 degrees? I forget exactly what it is, but it looks like about 45. Yeah, you'd think that we that I would know this off top of my head, but So really the the angle of attack isn't much different if you're just using standard ground blades Oh, you know what it is most usually you're at 30 degrees. So you're at at
00:32:20
Speaker
uh forty two degrees with a low angle and you're at forty five degrees because it's beveled down so the only angle that matters is the frog angle which is forty five so on a standard plane you're at forty five on a low angle plane with a thirty degree bevel you're at forty two
00:32:37
Speaker
So what you can do is you can change the angle that you grind your blade and get different
Woodworking Opinions & Methods
00:32:43
Speaker
cutting angles so you can get a higher angle and be able to plane, you know, highly figured wood and stuff like that easier. But if you're not going to change the primary bevel, then really it's the same.
00:32:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think that Lee Nielsen, if I remember, has a lower angle bevel on it, too, on the blade. I think it really does... Oh, on the 62. Yeah, I think it really does cut at a, you know, substantially lower angle in that respect.
00:33:12
Speaker
But, you know, he loved the knee. In fact, I bought another Lee Neilsen plane today, even though it was backordered. I just I paid for it. And, you know, my good faith was rewarded because it shipped out already. So that'll be a little that'll be too. Yeah, I got my eyes on a couple of things.
00:33:31
Speaker
Yeah, and you can get for like the Lee Nielsen, I think maybe just the four and the three, you can get high angle frogs. So you can go tip it up to like 50 degrees or they have three standard, one in the middle and then another high angle.
00:33:48
Speaker
So he's asking us if we think that plane is good and we say, yeah, yes. Yeah. If you have a smoother already, like a number four, look into just getting a high angle frog and then you can, you know, who wants to swap that out all the time? But plus it's always nice to have another plane. Yeah. And if he's looking to get another plane, I don't know why you're standing in his way. Just make sure you can try and check the bevel angle. Yeah.
00:34:17
Speaker
See if he was local he could come by and borrow it. Yeah, you know cuz we're like that Oh, yeah, that's your plane. You can win it all you want. Well, you know, I ain't letting mine out you come look at it But I like select people, you know, John Peters come by, you know, yeah, he's a good guy. He can he can be trusted All right. So We'll move on testing the moisture content in your lumber. What do you find acceptable? That's asked by Ed Jay at John's on Instagram. I
00:34:48
Speaker
Well, Ed, honestly, we don't test our wood. It is something that we've thought about. And I was actually looking, you know, a couple of months ago at some moisture meters, some, you know, wagners and stuff. And we had the inexpensive one here that I gave away. I mean, that was even a good one, a Ligna mat. Yeah, it was, you know, it's 130 or 40 bucks. Yeah. But that was a pinned one. I'd like to get one that's pinless.
00:35:17
Speaker
just because you can get, you know, better readings deeper into the wood and stuff and not put holes in it. Although we use rough lumber, so it's not that big of a deal, but, you know, everything we're getting is kiln dried. You don't know when it was dried, how long it's been sitting around outside, because, you know, none of these places are storing this stuff in inside, really. And then it sits out in our woodshed, so like,
00:35:42
Speaker
some of the oak we just cut up, it's definitely reached equilibrium. So it's not 8% anymore. It's probably 12%, 13%. But we bring it into the shop and we mill it in stages and we watch it. You know, it's going to go into a home with unpredictable moisture levels anyway, because some people keep their windows open, some people keep them closed.
00:36:04
Speaker
with the heat on blast all winter. So it's hard to tell. So you just need to keep in mind the construction methods and keep an eye on the wood as you're milling it. You know, pieces that move when you mill them are going to move more than pieces that don't. It's like ingrained in the grain of the wood when it moves. Yeah, it's got some memory to it.
00:36:25
Speaker
We do quite a bit of work when we're surfacing the wood we were very patient yeah it's always two and three steps it's a it's a time investment but it pays dividends in the end right oh yeah i mean it's one of the reasons. Long ago i stopped getting s for s lumber because.
00:36:45
Speaker
There was always a percentage of the wood that I just couldn't use because it would have a twist or a cup and there was no margin for error there. I couldn't remove it without diminishing the thickness. Yeah, unless you're buying five quarter and turning it into four quarter, but at that rate you might as well buy rough. Yeah.
00:37:02
Speaker
That's exactly it. So we're pretty thorough with it. And I think the way you described it is best instead of just relying on the mechanical number because that's that's going to be affected with the climate and the change here in the shop and the client's home. Just go through the steps.
00:37:22
Speaker
Yeah, it certainly can't hurt, but it's not a cure-all to just know, you know, an actual number. Yeah, that's good advice. You know, for example, we have a piece of cherry over here that I mean, it's got in a foot, it's got a six inch twist in one end. Yeah, and huge bow. Yeah.
00:37:44
Speaker
And it came out of the same batch of lumber. It was just this one board. Yeah, and everything was stickered up. It's not like it never got surfaced. Yeah, it still thinks it's a tree. That's why you buy extra. That's right.
00:38:00
Speaker
Got another question here from Dave M. Blugerson on Instagram. How often do you guys make lost cost prototypes for tricky designs like those feet? He's referring to the feet on over here next to me is the cabinet we're working on for the coffee bar. It has these I don't know what you would call them. They're kind of like a
00:38:33
Speaker
Yeah, I mean it came out really nice. Yeah, it's a splayed and raked foot with a
00:38:42
Speaker
Design. Yeah, a little chamfer. Yeah. The diminishing chamfer. It's got several design features. It's kind of I mean, because the secretary itself is a little bit of an amalgam of styles. It's not a straight. It's like a Victorian Gothic. Yeah. Campaign.
00:39:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's got a little bit of a mishmash of things going on to suit the client. And those took a few days to figure out and then a few days to execute. Yeah, I probably got about three and a half days in those four feet.
00:39:22
Speaker
But they look they look nice. They they're worth it. That's the thing. You know, it's an investment in education and all sorts of things. So yeah. And you know, from the get go, we expect just.
00:39:36
Speaker
that we were going to buy you know that's what's on the drawing is a DXF file from a supplier right you know cherry feet and I don't know I was just like well we could just make them right yeah again we could have spent the 600 bucks and and bought them or
00:39:56
Speaker
You take four days and make them. Yeah, it's kind of a wash. Yeah. But now we have feet that we made and learned a little bit and the next time we go to do them it'll be that much easier. It adds all the compound angles. It's all slow going because you got to figure everything out.
00:40:12
Speaker
There it it's it's not as straightforward as you think. Well, this is at 10 degrees. Well, then this other angle must be 80. It's there's some sort of mystery in there. Well, we do that all the time. You know, whether it's a prototype, whether it's a simple story stick like for doors.
00:40:34
Speaker
I almost always will cut a couple of small scraps to substitute as the rails so that I could space out my doors, you know, drive fit and make sure that, you know, once I cut the tenons in that when the doors assemble, they're all going to be the right size. Yeah, we do that almost every time.
00:41:00
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I had, I made two, uh, so when I, we need a four feet when I was making the blanks, I made six and then I had two to, um, Jesus Christ. I've ring doorbell constantly. I'm gonna just take this off. Um, made two extras. That way I would have.
00:41:20
Speaker
two to mess around with and figure out, you know, get my bearings and they turned out completely not right. What looked like a bad elephant foot? Yeah. But you learned what not to do. Right. And that's the thing is, you know, you got to work through the problem. Yeah. And, you know, you finally end up somewhere. And we didn't give up after that. No, if I had to make another one, I would have made another one. It's not it's not the end of the world. Yeah. For the Oak Chase lounges.
00:41:48
Speaker
We did a little two stooges routine trying to bend the first piece. No, a full well was going to be a comedy of ours. And what we did was that was like two or three times we did that with that first contraption.
00:42:06
Speaker
Until we said alright now we know what to do for the real job exactly yes we actually today we have off to the side over here to six inch pvc pipes you know eight feet long. Squirrels are battling today i don't know why there's some sort of aggression with the snow.
00:42:27
Speaker
So there we have two pieces in one and three in the other of like three and a half by seven feet long by one inch white oak, quarter white oak, and we fill them up with water. So those are soaking. We'll soak those probably until, you know, this time next week or maybe even the week after we got to see when we have time. We have to make our bending form and then we're going to steam, steam those and bend them.
00:42:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's it. So we got a helper in the shop now. Yeah, or two pipes. So it's not just the two of us anymore. It's two of us and two pipes. We got some chief help. Yeah, they're standing up over there in some little brackets. Yeah.
00:43:14
Speaker
So yeah, I mean the short answer is all the time. Anytime we're going to do something that we aren't sure about, we mock it up. Mock it up before you fuck it up. I love that. That's what Willie said. Yeah, we mock up everything.
00:43:27
Speaker
Yeah, reach out. Like when I was doing these feed, I was talking a while Willie and talking to, um, what's his name? Taylor still nappy out Michigan. So I, all the time, if I'm, I have a problem or we're scratching our heads off, shoot a message or send a video out to somebody on Instagram and say, what the hell would you do here? Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing about the community. It's very, uh, generous. Yeah.
00:43:52
Speaker
That's cool. Got one from our patron Dave here. Oh, yeah. Oh, what's he he's asking? What type of feather boards do you use? Also, have you used any mag switch products? And if so, what do you think about him? Dave M.
00:44:09
Speaker
We have like a mishmash of just random featherboards and shop made featherboards. Yeah. Um, the typical plastic ones. Yeah. There's like a bench dog one in there and then maybe a, I don't know, one that maybe came with like the bandsaw or something. Yeah.
00:44:26
Speaker
So they're just regular old plastic feather boards and then some, you know, ones that you make yourself, which are just as good. I'd say sometimes a little bit better. Yeah. Cause you get a little more flex so you can, I don't know. Maybe it's just, um,
00:44:41
Speaker
in my head, but I feel like you can get some more pressure because those plastic ones never seem to, like I want those things bending when I'm pushing up against them. The plastic ones are more like, well, they're so rigid. Yeah. At least like the bench dog one. Like the fingers are short. Yeah. Yeah.
00:44:57
Speaker
Although I am the guy that breaks the wooden feather boards constantly, so maybe I'm going a little too tight. We are lusting after the mag switch. We want to try those. It's an expensive entry into it where you just haven't been able to pull a trigger on that yet, but we will.
00:45:15
Speaker
Yeah, for like a hundred bucks you get two of them, which I mean, it's really not that bad. Even compared to the price of regular, what do feather boards cost? 20 bucks a piece or something? If we're looking for hold downs and frictions and things like that, if we don't have it here already, we generally just make it. Yeah, and we don't use them all that often. Yeah.
00:45:35
Speaker
But they do look really sharp, and we want them. Oh yeah, oh yeah. It's on the list. You're gonna have to ask somebody else, Dave, I'm sorry about, you know, first-hand impressions, but... Actually, John, John Peters just started working with Max, so he's, I think he may have already put out a video, or maybe he's prepared to. We may have to see if we can get our hands on one of those. Yeah, I think he maybe has a discount code, I'm not sure.
00:46:01
Speaker
Ah, yeah, check that out. So anybody out there, if you've had experience with the Magswitch products, chime in. Yeah. All right. Here's our next question. Do either of you work on a lathe? What type of projects or hobbies do you like to do in your off time? That's from Allen M. Misfit Woodworking on Instagram. Yeah. You know, I worked on a lathe in high school.
00:46:26
Speaker
and that's that was the last time so I'm 58 going on 59 that's how long ago it was um started in my basement was it like foot like foot powered yeah yeah he steps yeah oh yeah no this one this one was actually when I think about wood shop and metal shop back then
00:46:51
Speaker
Like, cause I was a teacher. I can't imagine letting kids loose. Like I was in a mail shop. We were off welding oxy acetylene welding. And the little shit that I was like, I would go by like people would leave their station. I go and like heat up their, their product. Well, the wrench to the table. They think it was cool. They got to pick it up, you know,
00:47:21
Speaker
Oh my God. So you ruined it for people like me because when I was in school shop was gone. I got rid of it. Yeah. So we used to do all that stuff anyway that I digress. I started in my basement. I just I had just enough room for this few tools I had.
00:47:40
Speaker
And so early on, I made the decision that a lathe wasn't going to be part of my skill set. And I would if I needed any round things, anything turned, I would I could purchase them because they're all readily available, even way back in the old days. Yeah.
00:47:58
Speaker
And, you know, it's just that was the decision. And I carried that forward in my design thinking, too, of course, not throwing lots of turned objects into the designs. And, you know, craftsmen, prairie style stuff doesn't really have a lot of that either. Yeah. And like me personally, I'm not a big fan of the aesthetic of things that are turned. There's certainly things that
00:48:28
Speaker
that are turned that I do like but for the most part I like more straight lines and stuff so yeah. Staked furniture you know as in like chairs and stuff that have legs that go through with through tendons that are wedged and stuff like that you can do most of that by hand without a lathe you know you turn those tendons with a lathe a lot of times.
00:48:48
Speaker
But yeah, it hasn't been something that we really needed. Not to say that I wouldn't love to have one and learn how to use it, because I would. You know, it's just another thing, as we say, you know, to have in the quiver. But just not something that we really need.
00:49:02
Speaker
No, we could easily get by without it. We're always trying to figure out how to jam another tool here as it is. Yeah, we have another tool coming that will go over here, the Shaper. So we're already jamming something in here. Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's no way we would put it over there.
00:49:23
Speaker
Something's gonna fit I mean this this area in the middle of the shop is where we stage all the things that we're building We have to like push everything out of the way. Yeah, so we could do the podcast So yeah, it'd be fun if we had a big shop and we had the time and You know the inclination I think is already there to try and you know do stuff. Yeah
00:49:47
Speaker
That yeah i guess you know we don't talk about those obvious curiosity so there's your answer and we don't. So what about projects and hobbies in your off time. Well hobbies is definitely music.
00:50:04
Speaker
performing music, playing music, writing music, making solid body instruments because there's no money in that. So that's a hobby. Yeah. Speaker cabinets was for a long time. I was really heavily into the the physics of subwoofers and designing subwoofers, you know, tapped horns and all that other cool stuff.
00:50:33
Speaker
So, yeah, that those are my kind of hands on hobbies for woodworking. Yeah, I'm a big fisherman. I don't get to do it as much anymore, you know, while running a business and having a kid and being married and all that stuff. But I do it sounds like that's no, no, I'm not bitter about it.
00:50:56
Speaker
I just don't get to fish as much as I used to. I want to go on one of those fishing trips and I don't even fish. It's not so nice. Yeah, I like to fish all, you know, I like to fish in the bay is right here. The ocean is obviously right next to that. I like to fish in rivers, salmon, steelhead, stuff like that. Large Mount Bass, whatever. Any kind of fishing I like to do. I did some hunting growing up, not as much anymore because I don't have the access to the, you know, the land and stuff.
00:51:22
Speaker
So I'll get out maybe once a year to hunt. Aside from that, you know, woodworking is both my job and my hobby. So it's like all woodworking all the time when I'm not here, you know, either doing something related to the business, editing a video or the podcast or whatever, or, you know, reading or doing something else with woodworking.
00:51:50
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I started as a hobbyist, so it's I kind of went. I never gave up woodworking as a hobby, so to speak. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, Rob's house is here. This is part of Rob's house. You know, it's a separate building, but.
00:52:07
Speaker
Like if if I lived in Rob's house, I'd be out here seven days a week. That's right. Taking around because a little playpen over in the corner. Yeah. I mean, I just one by one just be building different things in the house and trying new things and hand cutting dovetails and whatever.
00:52:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's a nice space for that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right. So you want to move on to the next one? Yeah, this, this is a great question. It's really, it kind of made me laugh a bit. And it's from Jeff CT Vader 1977 on Instagram. And he's asking, how do you prevent a lack of confidence or knowledge, keeping you from trying something?
00:52:53
Speaker
Can you tell why I think that's funny? It's a pretty simple answer. Just don't let it prevent you. We don't ever let lack of knowledge or experience or confidence stop us. I'd say the lack of confidence and knowledge actually
00:53:16
Speaker
um propel us to try things yeah because that's the whole fun in it is trying to do something you've never done before in fact like going back to the bending thing we knew that was going to be a failure going into that first experiment we just wanted to find out where the failure point would be what the specifics of the failure would be so
00:53:40
Speaker
That's the thing, you know, don't get hung up on it not going well. That's that's why I think we're not caught up in that cycle. We don't really care if it if it doesn't go through on the first take. No, for the most part, we know it's not going to go right. Like I had people that messaging me when we were doing that bending, they're like, you got to do this. And it's like.
00:54:01
Speaker
I know a lot of that stuff because obviously I did some reading up on bending before but it's like we're trying to push the limits of what we're doing to see okay we only steamed it for an hour and 15 when really we should have done an hour and a half okay that so that was wrong so you you equip yourself with all of the
00:54:22
Speaker
things you did wrong the first time when you go into it to do it for real. Oh, yeah, we could see and the jig was on a table with wheels and it was rolling all over the place and the wood we could tell wasn't wet enough. Yeah. I mean, you learn way more from your failures than you do from your your successions. Successes? Successes. Yeah. Yeah.
00:54:47
Speaker
So don't be afraid to fail, just prepare for it. Just know that it's gonna happen. Yeah, I'm sure there are a lot of those like cliches and posters and everything with little kittens hanging on limbs that talk about
00:55:05
Speaker
how you should keep pushing forward past the idea of failure. Hang in there. Yeah. But the truth is you don't really learn as much if you don't try. Yeah. So there you go. It's not that we're overly confident, but we never let that stop us.
00:55:28
Speaker
We know things aren't going to go well a lot of the time if it was easy. It wasn't worth doing so Like Nike just do it What about those times? We're just totally shocked because it did go well at the first time like can you believe that that just happened? Then usually it bites you in the ass because then you do it and then someone gets effed up. Yeah
00:55:53
Speaker
Yeah, we can't replicate it, you know? We were lucky the first time.
00:56:01
Speaker
We got one from our buddy Randall M in Chicago, RM Crafts and Customs on Instagram. He's a repeat offender on that podcast. What are your opinions on wooden screw vices? I'm building a new workbench and I'm not sure which vice to look into. Well, first off, Randall, we can't complain about our winters here. I had a friend who lived in Chicago for a while.
00:56:24
Speaker
And I went to visit him. It was like late November. And it was like another level of cold. Like I didn't know cold could feel colder. I was like, how do you live here? The wind blowing off the lake and everything. Oh, my God. I've seen like the ice piled up on the shore. Yeah. Yeah. Was that that's Lake Michigan?
00:56:49
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Um, we have steel, I guess they call those Acme screw thread vices, right? You don't have any wooden threaded vices in the shop, do we? No.
00:57:03
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know what you will call them just like it's not is it considered a it's not a mox advice. No, I think they call those those screws. I think Acme thread is just like the space stuff. Yeah, it's a one. It's whatever six turns per inch or I see. I see. I didn't know that.
00:57:21
Speaker
Yeah, they're just like regular like you have a a Scandinavian style tail vise. I think that's considered my tail vise is just the same as like the face. Right. Face vise. It's still powered by that one metal. Yeah. Yeah. It's just a screw with two guide rods, basically. Yeah. I would say that. And this is coming from a place of zero experience.
00:57:48
Speaker
A wooden screw vice would be like, you know, driving a car with no power steering. Like, what's the point? Because cars exist with power steering. So don't you want the power steering? Like, is there an advantage? Or is it nostalgia? Or what is it? I yeah, I don't I mean, I can't see any advantage because
00:58:10
Speaker
I mean, wood is a natural substance. Not that metal is not, but you know, wood moves and stuff and requires. I want to, I mean, I guess they've been around for the longest time. Yeah. So I don't know. We don't know why one would choose wood over metal. I guess that would be the first question. Yeah.
00:58:31
Speaker
In terms of what vices to look into, you know, I've heard a lot of good things about the Veritas. What do they call it? The twin? Oh, the twin screw. Twin screw vice. With the chain? Yeah. Bench crafted. They make some beautiful like leg vices and stuff. H&T Gordon. They're an Australian company.
00:58:56
Speaker
They make some really nice stuff. Again, you could spend more on the vices than you can on the entire bench. That's probably the advantage to wooden screws. You can get the tap and die and even make it yourself for probably less than it would cost. That's what I was going to say. Most of the really nice wood screw stuff, you see it's craftsmen making their own.
00:59:25
Speaker
My wife texted Jeff. She knows her podcast. What does she got? Groceries and three bananas, bananas for my son. I got more bananas at home. I knew what to do with. Oh God.
00:59:45
Speaker
So, yeah, I mean, honestly, Randall, I have zero experience with wooden screw vices, but I'd like to hear why he's interested in the wooden screw vice. Yeah. I mean, I've seen guys like, what's a guy's name? He's an English guy. He makes dovetail, you know, the magnetic dovetail guy. It's kind of like the Cat's Moses, but I think he did it first.
01:00:09
Speaker
What the hell is that guy's name? Super skilled woodworker. He's built some vices, some benches with wooden screw vices. So I don't know. Yeah, I think it's a tough call. It's a good question, though.
01:00:25
Speaker
For the next question we got here, this makes me think of that last kitchen job. For insect cabinetry, do you make one face frame to cover all the boxes? Or does each cabinet get a face frame? That's from Terraform Woodworking Co. on Instagram.
01:00:45
Speaker
Well, what we actually do is we build, we don't build individual cabinet boxes. We build these big ass cabinets. Yeah. We build the biggest cabinet we can. So is there's the least amount of styles. Right. Um, so we might build a cabinet that's 60 inches wide, right? That kitchen had two of them. Yeah. No, four of them. That's right.
01:01:09
Speaker
The uppers were also one cabinet. The entire stove elevation was four cabinets with a stove and a hood in the center. So there were two base cabinets and two uppers that were 60 inches wide. All singular box with partitions and one face frame. But they install really well.
01:01:34
Speaker
We don't like that double style thing. No, that's. Oh, no, it's great. To me, it screams like store bought cabinet. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're made to be mixed and matched and OK, we're going to do an 18 and then a 24 and then the other 18.
01:01:51
Speaker
Yeah, we just build a 60 inch cabinet and then we split it up. However, right since the times where I've had to do that, I like maybe add a little detail where the two styles meet like a, you know, a chamfer that goes part of the way up, stops from the top and the bottom. So it looks more determined than just two cabinets butting up to one another. But we try to avoid that whenever we can.
01:02:18
Speaker
Yeah, it makes install easier in the way that you're just hanging one cabinet. Granted, you need more... More guys. Yeah. But... Then there's no seams. Yeah. Once the doors are all off, because we're using those bloom hinges, you know, they just clip in and out for the most part. That's what we're doing. And then you just hoist it up.
01:02:42
Speaker
So put a cleat on the wall. Yeah. Yeah. If there's going to be a backsplash, just put a dead man on the wall and just slap it on there. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you could scribe in your panels on the sides and your, and your face frame on the side. Yeah.
01:02:58
Speaker
And you're good to go. I mean, it makes it super easy and clean. Yeah, I think if you've been doing it the way where, you know, every cabinet has a face frame, you'd be really pleased to switch it up and go with, you know, a larger box with fewer styles.
01:03:16
Speaker
That's one of the things I hated the most out of because I was a kitchen installer for Tom's shop. And they were all frameless. You know, you slap all these cabinets together and then if you were put a line on them, they're not straight. No, it's like a serpent's back. Yeah, it's one is towed in now. And I mean, just brutal. And when the machines aren't set up, the
01:03:46
Speaker
getting them flush on the top because maybe the rail is slightly high on one side and low on the other. I mean, it's just, it's easier to do all that stuff here and then just place one large cabinet. Yeah, it's easier for the countertop guy. It's easier for everybody. I'm getting pestered today. Yeah, that thing is going off. I thought I muted the computer. It's over there dinging. At least it's on this time.
01:04:14
Speaker
My God. I'll pick up this next question while you handle the fan mail. Can you give some good in-depth info about the slider attachment on the SawStop? I have a ShopFox table saw and I'm thinking of adding a slider to it. A true sliding table saw is not really what I need. That's from Justin D, known as Justin De Palma on Instagram.
01:04:43
Speaker
Yeah, we could talk about it. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how in depth we can go. It's pretty, I mean, it's pretty simple setup.
01:04:53
Speaker
So this SawStop sliding table attachment, whatever the hell you want to call it, it's made specifically for the SawStop. I don't see why it wouldn't work on another table saw. I think you might have to like drill some holes. Yeah, drill holes, maybe cut the fence tube or whatever, but maybe not even. Yeah, because it's laid out on the like wing attachment holes like we
01:05:16
Speaker
I don't know. Did we not put a wing on? Oh, you could or could you could leave this wing off? Yeah, but we didn't omit a wing, right? No, no. So the holes, you know, the holes line up with the sawstop. But if you have a Shopbox, Grizzly makes one that's like what they call like a universal sliding attachment. So it'll work with that because, you know, Shopbox stuff in the grizzly is is the same thing, basically.
01:05:41
Speaker
So it just attaches with a couple screws to the wing of the table saw. It has two legs that go down. It's got a ball bearing carriage that the thing rides on. It has a cross cut fence attached to that.
01:05:54
Speaker
I mean, it works nice. We use it a lot all day. I mean, what do you say are the good let's go over the good points and maybe some of the not so good points of it. I'd say the good points are it's got a large reference surface in terms of the fence. So rather than like a miter gauge where the the the fence is only 18 to 24 inches wide. You know, this thing is it's actually you see it back here on the on the thing.
01:06:22
Speaker
It's, I don't know what, 40 inches wide? It's beefy too. Yeah, it's bigger. Yeah, heavier duty. It's got nice flip stops on it. And we had a pretty good miter gauge that, I mean, we still have it. We don't use it anymore, but we weren't going from just like a simple little handheld one with a piece of wood on it. No, it was a Jessam miter XL2. One of the other advantages about this is it has the locking
01:06:51
Speaker
A point is not the same as the pivot point. Like with the miter gauge, you pivot it and lock it sort of in the same place. So this has another, it has, it's like hard for me to articulate, it has a miter bar that goes into a slot and then it has a handle with a smaller miter bar connected to it that goes into an adjacent slot and that's how you lock it down. So it's getting locked in sort of two points instead of being locked just at one.
01:07:19
Speaker
So it's definitely a little more rigid. Aside from that, I'd say the downsides are that
01:07:31
Speaker
it doesn't come on and off as easily as a regular miter gauge. So you have to take back out two set screws and pull it out. Because it's locked in there pretty solid. Right, because it's attached to the part of the table that moves. So there's a fixed part and then there's a part that moves. So it's attached to the moving table. Yeah.
01:07:52
Speaker
But really, it's just we what I did is I epoxy the magnet to the to the Allen Allen. It's a screwdriver with an Allen head and it sticks right on the leg there. So you just loosen up, pull it out. I mean, it's quick. My bench is right there. I mean, we don't have a big shot. So usually if if I'm not working near the saw, just it goes right on my bench there.
01:08:13
Speaker
and yeah we're sticking on the bandsaw over here or or you know if we like if we know we're going to be cutting a lot of plywood and we need it out of the way um we'll just stash it away for the day or whatever because that's the thing if you're going if the way it works is the in its installed position it's only about two inches away from the blade so if you're going to do a rip
01:08:37
Speaker
You know, you can only really just trim something. Yeah, unless you turn, you can loosen it and turn it. It swings to. You know, close to about 45 degrees, 50 degrees, I think it says.
01:08:51
Speaker
Yeah. So if you swing it to 50, I think you get eight inches on the left side of the blade. Yeah. So you could, you know, rip something with eight inches extra. Right. But if you're taking a 48 inch piece of plywood, you want a 24 inch rip, you got to take it off. Yeah. And then the other thing is the depending on which way you install it, we haven't installed flush with the back of the saw. You can install it kicked back. But obviously then you have this ear sticking out. So we get about 39 inches, I think, across
01:09:20
Speaker
capacity from the blade to the fence you get 48 with yes with the other way that's I mean the other thing I've done and I think you've done too is you can pull it the sled all the way back and kind of stand in between yeah yep so it takes a little bit of getting used to as far as the you know the encumbrances I'll say it can be in the way at times but
01:09:47
Speaker
By far, it's worth having. The way it glides, the cuts, the repeatability. Yeah, it makes nice square cuts. I mean, we haven't messed around with it. It's got like in the detents got like a little bit of slop when it's not locked down. But if you have the cursor in the center of the line and then you tighten it down, I mean, it cuts square. I just I check when I'm, you know, if I'm cutting a bunch of door parts, let's say I'm cutting all the styles.
01:10:15
Speaker
I cut the first piece, you know, you cut one side and then obviously flip it to your stop. I'll just check if it's square. If it's square, you just go ahead and start cutting. A lot of times what I'll do is if I'm being the guy that puts it back on, I'll just grab one of our straight framing squares. Yeah. And I'll just check it up against the blade just so I don't screw you when you go to use it. Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's on there.
01:10:39
Speaker
Yeah, like I always assume that things are not square or not, you know what I mean? Like you're better off assuming that everything is out of calibration. But just being me and you here, it's always easier to just kind of just do the extra thing so the next guy doesn't come along. Yeah. Not thinking, you know, screw up his part. Is there anything else we could tell him? I mean, if he's thinking about it.
01:11:04
Speaker
So he's thinking about adding a similar sliding table to his Shop Fox table saw. If it's as good as this one,
01:11:17
Speaker
I would say do it. Yeah, we looked at the, if it's the Grizzly one you're looking at, we looked at that for the Delta before we got the SawStop. This one's got a much bigger surface that slides, I think. It might be similar. I think the SawStop one's probably about three times the price. Yeah, yeah. At least double, that's for sure. Yeah.
01:11:40
Speaker
That's not to say it's any better. No, it's just, you know, it's got the name attached to it. Sawstop is, they get a premium for the saws because of the technology. So, you know, they can kind of bump up everything that goes with their saws. It's like the festival accessories. Yeah, exactly. The tools are what the technology and the engineering go into. But the dust attachment shouldn't be twice the price.
01:12:08
Speaker
So we hope that that helped. Yeah. Yeah. Here's one. I'm going to let you go first because I need to think on this one. All right. This is again from Aaron Lyle from Ottawa, New Jersey. He wants to know what project do you think you learn the most from and why? Wow. I think it's probably going to be this chaise lounge thing because I never bent anything. Yeah. And this isn't, you know, throwing a couple of thin pieces of wood.
01:12:36
Speaker
into a steam bender. This is one inch quarter sawn white oak. So this is going to, you know, be really a process where, you know, there is catastrophic failures is always just around the corner. Yeah. Other than that, I would say it's been such a cumulative
01:13:04
Speaker
learning process over the years. I can't recall when I cut my first dovetail. Not knowing how to put it together. I cut my first dovetails by hand because I didn't have a jig and you know I got a book out of the library and I'm cutting them. So I do you know you one side's got these compound cuts on it and the other side it's they're kind of straight cuts.
01:13:29
Speaker
So I'm looking at him like, how does this go together now? What? Yeah, exactly. But it's going to be these this bending. I think it's kind of even after all this time, it's going to be the most profound learning experience for me. It's it's hard for me to put my finger on like the most.
01:13:51
Speaker
you know, what job I learned the most from. One that definitely sticks out is the curved hood I built for that kitchen in Midtown. Again, more complex shapes and everything. Yeah, so like this was a kitchen I built when I was working at Tom's shop and I built the hood just from like the architects drawings, like no shop drawings, anything.
01:14:15
Speaker
with just some like radius. All I had was radius and and widths and height specs, basically. So when you're making a curved hood, it was curved on the sides and the face. So those corners are actually ellipses. So I had learned all this stuff about that, how, you know, the angles aren't what you think they are and the radius, like, yeah, the radius of the corner is not the same as the radius of the face and the side. And then just how to like
01:14:46
Speaker
Granted, it was made out of MDF. So it was like a laminated one eighth inch MDF like several times and you know, I built all the ribbing and stuff. So that was that was a pretty cool one. Yeah. And it had, you know, a seamless plumb transition and corbels with a floating shelf. And so it was a it was a pretty complicated build. And I, you know, they just kind of left me to my own devices, which that's how I prefer it anyway. But, you know, it was good to just figure it all out on my own.
01:15:13
Speaker
Yeah, those shapes, especially at the corners, it's always tricky, right? Yeah. Oh, so that's how that comes together. Yeah. All right. Thanks. Thanks, Aaron.
01:15:27
Speaker
We had this question, generally we don't really read these in advance. Well, Jeff has to type them up so he sees them. Even then I don't really. Yeah, we don't pay too much attention to it. But Jeff asked me this earlier today and I'd never heard of this. This is a question from Nathan T. Tree of Life Woodworking on Instagram. Nathan asks, do you ever use the rip and flip method to have all straight grain?
01:15:54
Speaker
I'm going to say I don't think I ever have because I don't know what that is.
01:16:00
Speaker
Yeah, so actually I had to clarify with Nathan because I hadn't, when I think rip and flip, like that's when you're cutting a thin piece and you like cut it halfway and then pull it out of the saw and flip it around and finish the cut. So you don't have to get so close to the blade. So rip and flip is, you said if you take like eight quarter flat saw on, rip it, and then you basically edge join the faces so that you have, you're making, you're essentially making quarter saw or rips on stock at a flat saw.
01:16:27
Speaker
in little inch and three quarter or you could do with any width stock, any thickness stock rather. So basically creating your own quartered or rift glue up out of plain. So that's what he's looking for is a quarter or rift appearance on the face of this board. Right, like so Nathan built this curved headboard. Imagine like basically like half of a cylinder and he used all, he used this technique to make an all straight grain. I see. When he glued it up.
01:16:57
Speaker
Yeah, I guess I mean, I could see something like that because you're going to have to glue up like a Cooper sort of thing to get that curve. Right. But for us here, time, I mean, we're always doing this dance between time and I don't want to call it profitability, but business
01:17:19
Speaker
sensibility. We can't spend forever. It's mostly just budgeting for the client. Right. The client's budget only allows us to take so much time for the job to complete the job. We got a hundred hours that we're being paid for. Now we'll generally spend a hundred and ten or twenty or thirty hours, but we can't spend two hundred hours and get paid for a hundred and stay in business and still send Little Hunter to college one day. No, he's paying for his own fucking college.
01:17:48
Speaker
Just like I did. I'm still paying for it.
01:17:51
Speaker
Come on, Bernie. But that's that's it. So it would it takes more time, it sounds like, to do it that way than to just buy the material the way we want it to look in the first place. Yeah. Like you said, like if you were doing something like a segmented curved thing, a Cooper door, it makes sense because you're going to have to cut segments anyway. Right. But if we were doing something like a panel, we're just going to buy quartered or riffs on style.
01:18:20
Speaker
That's that's what we do. I mean, the cost is in our labor. The material is is a fraction of that.
Woodworking Costs & Dream Projects
01:18:27
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, quartered white oak, let's say we're paying seven dollars a board foot flat is got to be, I don't know, five. Yeah. So it's it's only 20 percent more. There's no way we can make that up. No, no, no. It's it's much cheaper to just buy it. And there's a lot more room for error there. You know, trying to glue up a whole panel. Yeah.
01:18:46
Speaker
yeah smaller pieces yeah that's I mean how many if you're doing a building the door how many glue glue joints you have there yeah yeah there's definitely some some a larger margin for error so more waste yeah the answer is no we haven't um I don't know if we're missing something it sounds like our methods are suitable for us yeah
01:19:09
Speaker
Um, but I wouldn't mind hearing a little bit more about it. I mean, if it's a method with a name, I suppose there are more people doing it. Yeah. He said that, um, Matt Kenny, it wasn't a Matt Kenny, I think MK, MK woodworks on Instagram. He's a big, big, uh, account who makes some really nice stuff. He said that he uses a lot. Yeah. Something that I I've seen like, you know, in the Stickley books.
01:19:35
Speaker
where he would take quarters on and miter it. Yeah. So that you're getting it. And so you're not getting that ugly, you know, cathedral on one side on the leg. Yeah. Yeah. So I could see that working in an instant like that where it was similar. Right. All right. I think we have we have a right in question. Final question. This came in like I think Wednesday night last week or something. So I almost missed it.
01:20:02
Speaker
What would be your magnum opus as a woodworker to define your legacy? Nick, Nick Trayer on Instagram. And to just think that we didn't even have a legacy. I know. Seems a little ridiculous to answer.
01:20:20
Speaker
I mean, I would say I would love to do like a whole home like a green and green kind of did or like, you know, some people had Nakashima in their whole whole house. That to me would be to be able to curate an entire home with a client.
01:20:39
Speaker
and have it, you know, stay in the test of time and somebody else buys it and all these furnishings stay with the house and something like that. To me, that would be my magnum opus. That's funny because that's my exact same answer because I think of like Frank Lloyd Wright. Yeah. Yeah. And and that is it. It's it's like here's the Smith family. This is their house.
01:21:01
Speaker
I don't want to be and not to be wasteful. I don't want to be constrained by time or money. I want to do the job and whatever it takes, it takes not to be self-indulgent at all, just to have the carte blanche to just write. Right. And that's exactly it. It suits the the environment. It suits the people.
01:21:24
Speaker
And it's it's a it's heirloom in the truest meaning of it. It goes with that house for generations and generations. Yeah, like a Thorsen house. Yeah. Yeah. You know, some that people 100 years from now go there and say, yeah, this is the this is the Green Street house. You know, they spent 20 years, you know, making all this shit.
01:21:49
Speaker
Yeah, right. Because I mean, think about how long it would take to do, you know, something like that, because you'd have a combination of built ins and angle nooks and chairs and dining tables and cabinetry and bedroom furniture and studies. Yeah. I mean, all these little practical kind of things, window treatments, front doors, back doors, interior doors. And then you really, you know, get to pick and choose what
01:22:19
Speaker
What do you want to do? I want to build a thing with all Cooper doors. So, OK, so we're going to do it. We're going to put it in this house. So, you know, it opens you up to be able to do anything that you want to do. Yeah. You want to build something that has all hand cut joinery. OK, well, go ahead. There you go. Yeah.
01:22:35
Speaker
That's it. Our magnum opus. Yeah. So if you're listening and you got boatloads of cash, I'm talking boatloads. Yeah. Yeah. A good 10, 12 years to spare. Yeah. You got to be patient.
01:22:50
Speaker
I was flattered, our clients who were building this coffee bar for and we'll be building them a Dutch store and maybe some more stuff too. They said that if they had won the Powerball a couple of weeks ago that they were going to put us on Retainer for five years. Yeah. That's an awfully nice thing to say. Yeah. I said that's the next best thing to us actually winning. That's right. That's right. Because that's all we want. Yeah.
01:23:17
Speaker
That was a nice question. You know, it's it's always good to dream. And it's I mean, doing this podcast is almost a little bit like that. It's a little ethereal that people give, you know, two cents what we have to say and listen and let alone patrons. Yeah. How about this?
Listener Engagement & Community Plans
01:23:44
Speaker
All of you out there, what's your magnum opus right in. And then if we get enough, we'll talk about it next week. Yeah. I mean, that's the one thing I would really like to encourage all listeners to do is reach out. Yeah. Reaching out and sharing with us.
01:24:00
Speaker
uh more of their own stories and things so we and we could pass it along yeah so we're not just answering the questions but you know we're we're spreading the the good news and the info from you guys out there too yeah
01:24:16
Speaker
Yeah, and like especially stuff to follow up any of these questions. Yeah, we told you to do something and you did it and then totally screwed you up. Yeah, that's right. You know what I said? You know what else I'm curious about? Do we have any female listeners? Yeah, I don't. According to like the analytics that I look at, I don't think there's any. So we're like the rush of, you know, of podcasts. I'm cool with that.
01:24:47
Speaker
No male fan. No female fan. Yeah, well, I'm just cool being the Rush. Yeah, because I like Rush. I like Rush too. There was a there was a long time there where they, you know, they didn't sell any tickets to girls. That's for sure. Today's Tom Sawyer.
01:25:06
Speaker
That's the wall. Yeah that busted them open Broke it broke through So I'd be curious if there's a female listener out there Right in him. Yeah, we'd love to hear from you. We won't share your name or information now these Savage men that they also listen because we're pretty open-minded here. I mean we had we had a woman working in the shop Yeah, we talked to one day about
01:25:33
Speaker
You know, because I had the helper, the apprentice, who was a woman and she was way better than any man. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. With our small bits of experience we've had with women in the field, they really out powered the man. Forget about it. They put the men to shame and basically all aspects, you know, the people that worked for us anyway.
01:26:01
Speaker
Well, that brings us to thoughts on the beer of the week. Yeah, what do you think? It's good.
01:26:06
Speaker
I didn't get really any macadamia nut, to be honest. No, not me either. I was a little disappointed in that. But it has what you might call a nutty flavor. Yeah. But not in the way you'd think. No, and macadamia is a pretty distinct flavor. Like, you're not going to get it confused with something else. But it was a good, you know, brown ale. I do like this kind of grippy label. Yeah, it's like grip tape on the side of the can. You can hear it on there.
01:26:37
Speaker
Yeah, it was good. I enjoyed it. I wish it was colder. I don't know whether we got hot snow out there or something. Tool of the week.
01:26:47
Speaker
in the description and on the website. Yeah, probably not on the website anymore. We have the Amazon storefront on there. Yeah. If it's going to be anywhere, it'll be on that. But definitely be down in the in the description. Just a lot of work to just add all these things to the website all the time. Yeah. Yeah. The websites. I mean, websites, it's it's not passe yet.
01:27:08
Speaker
But there's different... It's a funnel to funnel people other places. Yeah, like we... I think we got a call from the website today, was that? Yeah, for a door. Doors seem to be... Bedford-Stuyvesant. Yeah, we might have to be reaching out to the doormyster. Yeah, Tim. True trade. They might be building a door that you already built. Not replacing one that you built, but one that looks just like one that you built.
01:27:37
Speaker
We could definitely use some pointers there. Yeah, you could advise us on the logistics of just being there and parking and all that stuff. The joinery around the arch at the top. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, everything.
01:27:52
Speaker
So, yeah, as always, you know, check out our YouTube page, subscribe, go to our Instagram, give us a follow, shoot us a message, say what's up. If you want to help support the podcast, you can become a patron. So every week we do a after show for the patrons. We'll do about we almost did an hour last week. Yeah. So it's like you get a whole additional podcast. Basically, we must have had a lot on our minds. Yeah, we went like 50 minutes. It never seems like it. I know.
01:28:19
Speaker
And we want to thank our Gold Tier patrons, David Murphy, Manny Sirianni, Eric, Dustin Fair, Adam Pothast, and our newest David... I'm gonna say Schumacher. It's spelled like Shoemaker. Let me know if I'm saying that wrong. Yeah, because we've been debating Dustin's last name for the longest time. No, it's Fair. Yeah. Well, he said it's like Mayor. Yeah, but we don't know. That's how you say Mayor. I say Mayor. Well, that's wrong.
01:28:48
Speaker
I say Patato. That's not how you say it. How about an informal poll for the listeners? How do you pronounce the word of M-A-Y-O-R? Mayor. Mayor. Mayor.
01:29:05
Speaker
How do you say? I can't think of it. Mayor. That's not far from what I say. I say mayor. I say mayor. No, that's completely different. That's a whole other word. M-A-Y-O-R. Mayor. May-er-er. E-R, like an E-R. How would you spell it the way I say it?
01:29:27
Speaker
M-E-H-R. M-E-H. Mayor. Mayor. Or M-A-R-E. M-A-R-E. Like a horse, like a female horse. Yeah, that's how, right. That's a mayor. Mayor. There's not two syllables in that word. Mayor. Do you see how you put two syllables in there? No. Mayor.
01:29:49
Speaker
Mayor. Mayor. Oh, you know, it's something we should bring up. We talked about this on the Patreon. Once all this COVID BS is over with, we'd like to do like a meetup. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We can't wait. You know, local to us. So if you're interested, let us know. We're in Monmouth County, New Jersey. We'd probably be doing it in the Middletown area. You know, I can't obviously can't say when because we have no idea what's going on with the
01:30:16
Speaker
with the vaccines. Hoping to get our vaccine soon. We're tier, uh, one C. Yeah. And they're, they're on to one B. We're waiting. And we just signed up on another list. Hoping to get it off of that one. So we'll see. Yeah. Yeah. We'll be guinea pigs for the rest of the folks out there. I ain't got nothing to lose. That's the way we have nothing to lose at this point. Come on. Yeah. Been lucky enough to knock it sick thus far. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Um,
01:30:47
Speaker
So I want to thank everybody. Be well out there. Thank you for listening. Thank you for participating. Tune in next week. Maybe we'll have our new machines and we'll be able to talk about them a little bit. Yeah. Getting loaded onto the truck as we speak. And soon we'll be able to have guests again, too. Yeah.
01:31:04
Speaker
Yeah, once we get our vaccine, then we can definitely have guests back to the guests at that. We're looking forward to that. You can't. Yeah, we got Tim. Definitely. Ryan, who just had a little baby daughter, Ryan Massey. Congratulations. Tim from True Trade. Those guys will be on. Definitely want to have John on again. Oh, yeah. Keith at two bit.
01:31:28
Speaker
Probably wild Willie, if he's willing to make the drive again. We got all kinds of man. Oh, yeah. Definitely have Manny on again. We'll have to do a two part for that one because we went over three hours last time. We have to take off the whole day. I know it was dark out last time.
01:31:47
Speaker
That was our first Patreon after show. Yeah. I think we did an hour for that. I know. And we got four hours. It was like we started at two and then it was like six thirty when we left. I think we were warming up for 40 minutes still. Yeah.
01:32:01
Speaker
We hadn't seen Manny in a while. So that's why Yeah, and hoping to be collaborating with Manny on a project waiting to hear from the designer. Yeah. Yeah last week trying not to Pastor her too much but waiting to hear Anyway, we'll see you next week next week. Ciao
01:32:41
Speaker
chain.