George T. (Terry) Chapman

Terry Chapman is a Professional Engineer (Civil) and Land Surveyor who lives south of Atlanta. He has done woodworking for many years and particularly enjoys bowl turning and making Windsor Chairs. He currently works as Site Development Manager for a local affiliate of Habitat for Humanity and has one son who pastors a Church in Connecticut. You can email him at cdeinc@mindspring.com.

New Book?

Sep 102009
 


Shoji Book.jpgARRGHHHH!!! (Did I spell that correctly? It’s not in my spell check.) That’s it; I’m finally going to do it!! I’m writing a book. I’m starting today and it should be published by next spring. People write books all the time on hide glue and planes and fireplace mantels and woodturning and Japanese screens and I am jealous of their success and I am determined to put my own ideas out there.

Why, you may ask, does this issue move to the top of the ever-present pile of things that must be done? I just spent a week with 249 other fine citizens building eight (count ’em, eight) houses in four and a half days. Whirlpool Corporation with Habitat sponsored a big build down in my town this year and I was able to participate. Volunteers came from all over the country and brought willing hearts and hands, but a range of skills from zero up to very skilled.

One thing I discovered (which is the genesis for my new book) is that many people do not know how to PULL A NAIL!! Now I grew up in the rural South and whatever other faults you may ascribe to that society, my father taught me early how to pull a nail out of a piece of wood. In fact, I debate whether he had to teach me – I don’t remember but I think I was born knowing how to pull a nail. I figured since I knew how from early childhood and it was such a part of my upbringing, the rest of the world must know how to pull nails as well as I do. I mean, a plumb cut on a rafter tail is something you may not know from birth, but pull a nail, come on, people.

Last week I actually had someone in my crew who, when instructed to “pull that nail and start another one”, did realize that the claw on the hammer was the correct instrument, thank goodness for that part. But for the next move–after hooking the nail with the claw this person (no gender assumptions here, please) began to pull on the handle straight back like you might pull on the rope in a tug of war. This, mind you while standing unsteadily fifteen feet up a ladder. As several of us on the ground moved to prevent a huge splat from a pending backwards dive, I knew instantly that additional instruction was needed, my birthright was not universal, and where have these people’s parents been all their lives? That was when I decided I’m going to write a book called Nail Pulling 101. Maybe Highland can publish it for me. 😉

Fireplace Mantels.jpg Gracious goodness, after this, someone’s going to tell me that people don’t know about possum hunting and barbeque and milking a cow. Wonder if Highland would publish those books?

The Gorilla Gripper makes it easy to lift and move heavy panels

Aug 232009
 

If there is one thing I really dislike on a construction site it is Oriented Strand Board or OSB. It is full of splinters even when fresh off the stack. It puts out a most irritating sawdust when cut and it is heavier than it ought to be. I try to avoid it whenever I can, but in my part of the country, it is used as sheathing on the side of the house and under the roofing. Handling this stuff is just an unpleasant part of the deal when you are building a house.

Highland has a new tool that I am looking at. It is called the Gorilla Gripper and is specifically designed to work on stuff like OSB. Have you ever seen the highway construction guys moving those concrete barricades used for traffic control when the highway is being built? They put a big gripper on it which clamps the top of the block and when raised by a big enough tractor, grips tighter and tighter as the weight increases.

Gripper.jpgSame thing with the Gorilla Gripper. You just grab the middle edge of the sheet with it and the harder you pull, the tighter it grips. The trick to picking up a heavy sheet with a Gorilla Gripper is to get your hand under the Gorilla handle and fold your arm under the load while you bend your knees, and then straighten your legs to lift the material. Your hand ends up at your shoulder and the heavy sheet hangs comfortably by your side so you can walk with it.
If you are less than four feet to the shoulder, you might have a little trouble with the sheet dragging on the ground. (Someone a little taller than you could always put another Gorilla Gripper on your head and pick up you and the sheet, and if you are still able to talk, you can tell the secondary lifter where you need the sheet. If you can’t talk, you still have one hand free and you can point with it to get the sheet where you want it to go.)

If your shoulder is over eight feet from the ground, then you can work from the end of the sheet rather than the side. You really big guys can even put one in each hand.

The other thing that had not occurred to me is dragging a heavy 4×8 sheet up a ladder. I watched their video and the demonstrator carried a sheet to the bottom of the ladder and then turned his hand over and holding the Gorilla Gripper at his hip simply walked up the ladder dragging the sheet behind his feet as he walked onto the roof. Works like a champ!!

All you cabinetmakers out there will love this thing too. Banging those precious sheets of 3/4 inch hardwood veneer plywood around the shop gets to be a real pain, plus they cost a lot of money and you sure don’t want to mess one up. If using a Gorilla Gripper saves you just one sheet of walnut or cherry ply, this little machine will have already paid for itself.

Click over to the Highland Woodworking website and see the Gorilla Gripper video and then place your order.

Contemplating the Patternmaker’s Vise

Aug 162009
 

I had heard of the Emmert Patternmaker’s Vise for many years. People talked about it in awed whispers with their hands cupped next to their mouth and you just knew it was something special. I never got to play with one, so the other day when Chris and I were examining the Emmert patternmaker’s vise clone that they sell at Highland Woodworking, I got interested.

First, you may not know what a patternmaker is. A patternmaker is about the ultimate woodworker, called upon to make the pattern for a metal casting out of wood (or these days, plastics or other modern materials). In days past, patterns were more likely made out of wood than anything else. Since (most) metal shrinks as it cools, the pattern has to be made slightly larger than the finished product. Try to picture making a wooden precursor to all the cast metal parts in a Model T Ford, making sure they are 1.5% bigger than the finished product.

Patternmakers Vise.jpgBeing able to hold the wood securely while the pattern is being sawn, carved, drilled, filed, sanded or however else formed is the whole purpose of the patternmaker’s vise. You can clamp almost any shape, then twist the vise in almost any direction without taking the piece out of the vise. Does your vise allow you to twist your work up and make it parallel to the top of the work bench — without taking it out of the vise? Mr. Emmert figured it out back in the 1880s and his company continued making them up through the 1970s.

I checked on eBay and you may be able to find an original for sale today at anywhere from $500 to $900 depending on its condition. There are several Web sites dedicated solely to the Emmert, and the one which appears most often is called “The Iron Hand“. I kept trying to figure out why they called the site “The Iron Hand” until I finally had this image of a guy sitting under the bench with his iron hand holding the piece and turning the work in whatever direction you needed it to go, including laying it down flat on top of the bench. I guess if they were still making them, you would probably be able to give it voice commands by now. Anyway, go look and see what this thing will do.

When you get through looking at what it will do and you get through lusting for an Emmert, go ahead and search eBay and check deep within your soul to see if you really want to pay that much to have a secondhand original. (Its shipping weight is about 90 pounds by the way.)

After you get the answer, come on over and buy the clone at Highland. Our imported Patternmaker’s Vise (manufactured nicely in Taiwan) is $399.99, and is based on the original design. It will do virtually anything any normal less-than-a-patternmaker woodworker is EVER likely to do. (Do study the installation instructions since it usually involves a fair amount of modification to whatever workbench you attach it to.)

If you could just figure out a way to use your new vise to hold the bench while you install the vise — well, you get the idea.

Sell That Stuff

Aug 032009
 

You keep making all this stuff and it keeps piling up in the dining room and all your family has more than they want, but you just have to keep making it because it’s what you do and who you are. What do you do now?

Here’s one answer. Put it up on line and sell it. I tried it and it works. You will be constantly amazed at what people are willing to purchase from you (no offense to either party) and if you work at it some, you will be able to sell more than you can make. 

130131.jpgFor instance, I am shipping today a bag full of cedar shavings swept from the floor of my shop from a bowl off my lathe, (a beautiful Oneway 1640 from the High by the way), to a lady from Illinois who uses them to make little cloth cedar pillows to put in stinky tennis shoes. She is paying $30 plus shipping for two quart bags of shavings I was going to sweep into the dust collector and use for mulch. She turns around and sells the bags for $15 per set and both of us giggle on the way to the bank.

There are several choices on line for selling, but my choice is a site called “Etsy”. www.etsy.com) pronounced like Betsy. They only allow handcrafted and vintage items and it is really simple to use. First you have to pick a name nobody else is using; “www.thewoodshop.etsy.com” is taken by the way. (See me sneak that one in. Look at my new shop sign from Highland.) If it is clear, then just walk through the steps and put your stuff up there. Get a digital camera and upload some good pictures, decide on a price, write up a description using words like “found lumber’, “recycled”, and “green” , check your shipping costs and go for it. It costs something like twenty cents per item to list it and then something like 2% commission when it sells.

PICT0100.JPGSet up a PayPal account, which is really simple to do and people will pay you through PayPal before you ship. On top of that PayPal will print out a shipping label with two clicks and take the postage out of your PayPal account leaving you with the net. Call the Post Office and they will pick up the box off your back door steps. How cool is that?

I average a sale a month and there are things on my site which over 300 people have looked at, including people from England, France and Afghanistan. My record so far is a large salad bowl for $ 105 to a lady in California who gave it as a wedding present. Go for it!! Get that stuff out of the house!! Make some more!! Buy more tools from Highland!!

Recommended Improvements for SawStop Tablesaw

Jul 312009
 

sawstop8.jpgWell I have read all about the SawStop tablesaw and watched all the demonstrations and I like it a lot. I have analyzed this new technology carefully in light of long years of woodworking experience, some close calls, stories from friends and other legendary tales, including the guy who worked for me once making survey stakes who left his left index finger lying on the saw table. Cut it right off. Clean. They couldn’t sew it back on because he was a smoker. When he got mad at somebody later and wanted to poke them in the chest to make a point, he had to use the other hand. Couldn’t do that magic trick where your finger comes off anymore. Well, you get the idea.

However I think the SawStop tablesaw is missing two things and I hope somebody from SawStop reads this and takes immediate action to improve their already excellent product.

My last pick-up truck had OnStar® in it to summon emergency help in case of an accident and I was not able to use my phone to call for help. If I am using the SawStop tablesaw and come that close to cutting off a finger, the saw better be calling for somebody to come and get me because I guarantee you I will be lying on the floor passed out. The good news is they won’t have to sew my finger back on. OnStar for SawStop.

Secondly, it has long been a standing joke in our family that if we ever have a serious accident, you need to call for an ambulance and a Porta-John. That is the other thing the SawStop tablesaw needs, because again, even when my fingers are safe, we still gonna need it.
You will notice I did not recommend a surgical field kit, tourniquet, large bandages, ice packs to deliver the finger to the emergency room, or any of that other stuff you would need in similar circumstances on other brands.

There you have it. I know many corporations depend on feedback from experienced users to improve their products and I am happy to participate in that process. I hope you will bring your suggestions to them in the same spirit, although I cannot imagine how anyone could improve on a table saw equipped with SawStop’s safety technology that’s also backed up by OnStar® and a Porta-John.

Going to the Dogs

Jul 242009
 

I saw a video once of the guy who invented the bullet proof vest police officers wear, shoot himself in the stomach while wearing the vest. He stood right up and took out two watermelons. Pretty good proof of the usefulness of the vest.
PCS240.jpgJim Yahres left a comment on Chris’s post below about the new SawStop table saw. In it he referenced a YouTube video showing the famous “hot dog” demo. At the end of the video, the host challenged the inventor to put his finger in the saw. He did. Wow!

Drop by Highland tomorrow (July 25th) and see which unlucky hot dog gets to risk life and limb on a SawStop table saw. 10:45 and 2:45 Live in the Store.
Hot dogs all over the City are crawling towards the back of the meat cooler. Inventors too.
Do Not Try This at Home!!

Router Bits

Jul 202009
 
routerbitcase.jpgSometimes you just need to clean out and start over. Could be the refrigerator, the cupboard, the den, the barn, your wood shop, your life. In my case, some of those things do need to be cleaned out, but one thing I have decided to clean out and start over is my collection of router bits. In the past I bought router bits for two reasons: I thought that a proper woodworker ought to have router bits. You can’t be a woodworker without router bits. The second bits I bought were pattern maker bits, the bits with a bearing on the bottom, which I used when trimming sheathing from the window openings when framing a house. Punch a hole in the sheathing and then let the bearing follow the window framing.

The first set of router bits I purchased was from a department store and has about ten basic bits in a cute little plastic box with a removable stand to hold the bits. Not knowing any better, I bought quarter inch diameter shafts with high speed steel (non-carbide) edges. I guess I got what I paid for, but they are not much.

Somewhere along the way I upgraded the router and the new one had two collets to accept quarter inch or half inch router bits. It was soon apparent that those little quarter inch steel router bits were not going to cut it, so to speak, so I started to buy a few new bits as things came up in the shop. I always made sure that any new router bits were half inch shaft and carbide edges. That is pretty much all I buy these days and life is much simpler.
cabinetmaking router bit set
As is typical for many items at Highland, there are not just a few router bits for sale. There are three walls full of all different styles, brands, profiles and sizes of router bits. You can buy sets of router bits to make kitchen cabinets. You can buy sets of router bits to make raised panels. You can buy sets of router bits to make divided light doors. You can buy sets of router bits to make crown molding.
fudge.jpg
You can buy sets of router bits to make chocolate fudge ice cream. (Well, maybe not.) But Highland Woodworking has a wide selection of router bits in a wide range of prices from several different manufacturers. If you can’t find the router bit you need at Highland, you probably didn’t need it anyway.