Check out this old episode of the Spoken Wood Podcast from Matt’s Basement Workshop. Our own George T. (Terry) Chapman read one of his pieces about the trials of combining his engineering background with his hobby of woodworking. Take a look back through our archives to see more of Terry’s entertaining blog entries, and stay tuned for more!
When stuff flies off my lathe, I hang it on the wall to remind me.
If you don’t already have one, it’s time to get a face shield!
What the heck is HVLP anyway? Before now I never really knew but I suspected it was some sort of social disease, or maybe some new computer software site that I was missing. Turns out it stands for High Volume, Low Pressure, as in a paint sprayer. Well, so what? Let me explain.
Awhile back I bought a name-brand high pressure airless sprayer and it works well, but I am about half scared of it. When I opened the box, it had more warnings than you have ever seen about the pressures involved. This thing operates at something around 2000 psi. There is actually a little plastic card to take with you to the emergency room if you happen to stick this thing in the palm of your hand and pull the trigger. The little card instructs the surgeon who to call and warns that paint injected into your body with this thing can only be removed by amputating the affected part. What if you shoot yourself in the head with it? Are you kidding me?
Enter the Earlex 2900 HVLP paint sprayer currently available only at Highland Woodworking. They loaned me one to try out for a few weeks and I like it. I felt great relief and relaxation when I was using this thing. When I first turned it on and it was blowing this gentle breeze from the nozzle, in spite of all my negative instincts, I very gingerly stuck my hand in the air stream. Nothing!! When I first filled it, I used a bottle of water because I didn’t want to clean it. In the past I have spent upwards of two hours cleaning my high pressure system and if this sprayer was going to take that long to clean, I wasn’t interested.
When I sprayed it, the water went out about two feet in a nicely formed spray. No trauma, no high pressure, no fear, no amputations. I played with it enough to use up the bottle of water and then I figured I would try some real paint. I had a new quart of interior white latex and thought that might be a good test. Without any fine furniture underway that I wanted to paint white, I had two metal sawhorses that I very much dislike at the shop, so painting them white seemed to be ample revenge for all those pinched fingers while setting them up. After using the viscosity cup as directed in the instructions, I wasn’t satisfied with the results, so I thinned it down a little more and tried again. Now those nasty metal sawhorses have never looked so good. I put two thin coats on, had most of the paint left in the cup and was ready to paint anything else I could find.
I got done painting, all the while dreading the cleanup. I took the cup to the kitchen and rinsed it out in about two minutes. After that I filled the cup with clean water and sprayed that through the system and it was done. I kept looking for something else to clean, but I couldn’t find it. I was going to take the gun apart and clean it, but it didn’t need it. I was going to take the hose off and clean that, but no paint goes there. I was going to take the needle out and clean that, but it was already clean. No more than ten minutes max and it was done.
This really fine Earlex sprayer is available from Highland for $149.99 including a book on spraying and a demo DVD. Get your wife one of these for her birthday and she can stain the deck next time it needs it. Shouldn’t take her more than ten minutes to clean the sprayer after she finishes.
Do you remember a few weeks ago when I talked about buying a new router with the profits from my furniture making exploits? Well, I decided to go for it, and when I went to Highland, I was really impressed with the Triton 2-1/4 HP plunge router.
The thing I like best about this router is that you can crank the bit all the way up or down using the router handle. There is a ring inside the handle which, when depressed, allows you to move the bit up and down. You can move it a fraction of an inch, or you can move it the full range of motion in either direction. There is also a fine motion screw on top of the motor which operates for the full range of motion of the bit. When you crank the bit all the way down, a lock engages the collet and you can then use the wrench to remove or install the bit with one hand. It’s a beautiful thing.
In addition, when you mount the router upside down in a table, there is a crank handle which fits through the top of the table and attaches to the crank mechanism on the router, which you can use to adjust the bit very precisely from above the table. When you need to change the bit, simply crank the bit all the way up (or would that be down?), it locks in place and you can change the bit with one hand from above the table. And with 2-1/4 HP, this thing will do pretty much everything you want to do in the average woodworking shop. (For heavy production work, there is also a 3-1/4 HP model.)
About 15 years ago I made myself a wooden router table that was just awful. It is still sitting in the shop and almost never used because it was not well made and the router is very difficult to adjust from under the table. I’m going to throw it away this week. So while I was at the store looking at the routers, they also showed me their Kreg router tables. Kreg’s basic model is a benchtop style which works very well with the Triton router.
I ended up buying Kreg’s deluxe precision floor mounted model. It comes with a set of very sturdy legs, which you can purchase wheels for if you like. The top is extremely stable, plenty big, and has a pattern of bumps on top of it that makes wood slide easily. It comes with a sophisticated precision fence, and has universal mounting hardware to fit most popular routers. When you drill a single hole in the right place in the top, then the crank handle that comes with the router will operate the height adjustment flawlessly. It effectively eliminates any need to buy one of those expensive third-party router lifts.
When you compare this total outfit price wise to one of those router lift mechanisms you see elsewhere, pricewise it comes out looking very good indeed. I really like this package, and am excited to have one in my workshop.
It’s Safety Week 2010 for Woodworkers – a good time to consider some of your own shop safety practices and think about what you might improve. One of our customers, Howard Van Valzah, contributed this great safety tip that could be valuable to some of you. We’ve also included some links below to other blogs that are also ‘celebrating’ safety week with links and tips that could help improve your workshop safety.
Got tips of your own? Share them in the comments!
Enjoy and be safe!
A Two Minute Safety Tip
by Howard Van Valzah
As a veteran woodworker age 80 I have finally learned something I should have learned many years ago. Recently it became obvious to me that the majority of my woodworking injuries were on my left hand. The worst one was on my left thumb that wandered by itself into a table saw blade. Stitches didn’t work so a skin graft was needed to complete the cure. That happened four years ago.
Click to read the rest of Howard’s safety tip
A couple of safety links for you
The Wood Whisperer
Matts Basement Workshop
I love my truck when it’s full of wood. Look at all that walnut lumber. I had just about as soon have my truck full of walnut lumber as to have it full of hundred dollar bills. Look at that stuff!!
Let me tell you about this little adventure. Some friends down the road who know I enjoy wood working offered me two walnut trees off the family farm. The trees were out by the barn and blacksmith shop and had some electrical wires through one of them, so I knew taking them down was beyond me. I hired a professional tree service fellow to take them down and haul the good parts over to a friend who has a portable sawmill. Tree guy came out last week with his bucket truck and his small tractor and trimmed them up and then put the trunks on the ground. The grapple hook on the front of his tractor made short work of loading the tree trunks and they were soon at the sawmill.
Now understand the problem with walnut trees and particularly trees close to a house or a barn and in this case, a blacksmith shop, is metal. People hang horseshoes on limbs (that’s good luck for most people–just not for sawyers), drive nails in tree trunks, and nail fences to them. The sawmill guy is willing to saw them for me, but he knows about metal and before he starts, he wants me to stand good for the blades at about $30 each.
We struck a deal and he started sawing while I was still there. I walked around the mill a good bit trying to figure the safest place to be when the saw blade found the metal I thought was in there. I had visions of metal chips and blade chunks flying everywhere, but thank goodness I was wrong. When the blade hit the first piece of metal, it sounded like a bug zapper. Just a little short “bzzt” and it was through. After several more hits, that blade was done and he reloaded a new blade. There was some beautiful lumber in these trees and after a couple of slabs off the top, we started getting 12 to 16 inch wide boards at an inch and an eighth thick. We sawed one trunk right down the middle of the pith to make bowl blanks. Those bowl blank boards are so heavy, I will have to use the chain saw to cut blanks off the end of the board while it is still on the truck. Otherwise I will not be able to get it off the truck.
When I count up to see if this whole deal was worthwhile, I think it was. I spent about $600 and I have 23 boards which average 12 inches wide and 6 feet long. That computes to around 138 board feet. Plus I have enough for about 20 bowl blanks four to five inches deep. Even allowing for waste, I think you could not buy this lumber for $600. Maybe I can sell some of that dern metal and recoup part of my cost.
Well, here’s the verdict. If you ask the right question, this thing is the answer. First of all, I started out by asking the wrong question. Am I going to use this instead of my Delta Unisaw? Not if I am in my shop. Would I use it instead of my band saw to cut a curve in 8/4 cherry? Not if I can help it. But if I have to repair the upstairs bath cabinet in my rental house, then I will put this thing over my shoulder and save three trips back to the shop.
When I was in the store to pick this up last week, we had a good discussion about who would buy this thing. I never felt I had a clear answer until I got it home and started thinking outside the box (so to speak). (It’s all in one box, don’t you see?)
If you approach it from the standpoint of one of those kits of portable tools you might see on sale at the big box store around Father’s Day and Christmas, then it makes a huge amount of sense. The total price is right in line with the name brands for a kit that includes a cordless jig saw, circular saw, drill driver, and flashlight, all running on an 18 volt battery.
And then on top of that (and beyond any of the other kits), you can turn the drill driver into a drill press, the circular saw into a table saw, the jigsaw into a scroll saw and the flashlight into a table light, and you can see where this is going. If I want to get a set of portable tools, then why not add the table saw/scroll saw/drill press/table light functions on top of it for no additional charge?
If you are a handy-person with limited funds, live in an apartment or small house with little space and big dreams, or a student starting out in woodworking, or a modelmaker, then this would make an excellent tool system for you. And say if you have a cabin at the lake or in the mountains, or work on boats, or go traveling in a motor home, or handle other folks’ home repairs out of the back of your truck, well, you get the idea.
It’s versatile, it’s very compact, and it’s highly portable, and there are really cool functions built into this box. A large canvas tool bag containing all the basic tools stores in a sturdy steel-reinforced padded case with a total weight of about 30 pounds.
Take the soft bag out of the box and plug the battery/handle into the corner of the table where it powers any of the tools mounted on the table. If you purchase an extra battery/handle (for $49.99), you can plug the second battery into an alternate extension on the back corner of the table so it will charge while you use the table.
Changing tools is a snap – lift the table top, pull back one slide, pop in the tool, plug it up inside and you’re ready to go. I timed myself changing from the table saw to the jig saw and it took me 29.2 seconds.
The saw fence is the post for the drill press, a saw fence, a carpenter’s level, a post for the light, an iPod speaker system, (well, maybe not) and it stores out of sight on the bottom of the box when not in use. The miter gauge doubles as a protractor, there is a plastic shield for the scroll saw that fits onto the post, there is a plastic blade guard for the table saw in addition to the retractable blade guard for the circular saw, the push stick for the saw is also the handle for the drill press – it just goes on and on.
Oh yes, there are two plastic storage boxes full of drill bits, nut drivers and jig saw blades and they snap neatly into the back of the hard case. I love the way this thing fits together.
So, do you need versatility? Compactness? Portability? Affordability?
There’s even a video. CHECK IT OUT
And hey, Father’s Day is just around the corner.