The Tips and Tricks Thread

[Bryan Cramer]

I know this isn't a scrolling forum, but angling your scroll saw so the rear of the table is higher than the front prevents fatigue. Adjust the angle to suit you. I bolted a 4X4 to the rear legs. I just spent 22 hours cutting a portrait and it sure helped.

[Ole Anderson]

Sanding large pieces and controlling dust can be a problem. I don't have a good woodworker's bench or a large dedicated down draft table so I use the top of my TS. It is at just the right height. I throw a piece of 1/4" Masonite on top which has some cleats to keep it in place. Then I lay down a sticky (or used to be) sanding rubber mat. Two small spring clamps at one end hold that side in place with the other end kept in place with my portable downdraft table, stood on edge. When cleaning up glue ups that don't fit in my 13" planer, I use a 60 grit belt in my sander. To keep the board from sliding toward me, I just stick a properly sized chunk of 3/4" scrap just tall enough to catch the bottom edge, in the groove between the table top and the rail. My palm sander and my belt sander do not have dust collection, but the side draft dust collector seems to do a good job of keeping the dust out of the air, although the coarse dust from the belt sander does get pretty thick on the table top. I do run my ambient air cleaner and wear a mask while sanding, even when the profiles of the raised panel doors get hand sanded.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Very simple shop made jig used to position sanding disks on a ROS.

[Rick Potter]

While answering a question about dowel sizes, I decided to post this here too,

Many dowel rods, and sometimes factory dowels, are undersized and don't fit in the normal sized holes properly. I suspect they just make them to the closest metric size. To make the problem worse, I have found that all bradpoint drill bits are not exactly the same. I have a nice set from Shopsmith, a set of B&D's, some from Sears.

To make sure my dowel stock or dowel is going to fit my holes, I have made a simple block of wood with the common size holes drilled in it with each set of drills I have, including forstner bits, and spade bits. Now, when I am looking for dowels at the store or at home, I just take the sample block with me and test the dowel.

I also bought an inexpensive set of over/under brad points. It has sizes 1/32 on both sides of the desired size. Pretty handy sometimes.

Rick Potter

[Andrew Joiner]

Now, when I am looking for dowels at the store or at home, I just take the sample block with me and test the dowel.

Rick Potter

Great tip Rick. I do it in the shop with my "stock" of dowels, but I'll bring it to the store now when I go to buy dowels.

[Rick Potter]

Tip O' the Day from the Village Idiot..

I am probably the last person in the world to realize this, but I thought I would pass it on for other-worldly members. Not my tip, I got it from this weeks WOOD magazine e-mail.

When installing side mounted, full extension drawer guides, you install the drawer part using only the vertical slots on the guides. Then install the cabinet part using only the horizontal slots. This allows you to adjust in any direction. When you are happy with the fit, put in a couple screws in the round holes to lock it in.

Check out the WOOD tips for the week, they even have a video for those of us who have been doing it the hard way.

Rick Potter

[Ole Anderson]

This idea only works if you have a nice smooth floor (mine is Pergo): I screwed the CI base of my DP to a piece of 1-1/8" MDF and added four felt furniture pads at the corners. Slides easily, but not too easily, and is very stable. I used up a whole package of felt tabs in my shop for those things that didn't already have casters.
Attached Thumbnails

[Rick Potter]

This is the flip side of Ole's tip above. I made a benchtop router table out of scraps of pre finished plywood. Turned out great, except it tended to move on my formica covered bench. At first I clamped it down, but being lazy I went to HD and got some anti skid tabs. They are just 1" patches of rubberized something, and stick on just like felt pads. They were right next to the felt pads at HD.

Problem solved....non skid, and I don't have to unclamp it to move it.

Rick Potter

[Rick Potter]

I have picked up half a dozen cheap ($10-20) routers off Craigs list, and I keep them set up with roundover, chamfer, ogee, and flush trim bits. Hey the routers were cheaper than the bits. This has worked out very well, since they are set up and ready for a quick trim.

In the post above, I talked about making a little bench top router table. This is my second one, and more are on the way. On this one, I tried out one of those little Rockler router table tops, made to clamp to a bench, because it was on sale. Size is about 11X15", and I made a base for it. I am doing this because I feel much more comfortable doing roundovers, etc, on a table than freehand, especially with a laminate trimmer sized router. I find myself holding them with my fingers way too close to the bit. I made an egg shaped base for one, and it works well, but since I have the extra routers, I am going with the tiny tables. My first one, 25 years old, is just about the same size as the Rockler, melamine....could build more for $5 each, so I will build the next two.

Anyway, I just wanted to mention how handy these tiny tables can be, and how cheaply you can do them. Maybe give someone some ideas. Like maybe a lazy Susan, with four small routers in it, or a flip top stand with two on each side.

Rick Potter

[Ole Anderson]

I have the Leigh D1600 jig that is being used to make dovetail joints on several drawer boxes for my kitchen remod. A couple of things that helped me:

• The dovetail bits were a 8 mm shank. I had a 5/16 x 1/2" collet adaptor that worked well to adapt the 8 mm shank to the 1/2" router collet. 5/16" = 7.9375 mm.
• The 621 uses the left knob to tighten the plunge mechanism. Once you have the depth set, tighten that knob about as tight as you can get it. I didn't and my first use of the router unplunged it so that the dovetail bit ate the brass bushing. I had to get a new one from Highland Woodworking. http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/s...spx?find=leigh
• My first use of the jig generated copious amounts of sawdust. I opted to get the Leigh vacuum and router support, well worth it. Bought that also from Highland Woodworking.
• My kit did not come with the 12 degree dovetail bits needed for 5/8" drawer sides. Infinity Tools were one of the few places I could find them in the states. http://www.infinitytools.com/?key=gp...IA6g#&panel1-1
• When routing the pins, the manual recommends removing the material in 3 or 4 passes. I found that by marking 2 lines on the jig templates with a sharpie and peering over the top of the router (using eye and ear protection of course), I could get some repeatability on doing it in 3 fairly even passes. A small thing but when you are routing a hundred or more pins, doing 300 vs 400 passes can be a a big help.
• I could have used my shop vac for dust collection but opted to utilize the dust collector. As I had the Leigh jig clamped to my router table, I just connected a section of 2-1/2" vac hose from the Leigh dust collector to the 2-1/2" inlet on the side of the router table that normally services the rear fence collector. Worked fine.
• Using two layers of 1-1/8" particle board and a large forstner bit I constructed a router "landing pad" that allowed me to set the router down with the bit extended.

[Rick Potter]

My wife is off work for a while, and is helping with the kitchen cabinets. She has been doing the staining and finishing on the current crop for the last couple weeks. She stained a dozen panels before I woke up the other morning, and started finishing them the next day. When she got done varnishing the second coat (wipe on) she noticed the Red Oak panels were not red at all, just brown.

After a bit of soul searching we finally figured it out, she had not stirred the stain before using it. This was the same can she had use the previous day, but I stirred it before use, and she did not realize this. The stain worked great, except the reddish tint was not there, and it was easily missed till we put the panels next to some previously done. Luckily, except for two shelves, the panels are all on the inside of cabinets, and will not show once the drawers are in, so we let them go. The two shelves that are in a bookcase type unit we sanded, re-tinted, and will finish again tomorrow. Whew, no harm done.

Obviously the tip is...........stir your stain thoroughly and often, and make sure any helpers know this too.

Rick Potter

PS: Bonus tip.........In case you don't know, always keep varnish stirred, because the flattening agent settles to the bottom pretty quickly.

[Justin Ludwig]

I built a stand for my bench top drill press. I need things mobile in my shop and usually buy castors in sets of 4. The only extra castors I had at the time were 400lb rated ones I bought from Grizzly. I figured 1600lbs of castor ability was a little over the top for a bench drill press. See the pics below for a simple solution at 1/2 the cost. I'll eventually replace these big daddy castors with smaller ones once I need them.

castor-tip_1.jpgcastor-tip_2.jpg

[Ole Anderson]

Today I needed to put a bevel on a small scrap in order to use it to support a photo on an aluminum plate. I found a small piece of Ipe that would work nicely, but running that small piece through the table saw required too much of a pucker factor. My push "stick" just wouldn't hold it against the fence. So I stuck a piece of double stick tape to the piece and found that now my push "stick" and the scrap were now one and I was able to rip the bevel with confidence that there would be no kickback. Although looking at the picture, I didn't position the foot of the stick at the rear of the piece, yet all went well.

[Ole Anderson]

Ok, this is only a WW tip if you put liners in your shop trash cans: Kitchen trash bags are always a bit too large and they get pushed into the bin along with the trash. If you pull out the embedded tie, and take up a little by putting a knot in it, the bag will now fit snug and not fall in along with the trash.

[Ole Anderson]

This tip is similar to #6, but even more foolproof. I was making new 3-1/2" square legs for my pool table and made them up using 3/4" oak joined at the corners with a lock miter bit. Anyone having used that bit know how finicky they are as far a keeping the stock up against the bit and flat on the table. So I wanted a foolproof way to do that, short of using a shaper with a power feed. I had an old aluminum angle previously used as a fence that I clamped to the table to positively keep stock up against the fence all the way through the cut. And with the acrylic safety shield that came with my Freud fence pushed down on the stock, it was totally captive as it was fed through the bit.