Blind Hog Finally Finds an Acorn

[Steve H Graham]

On the theory that people are morbidly fascinated by tales of inept woodworking, I thought I'd post an update on my continuing efforts to create six pieces of walnut suitable for assembling in a slab which can be turned into a Telecaster body.

Tonight I resawed a new chunk of walnut, stuck the pieces on my new, shorter planer sled, and face-jointed them. It actually worked, although I got a tiny amount of snipe on both boards.

Initially I figured my tools were 98% to blame and I was responsible for the other 2%, but it has gradually become apparent that those numbers needed to be reversed. Ignorance, lack of technique, and sheer stupidity were causing most of my problems.

I have learned that good technique can almost eliminate snipe when I use the planer sled, and improved shimming and a more manageable sled are solving my other problems. The infeed tables I ordered should make things even better. The orbital quarter-sheet sander I bought yesterday does an acceptably quick and effective job of fixing my jointing errors. I now have six 18"-24" pieces of usable wood, and I only had to buy nine feet of walnut to do it.

I guess I won't have to buy a jointer right away, although the little Rikon 10" looks really enticing and may end up in my garage anyhow.

I look forward to the arrival of my restored Stanley No. 6 plane, so I can put the sander and maybe even the planer away.

By the way, here's a great tip I came up with tonight. When using a shop-vac as a passive receptacle to catch planer dust, don't connect the hose to the shop-vac's blower side. Don't ask me how I got so smart. You wouldn't understand. It's a gift.

[John Coloccia]

By the way, here's a great tip I came up with tonight. When using a shop-vac as a passive receptacle to catch planer dust, don't connect the hose to the shop-vac's blower side. Don't ask me how I got so smart. You wouldn't understand. It's a gift.

I almost, but not quite, spit a mouthful of my cup of soup reading that. ROFL. There's just a million little details to get right that go into finding that first acorn, aren't there?

[Steve H Graham]

I make a point of doing at least one thing every day that makes me feel really stupid, and then I compound the stupidity by talking about it on the Internet.

I was going to turn on the vacuum and have it suck the dust out of the planer, but then I remembered the DeWalt has its own fan, so I decided to let the DeWalt do the work. After I ran the planer, I realized the hose was connected wrong and that the hose and blower end of the vacuum were probably packed with crap.

My solution was to take the hose off carefully, reattach it correctly, and run the sucking end directly into the exhaust. If anything blasted out of there, I never saw it, so I assume it went into the hose. I hope so, anyway. If not, it may have entered a wormhole and exited in 1993 on the set of Deep Space Nine.

[Steve H Graham]

That would explain why I've been getting angry emails from Avery Brooks for 17 years.

[Peter Quinn]

That would explain why I've been getting angry emails from Avery Brooks for 17 years.

LOL. I think some of it may have shown up in my shop. I can remember taking the hose off my DW planer to empty the trash can before I had a DC, and not tightening the clamp very well when reattaching, and firing it up to plane some more wood........wow did I get a face full of maple! I'm standing there holding the outfeed thinking I don't want to let go and get snipe, but I don't want to eat any more rabbit bedding either.

That #6 will make a lot less noise. Glad your finding some nuts. Plant a few of those acorns and soon you will have a whole forest.

[Steve H Graham]

I love the part of your story where you're wondering if you should fill your garage with sawdust or let go and risk snipe. Sometimes when you're using tools and something goes wrong, it instantly reveals your true priorities.

[Steve H Graham]

Fascinating new knowledge I accrued today: a shop-vac isn't made to withstand internal pressure. It's made to seal in response to lowered pressure. How do I know this? I attached my vacuum to my planer, turned the planer on, face-jointed two boards, and then noticed the sawdust all over the garage. It blew out between the vacuum and top.

So apparently I have to turn the vacuum on even when the planer is pumping the sawdust.

Where do I apply for a Darwin Award?

[ian maybury]

:) Philosophical break/curve ball! Woodworking (and indeed work in general) is a such a multi dimensional activity. We tend to chatter away about what we did and didn't do, but in the end we don't ever truly describe what we actually do.

Of course there's a seemingly obvious series of steps involved in completing (or intellectually describing) a task on e.g. a woodworking machine, but yet there's a whole series of worlds within that where there's all sorts of unspoken bits of finesse applied. Little tweaks that really matter that we're actually not conscious of applying most of the time - until that is we see somebody do the same task for the first time and have it go royally wrong...

To move this perspective into a much larger arena. The scary bit is that as never before there's a whole generation of managers, bankers, economists and the like out there making decisions with huge implications for all our futures that NEVER EVER have been close enough to the actual activity they think they manage to know what matters.

IT/computer systems, various bargaining chips like MBAs, piles of other people's money, the arrogance to feel entitled to speculate with this money and other bits of paper and behaviours that persuade us that they know best (taught by academics who have never done it either) and run away self interest have for example created the situation where a very few (maybe a core of four or five at the top of even very large organisations) are trying to remote control these ever larger organisations using IT (while fighting frantically to dominate other organisations and their supposed colleagues - having stripped out the eyes and ears at branch management level that were so much closer to reality. (prejudices and limiting beliefs of course left most of them blind too - but at least they didn't have the option to keep on burying the problem under layers of paper until eventually it couldn't be hidden any longer.

Some little breath of wind (chaos theory anybody?) removes just one tiny but critical element, and once the edifice starts to come apart the collapse rapidly becomes unstoppable) Wasn't that why the USSR supposedly collapsed?

Sprinkle escalating levels of greed on top and it's no wonder we're economically going down the tubes, is it??

[Rick Markham]

Fascinating new knowledge I accrued today: a shop-vac isn't made to withstand internal pressure. It's made to seal in response to lowered pressure. How do I know this? I attached my vacuum to my planer, turned the planer on, face-jointed two boards, and then noticed the sawdust all over the garage. It blew out between the vacuum and top.

So apparently I have to turn the vacuum on even when the planer is pumping the sawdust.

Where do I apply for a Darwin Award?

I was going to mention this little nugget of knowledge... ya beat me to it! Sorry it had to be the hard way. Well ya got one thing going for ya, you know how ya learn... some people make the same mistakes over and over in life. Lord knows, I often learn "the hard way" and I have certainly done my fair share of dumb things. ;)

[Victor Robinson]

Steve, I for one wouldn't mind if you posted a daily thread with your inept woodworking stories. For some, woodworking is about making things and stuff. For the rest of us, it's just a way to laugh at ourselves. :p

[John Coloccia]

Steve, I for one wouldn't mind if you posted a daily thread with your inept woodworking stories. For some, woodworking is about making things and stuff. For the rest of us, it's just a way to laugh at ourselves. :p

ROFL. I sure Victor didn't mean it like that. ROFLMAO. :D

[Erik France]

The infeed tables I ordered should make things even better. The infeed and outfeed tables for the DW735 will make a big difference. I think Dwalt should include them with the tool initially. I ordered a set not too long after I got my planer as I was getting a bunch of snipe.

The Dwalt dust collection bag is ok. It doesn't do very good on the fine dust but it works well for chip control. Most of my planing gets done outside, so I wasn't concerned with collecting all the fines. I just needed to stop the chips from piling up and choking my grass by my shop. I'll still use it from time to time when I have a lot of planing to do. The trash can is easier to empty than my dust collector.

[Dan Hahr]

You will still get some snipe some of the time, even with the tables. This is especially with the planer sled. As soon as you get a flat reference face, get rid of the sled and wait until you have a flat face on all the boards. The run the longest first and last, with the others in the middle, all in a row, one after another, with the ends butted tight to the others. This keeps the ends from lifting into the cutterhead and getting sniped. You run the longer ones because you will still get about 3 inches of snipe on the first and last end that go in. Its not a bad idea to run some scrap through before and after the line to sacrifice.

Also, if your boards are short and you aren't quick enough, you may want to switch to slow speed. It helps to stack the wood in the right direction, and stand to the left side of the planer (if you are right handed.)

Good luck with the plane... Dan

[Gary Chester]

Ian... great read...

Of course a bit of scotch helps...

[Steve H Graham]

I have to get the DeWalt dust bag thing. The yard now contains about all the "mulch" the code enforcement people will tolerate! And I don't want to fill the vacuum or a dust collector over and over (not that I have a dust collector, but someday I will).

My anti-snipe technique is improving. I didn't realize until last night how hard you can pull up on a board at the end of a pass. Evidently you have to give it a good pull to completely prevent snipe.

RE inept woodworking, I may have a good story tomorrow, if the boards I glued up don't come out right. It looks like I need about ten more clamps, and the Irwin Quick-Grips I reached for in desperation just don't cut it. And wet glue is like grease! It's easy to line the boards up when they're dry, but when you add glue, the clamps make them squirt around like wet watermelon seeds. And the miserable boards bowed overnight! If they hadn't done that, the clamping would have been WAY easier.

[Jaze Derr]

Thanks for the giggle :) I will remember to actually turn the shop-vac on when it's hooked up to something now.

[Russell Smallwood]

Initially I figured my tools were 98% to blame and I was responsible for the other 2%, but it has gradually become apparent that those numbers needed to be reversed. Ignorance, lack of technique, and sheer stupidity were causing most of my problems.

Oh.... just wait until you start into the hand tools...