M is for Micrometer

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M is for Micrometer

For most jobs, I use a tape measure. For some specialty measuring jobs I use an interior folding rule. For other specialty jobs, I sometimes use a micrometer.

Micrometers aren't just for establishing very small distances with great accuracy. Like any shop micrometer, mine (pictured to the left) can measure in thousandths of an inch or in fractions of a millimeter. Since mine is a purely mechanical micrometer, it does this by means of a finely machined ruled scale (two, actually: imperial on top, metric on the bottom) and another finely machined slider. In taking a reading, the zero marker for the slider will probably fall between one of the markings on the rule. You simply count up the slider until you find the slider marking which is precisely aligned with a scale marking and, presto, that's your fractional measurement.

In practice, you can discriminate proportional half-shadings between "a big bit off" vs. "a tiny bit off" vs. "zeroed" (1). A "tiny bit off" corresponds to 0.025 millimeters, i.e. 25 microns, the smallest gradation that can be measured by a trained eye in any practical sense. To be honest, I wouldn't try to put a spacecraft on Mars using measurements THAT fine, but it's useful for measuring wear on certain kinds of contact parts.

I don't generally do woodworking that requires thousandths of an inch. Since wood expands and contracts with the weather, the time of year, how sunny the room is, what kind of finish you've applied, how the piece is used, etc., there's not a lot of point in measuring beyond a sixteenth of an inch (2). Finer distances than that are done by feel.

No, where I use this micrometer most is in determining the sizings for round parts. See, putting a tape across the end of a dowel will sometimes give you a bad reading if you're not cutting directly across the center. A micrometer does a three-point alignment with the perimeter, so it always gives you a true diameter.

The lower jaws are for measuring exterior diameters, the upper prongs are for measuring interior diameters. You stick the prongs in the hole, open the mic until it stops. If you're a clumsy sort of person, you can tighten the set screw so that the reading won't be changed by a hand bump or dropped mic, but who among us has ever done anything so dumb? (3)

When the mic opens, the centerline probe extends from the end. This isn't just part of the mic's sliding mechanism. It's used to measure depths, especially of blind holes were a normal tape measure can't reach. Again, since I work mostly with wood, not metal, I rarely need to know the depth of a hole to a thousandth of an inch. While I used this a lot back when I did a lot of engine repair work, for woodworking I often use less precise methods.

Micrometers nowadays are digital and much easier to read than mine, with onboard memory that records multiple readings. However, since I don't have much call for such precision, this one is fine for me.

1. The machinists who taught me how to use this micrometer referred to these as, respectively, "off by a CH", "off by an RCH" (4), and "dead nuts". Machinists are a foul-mouthed bunch.

2. Imperial measurements go in binary fractions down to thirty-seconds and sixty-fourths of an inch. Below that, it switches to decimal fractions as thousandths of an inch. If you want a bunch of foul-mouthed machinists to laugh at you and call you a "dumb-ass college boy", suggest that this is a more cumbersome system than metric. Go ahead - it's a formative experience.

3. Me. Of course, once you drop a precision measuring device like a micrometer, it's no longer a precision measuring device. It has become what machinists call "a worthless, lying piece of shit, you dumb-ass college boy".

4. According to the link cited above (5), a real RCH was actually measured with great precision and found to be 30 microns. Those machinists knew what they were talking about! 

5. Only here at Landless will you find footnotes that are themselves footnoted. Tell your friends!
  
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L is for Laser level

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L is for Laser level

I've been drooling over this tool for years, but finally was able to justify buying one a few months ago. It is an beautiful piece of technology.

But first, some background about levels - probably unnecessary, but you never know. A level is a tool that tells you the orientation of something. From as far back as people cared to build things that were truly flat, people have used levels. From the Romans back to the Etruscans, Egyptians, Phoenicians and before, carpenters would fill a marked pan with water and set it on top of a wall. When the level of water was the same all around, the wall was flat. If you put two holes in the pan at opposite ends, right on the level line, you could use the pan level as a sighting tool for building level roads, piers, aqueducts, cathedrals, etc.

An open pan of water is a bit awkward, though, so as soon as it was practical, instead of looking at the level of water in a pan, they put the water in a little bottle with a flat bottom, then (because bottles break) they embedded the glass into a flat piece of wood. Convenient, that, since it's easier to make wood flat than it is to make glass flat (1). Eventually, somebody had the idea of using a glass tube mostly filled, instead of a little bottle insert only partly filled. Instead of looking for the surface of the water to go flat, you looked for the bubble to go in the middle of the tube (2).

Really old levels have only one bubble glass, level with the block of wood. Modern levels typically have three bubble glasses: one flat (3), one vertical (4) and one at a 45 degree angle (5). I have four big levels, ranging from 2 feet to 4 feet, in wood, steel, plastic, and fiberglass. I also have all the silly little levels built into my drills, saws, adjustable squares, etc.

A big advantage of the laser level pictured here is... well, there are several. Instead of laying a long level against the wall and marking spots across the wall that a true level (for laying tile, installing light fixtures, hanging pictures, etc.), you turn on the little vacuum pump built into the base of the laser level and hold it against an adjacent or opposite wall. It holds itself in place, shooting a flat laser beam across the entire wall you're working on (6).

The laser electronics swing free inside the case, so even if the thing you attached it to isn't level, your laser line is. With a tweak of a knob, you can adjust the line up or down to be exactly where you want it. It stays on as you work across 10, 20, 30 or more feet of wall (7). Also, the beam can be set to a flat line, a vertical line or both. This cross hairs feature lets you align the picture your hanging with respect to the vase below (8).

I know this is a specialty tool. Believe me, I've gotten by with long levels and plumb bobs, hose levels and taught pieces of string. I've installed drop ceilings, dug French drains, built stud walls, brick walls, fieldstone walks and lots of other things that absolutely HAD to be level and/or pitched at an exact angle.

But this laser level turns an hour's work into ten minutes. It's a thing of marvelous beauty.

1. A downside is that Incidentally, since the little bottles were sealed, they couldn't change the water. Since water gets scummy and cloudy after a while, they pretty soon switched to using alcohol or mineral spirits in the glass. Hence the old name, "spirit level".

2. This led to the colloquial term for someone who was a little off as being "half a bubble off plumb".

3. For floors.

4. For walls.

5. For no earthly purpose. Who in the world measures an angle with a level? Crog the Caveman? That's like trimming your fingernails with an axe. To get an angle properly, you measure rise and run, then calculate it.

6. So damn cool, I'm about to cry remembering the first time I used it.

7. *sniff sniff*

8. Or, more importantly, align the light fixture wiring with the outlet and/or sink underneath it, so you not only have the fixture level, it's wired properly between the studs, missing interfering pipes other wires.

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K is for Kneepads

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K is for Kneepads

Much like I didn't used to wear gloves, I didn't used to wear kneepads. Unlike with gloves, the "no kneepads" thing was pure testosterone.

I couldn't be bothered, didn't need them, didn't want them. Wusses and rookies wore kneepads. Callused knees were a sign of virtue and work ethic.

Kneepads got too sweaty. Kneepads were too binding. Kneepads were too awkward. Kneepads never fit right. Kneepads always slipped. Kneepads looked dorky as hell.

The cheap foam kneepads didn't last and didn't do any good anyway. The slightly less cheap kind with the hard plastic pads were unstable and uncomfortable, worse than no kneepads at all. And the high-end kneepads? Who in his right mind would pay $30 for a pair of kneepads? Silicon gel comfort wide elastic strap velcro adjustable blah blah blah... forget it!

Above all else, kneepads were for old men, the kind of guys who made those old man grunting noises when they got up off the floor where they'd been laying tile or setting floor joists. Kneepads were a mark of weakness and decline.

All of this I believed, and not just believed but lived out to the fullest extent. That makes this bit of self-examination somewhat awkward.

I'm not quite sure when I came to my senses. Was it when I laid the Pergo in my kitchen? Laying the flooring in my bedroom closet? When I laid fiberglass insulation in the attic joists and then installed flooring on top of it to get more storage space? When I did the oak flooring in my bedroom?

I know I wore kneepads to lay the drystone walk in the backyard, and I was wearing them for any hands-and-knees job by the time I did the tiling by the front door.

These kneepads you see in that picture up there... when did I buy them? These are the third or fourth set, and they're a serious cut above the previous ones, which are still in use by Mrs. Noland for her gardening and DIY projects. When did I buy these Cadillac kneepads? It was certainly long before I did all the restoration of the downstairs shower, which was many months before I did all the tiling and plumbing for the master bath.

When did I start wearing kneepads? Probably when I got tired of bruised knees, numb thighs and being stiff-legged for two days after every big job.

I guess these kneepads make me an old man who has to pace himself on a big job, working through the hours with measured pace rather than the simple furious energy of a young buck.

Funny how I don't much give a shit about such categorizations anymore. Must be the kneepads.

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#FridayFlash: On Bended Knee

This story is continued from last week's story, "Exotic Wood", and is based on today's A to Z Challenge post, "K is for Kneepads"

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Potemkin cupped the last piece of wood in his left hand; in his right, he readied the knife. The blade was only two inches, barely longer than the piece of wood itself. Curved and watery, the Damascus steel held a swirling dark pattern that fooled the eye, tricked the unwary into misjudging just where the cutting edge was. It was a knife that had to used by touch and feel more than by sight.

He set the last piece of wood into the last space in the parquet floor. The intricate fractal pattern spiraled outward from the center, seventy-five feet on a side, combining carefully shaped pieces into a combination rose window and sunburst. A hundred different species of rare and lustrous wood had gone into the floor, everything from angelwood and purpleheart to yarrowfen and zebrawood. The floor contained every color of the rainbow and every shade from bone white basswood to midnight black ebony.

And, of course, the wood that sings and cries...

Intermixed among the normal woods, slips and slivers of the most precious wood in the world lived and hid and adorned. Here making a line, there making an angle, here making a centerpiece, there making a frame, they were each at home among the other woods, drawing strength and comfort from them as they never could while kept apart, locked in an ornate box. Closely fit, without a hairsbreadth between them, they were many small sections that made up a single, glorious whole. No glue, no nails, no clamps, dogs or wedges, just the wood itself, shaped by the hands of a master.

A master who had to cut the wood apart before he could bring it back together.

The last piece of wood was a shade too wide for the last space. Potemkin sighed and readied the knife. It was the product of three thousand years' rediscovered bladecraft combined with the most up-to-date nanotech fabrication metallurgy. The deceptive, darkly beautiful blade was sharp enough to go straight to the bone on a single pass, sharp enough to whittle away a tungsten steel bolt, sharp enough to cut away anything a man's hand had strength to work against.

But it still wasn't sharp enough to work this wood without cost.

Still kneeling, his legs numb despite the kneepads his old frame demanded, he steadied the last piece of wood in his left palm. It would take only another sixty-fourth of an inch to make the fit perfect. He held the blade to the last piece of wood and closed his eyes. The wood cried and begged, the long suffering of repeated tortures spilling out in a shriek of pain and terror. He felt the anguish enter his heart, wrap itself around the shriveled husk that remained of his soul. Potemkin became one with the pain, opened his eyes and sliced the blade into the wood.

His vision blurred with the weight of shared agony. A paper-thin wisp of wood floated off and away, fluttering down, down, down, gasping in its newly severed isolation and horror before it fell to the floor, dead.

The pain of the wood lived in him and surrounded him, but Potemkin did not weep. He hadn't wept in fifty nine years, not from pain or fury or grief. He knew that when he finished the floor, he would have to bear an entire lifetime's worth of sorrow, taken all at once like a draft of boiling hemlock. His old ribs thudded with the fear that he might not be able to withstand it. As the cries from the last piece faded, however, he knew that the strength that had brought him this far would see him through to the end.

He set down the knife and picked up the mallet.

The last piece of wood again went into the last space in the parquet floor. This time, it slipped snugly into place. One tap to set it and the floor would be finished. After so many, many years, it would be finished and his life's work would then enter its final phase.

Potemkin readied the mallet. Eleven years since he'd purchased all the precious wood that Waterview had. He'd been forced to buy up Waterview's entire stock of normal woods as well to swing the deal, more than nine million dollar's worth. Time and money... what did they matter now? With a smooth stroke he brought the mallet down onto the last piece of wood THWACK and locked it in place. The last piece of wood made a shocked cry of alarm and then... nothing.

For long minutes, he waited. On his knees in the middle of the finished floor, he waited and heard nothing. But then... the sigh of a contented, happy child, the sound of comfort and love and release.

The old man recoiled as though he'd been kicked in the chest. Tears erupted from him, great flooding tears of joy and regret. He dropped the mallet and clutched at his face, crying out at the burning pain from the too-long unfamiliar sensation of weeping. He bowed his head and fell forward onto the floor, sobbing and convulsing as his lifetime of loneliness and bitterness came welling up. His tears plopped down, spreading and soaking on the last piece of wood and on all the pieces of normal wood beneath him.

During hours and hours, the uncontrollable weeping went on. Hyperventilating and cramping, Potemkin wept and wept and wept. A stroke, a heart attack, an aneurism could have taken him, so violent was the pounding in his head. His fragile old bones might have snapped under the strain of his own gasping and crying.

"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry for hurting you... I had to... I'm sorry..."

Finally, exhausted and spent, he slept, shuddering sobs still wracking his body as he lay curled on the wide, beautiful, intricate pattern he had created.

And in the timeless space between sleeping and wakefulness, a voice called to him. Rising up from beneath him, all the finely cut pieces of the wood that sings and cries spoke to him with one voice. It came to him soft and sweet, like the memory of a song sung in long-gone days of innocence and joy.

"Alexi... Alexi... we know what you have done... we forgive you, Alexi, but your final task remains undone..."

In his sleep, the old man whispered, "Will you help me?"

"You are alone, Alexi, always alone, in this as in everything... we cannot help you, Alexi... but we will guide you... get up, Alexi... get up and gather your tools..."

~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~ 

This story continues with "Quickly, Staunch the Wound", a piece based on next Friday's A to Z Challenge post, "Q is for Quick-set epoxy"

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J is for Jack plane

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J is for Jack plane

The plane is one of the canonical tools of a woodworker. In every soft-focus TV ad that wants to convey tradition and craft, you see a shot of a cabinetmaker running a plane along a piece of wood. There he'll be, putting the finishing touches on something with a tool that everyone will recognize. Perhaps in close-up, perhaps in an pan shot, you'll see the gnarled old hands of the master easing the plane forward, a thin curl of wood shavings rising up and away like the breath of an angel sent back to heaven.

I'm here to tell you that when you use a jack plane, that's exactly how it is. I recently had to trim a sticking door, which was square but was sticking because the doorjamb was not. With my jack plane (one of only a couple I own), I angle-shaved one corner until it matched the dimensions of the jamb. When I was done, it closed perfectly. While I was planing the door down, I got a whole mass of those angel curls. So, yes, it's just like in the TV ads.

That is, it's just like in the TV ads IF you have the wood oriented properly with respect to grain and angle of cut, IF you have the depth of the blade set properly, IF you have the backing plate set at the correct angle, IF the blade has been sharpened properly, IF the blade has been set square in the plane clamp, IF you press down with the right pressure (but not too much) and IF you go forward with smooth, steady confidence (but WITHOUT going too fast or too slow).

If any of these are done wrong, the plane bites and binds, taking chunks and pieces from the wood, stuttering and rasping as you shove it along. What you end up with looks like it got caught in a gravel crusher instead of being as smooth as melting ice.

There are a thousand ways to hack a piece of wood up with a jack plane, but only one way to gently remove long curls of wood 1/32" thick. When you see those commercials and watch that old geezer shaving up the workpiece with an expert touch, just realize that it's harder than it looks.

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I is for Interior Folding Rule

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I is for Interior Folding Rule

Click to enlarge - it's worth a close look!

These little babies are pretty obscure. To be honest, I don't have much call to use them, but they are so interesting, I'm glad I have them. As you can see from the photo, folding rules with an extension section have been around for a while, but continue to be made. The small one dates from the 1950s and belonged to my grandfather. The larger, newer one is much more recent - 1995? 2000?

Unlike Allen wrenches, drill presses, hammers, and many of the other tools I've been discussing, the interior folding rule has one function, which it does supremely well. It's a real specialty item, used for measuring the exact interior dimensions of closed frames, such as windows, door jambs, boxes, dressers, etc. Why is it so specialized? Allow me to (briefly) explain.

Folding rules are the precursors of modern tape measures. Any carpenter always had a folding rule in his kit. In the old days, a "tape" measure meant a long piece of cloth tape, 25, 50 or 100 feet, coiled around a hub or in a small round drum. Any distance shorter than about 10 feet was measured with a folding rule. Any distance longer than 10 feet used multiple increments of the folding rule or (since that led to errors) a single use of the tape(1).

Even after the innovation of the modern tape measure - a thin tape made of retractable, flexible spring steel - a problem remained. How do you measure the inside of something? This sounds like a dumb question, but it's more pertinent than you might guess.

If you measure from edge to edge on the outside, you're only interpolating about what the measurement is on the inside, based on the assumption that everything is straight, square and plumb. Good luck with that, Skippy.

On the other hand, if you put your folding rule (or tape measure) down inside and measure directly, you can put the far end flush against one side, but you have to hold the rule at an angle against the other. That means you must estimate the true measure based on an eyeball of where the rule is in relation to the far end(2). Again, you can be off by as much as 1/8", the difference between square and crap.

Enter the interior folding rule. It goes inside the space to be measured and is unfolded into as many units as the space will fit. What's left over is measured with the extensible brass slide. The rule is placed flush against one side; the extension is slid out until it's flush against the other side. Length of rule units + length of extension = interior space width.

The REALLY great thing about this tool is that it allows you to take incremental measurements of the interior space. In a bright, shiny world where every doorjamb is a perfect rectangle  and every window slides easily in a perfectly square frame, this is unimportant. In the real world, however, where doors and windows stick and bind, it's pretty useful to know the real shape of the materials you have to work with. As you run the interior folding rule down the space, you can slide the brass extension in and out to account for the changes of the space, in 1/16" increments.

I haven't had to rebuild window frames in a while, but I just recently did some cabinet work where this tool came in handy. As I said above, it's a specialty item but is an absolute champion at what it does.

1. REALLY long distances needed surveyor's cord, but I won't get into that.
2. Some tape measures note the width of the tape itself so that you can extend the tape, take a reading and add the tape width. In my experience, those width measurements are not very accurate, and get less so as a tape measure gets dinged around.
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H is for Hammers

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H is for Hammers

I'm not going to belabor this: I've got a few different hammers.

Like any tool, different hammers are designed to do different things. Yes, you COULD get by with just a regular carpenter's claw hammer, just like you COULD get by with just one kind of pen. It's a generalist tool and does most jobs well enough. Whatever extra power, control, finesse or leverage a given job requires must be supplied by the ingenuity of the wielder.

You COULD live that way, but I can tell you from experience that it gets old. A destruction job that a 48-oz sledge hammer would do in four strokes, a 16-oz carpenter's hammer will take fifteen or twenty strokes... or thirty. Similarly, a fine finish nailing that a 4-oz tack hammer would do beautifully will end up looking like it was done by Crog the Caveman if done with that 16-oz carpenter's hammer.

Here are the hammers in this picture, clockwise from top:

• 48-oz short-handled sledge (not pictured is the 10-lb long handled sledge I use for big knockout jobs)
• three 16-oz carpenter's hammers (I have three so that, on jobs that need several people, I can just hand out hammers and get everybody to work)
• 22-oz ball-peen hammer (for metalwork)
• 22-oz framing hammer, flat face (angled, blue handle) (used for framing... duh)
• 22-oz framing hammer, check-face (angled, black handle) (notice that the framing hammers have a tapered steel shaft, integral with the head, while the other hammers have a steel head attached to a wooden shaft. Framing hammers are very end-heavy, very long-handled and hit almost as hard as a sledge. They'll drive a ten penny nail in two whacks.)
• dead-blow rubber mallet (for "persuading" soft materials)
• double-faced hard-blow rubber mallet (white=soft, black=hard)
• wooden mallet (used with chisels)
• head from my grandfather's 12-oz ball-peen (useless as a hammer, but I think of my grandfather every time I look at it)

Not pictured are various other hammers - a 4-oz tack hammer, a silly combo hammer/screwdriver thing I keep in my car, the 10-lb sledge, and probably a few other hammers I've forgotten about. The picture shows the ones I use most often.

Also, I didn't picture the prybars, crowbars, superbars, linesman's combo tools, wood chisels, concrete chisels, cold chisels, etc. that go hand-in-hand with these hammers. If I have more than three nails to pull, I rarely use the claws on the back of the hammer; a pair of prybars work much better.

Hammers present you with a refinement of the classic line: use the right tool for the right job.

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G is for Gloves

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G is for Gloves

I wasn't wearing a glove for this.

I didn't used to wear gloves.

This was not because of the normal stupidity and bravado that pervades young men, that inevitable consequence of being steeped in testosterone and ignorance. In my own way, of course, I was as drunk on that cocktail of youth and inexperience as the next guy, but I've always been a careful and risk-averse person(1). No, this was a considered approach to woodworking and DIY in general. Two things went into the decision: the quality of the work and the nature of workplace injuries.

Gloves necessarily separate you from the work. Whatever you're doing - sanding, carving, framing - gloves inhibit your ability to control your tools and to get the feedback they're giving you. More importantly, gloves prevent you from sensing the work itself. Wood can lie to your eyes and to the tape measure, but it can't lie to your hands. Your fingertips, your palms, the heel of your hand... these are the means by which the wood talks to you, in syllables of thousandths of an inch.

Is that joint really square? Did that knot sand down properly? Will that cross-grain catch fibers? Are those four pieces really the same length? Should that veneer be re-set? How much flex is on that plane?

For many years, I simply regarded the quality of the work as more important than the safety of my fingers. Being able to sense the wood, to listen to it and work with it, was the first priority. I can't tell you how many splinters, cuts, stabs and slices I've had over the years. I've never kept track. The "mystery cut" is familiar to any woodworker: after a day spent in the shop, you look down at your hands and realize that you're bleeding - sometimes impressively - from a big gash torn in one or more fingers. The mystery cut is bloody, dirty and crusted with sawdust, perhaps with a largish flap of loose skin. It's the kind of injury that should really be washed off as soon as possible. The thing is, you simply can't recall what caused it. Being so deeply in the zone, focused so intently on the work, it happened without your noticing.

Who needs gloves to get in the way when you're having that much fun?

With regard to the potential for really serious injuries, though, I subscribed to the theory that gloves could make them worse. The logic goes like this: your fingers are too close to the whirring blade of your table saw, band saw, miter saw, etc. If you're bare-handed, you get a nasty cut, perhaps even sever a fingertip(2). If you're wearing gloves, the blade grabs the glove and yanks your whole hand in. After that, you're the guy who has to hold up two hands to order four beers. It's the same logic for not wearing loose clothing or unfettered long hair around your power tools. Better a single bad cut to a finger than being chewed up completely because you were wearing gloves, right?

It took a certain amount of distance and perspective before I realized that the real key to not getting badly injured was to keep your fingers as clear of the whirring blades as practical. These days, I use push sticks, grippers, handles and other devices to let me have good control of the wood without having to run my fingertips a quarter of an inch from the blade.

I also wear gloves for rough work. Maybe I've gotten soft in recent years, maybe I've allowed my oxhide calluses to fade to nonexistence, or maybe I've gotten tired of taping closed my wounds with homemade butterfly bandages and digging splinters out of my fingers. Whatever it is, I've changed my behavior. Not for all things and not for all jobs, but much more than I used to.

The gloves you see here are the latest pair of leathers. Spending the extra couple of bucks on good gloves buys you:

• seams that don't rip
• fingers that are long enough to be comfortable, not so long that you flop at the tips
• linings that don't pill and fray
• surfaces that don't make your hands sweat
• backstraps that allow a solid closure fit, yet are easy to undo with your teeth.

My recommendation to you: gloves are protective gear. Wear them under any circumstances which warrant the additional protection. Same goes for eye and ear protection.

1. That is, when I wasn't being deliberately self-destructive.
2. I took a big chunk off the top of my left thumb once. It hurt.

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Woodworking Tools, A to Z

This page will serve as a handy index to all of my woodworking tools posts as part of the 2013 A to Z Blogging Challenge. Enjoy!

A is for Allen wrench	B is for Biscuit cutter	C is for Clamps
D is for Drill press	E is for Exotic wood	F is for Files
G is for Gloves	H is for Hammers	I is for Interior folding rule
J is for Jack plane	K is for Kneepads	L is for Laser level
M is for Micrometer	N is for Nippers	O is for Opener
P is for Pencils	Q is for Quick-set epoxy	R is for Router
S is for Stud sensor	T is for Trim saw	U is for Ultraspeed rotary tool
V is for Vise	W is for Whetstone	X is for X-ACTO knife
Y is for Yankee drill		Z is for Zip-ties

 

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F is for Files

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F is for Files

There was a time when I didn't care about files. I had one old file that I'd gotten from somewhere - rusty, dull, no handle. It was useless, really, but I kept it in my toolbox because I figured every well-equipped toolbox should have a file. It's no wonder I had no respect for it. That thing sucked.

I'm not sure when I acquired my first proper file, but the difference was night and day. One doesn't think of files as something that need to be cleaned or sharpened or maintained. They just ARE. However, just like any tool, files have a proper method of use and many, many improper methods of use.

Do you have access to a file? I mean right now... right this very moment? Even the little file on a pair of nail trimmers will do.

Run your finger along the file in one direction, then run in back the other way. Do you feel a difference? Files have directionality, which means they cut in one direction but not in the other. If you apply force to a file when pushing it the wrong direction, you not only don't take a million little bites out of the piece you're working on, you bend back the tiny ridges on the file. This makes it less able to cut in the proper direction.

Hang on... those of you who got out the nail trimmers might not have felt any difference. Take a look at the file. See how the little lines are cross-hatched? The cutting surfaces on each set of microgrooves are oriented 180 degrees from each other. That means it does NOT have directionality, and will cut no matter which way you draw it. This kind of thing severely reduces the mechanical strength of the cutting grooves, but for cutting something soft like human fingernails, it doesn't matter. Even cheap steel will hold a cutting edge for a long time.

Some shaping rasps (I've got a couple) have the same double-check pattern. For one thing, they're made of high-grade carbon steel, so they won't dull despite the loss of strength on the cutting surfaces. For another, mine are only used in woodcarving, for making light passes that don't remove much material.

Looking at the files in that picture, you can see a mix of old and new. Some I bought online or in a store, some I got at garage sales. I forget what all I have. Round file, half-round file, taper file, rat-tail file (VERY useful for sharpening chainsaw blades), block file, rasps in heavy, medium and light, etc., etc. Probably the most interesting thing about these files are the handles.

Some have plain wood handles, others have plastic. A number of them, though, have handles I made from blueberry canes. For some reason, many files that you get at garage sales lack handles. I've never been able to figure out why. Do they rot? Do they crack off for some reason? Were they improperly stored? Whatever the reason, I found it necessary to fashion new handles for these.

I used thick old canes from one of my blueberry bushes, perhaps 7/8" in diameter. The blueberry canes are straight and hard (plus, I had a bunch saved in my wood storage from a major trim out I gave the bushes a few years prior). After stripping the bark, I sanded off the worst of the irregularities, then tapped an undersized hole in the center heartwood. A firm, confident whack with a mallet drove the tang end of the file into the hole and there it stays, held in place by friction with the wood.

The irregular nature of those blueberry cane handles is a bit goofy, but they each have an natural orientation in which they are most comfortable to hold and use. They give each file a certain personality of its own, which I like.

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#FridayFlash: Exotic Wood

This story is based on today's A to Z Challenge post, "E is for Exotic Wood"

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On the other side of the frosted glass, a man knocked at the door and waited. Inside the shop, the proprietor studied a monitor, artfully hidden from view beneath the countertop. After a moment, he pressed a button. The door buzzed and the customer stepped inside.

"Ah, Mr. Potemkin," the proprietor said, rising from his chair. "How good of you to be so punctual. I can see that Mr. Thompson was right to recommend you to us. I am Mr. Waterview."

"Mr. Thompson was too kind, Mr. Waterview. I appreciate your seeing me." They shook hands and Mr. Waterview stood back. The newcomer looked around the shop, his eyes finally coming to rest on the countertop. He glanced at the proprietor. "May I?"

"You wish to examine the grain? Please, I'd be honored if you would."

They stepped closer to the massive countertop. A single slab of wood, it was almost four feet across, at least eighteen feet long and three inches thick. Mr. Potemkin ran the flat of his palm along its length, bending down close to the surface. Though it appeared to be unvarnished, the wood had the mirror lustre of melted molassas caramel. The full length of the slab was unchecked and uncracked, with grain lines no thicker than a thumbnail.

"Well?" said Mr. Waterview. "What do you make of it?"

The other man didn't hesitate. "American black walnut, a solid piece of heartwood cut out of an old growth tree from a virgin stand. Judging by the uniformity of the grain line, it grew somewhere brutally cold and ugly, but sheltered from the wind." He tapped the surface with his knuckles, listening the to wood absorb his efforts. "Trees like this haven't been seen on this continent for two hundred years, but this surface doesn't show anything like that kind of wear. The slab is too thick to have been resurfaced, so you got it this way. There are no cracks in the wood, either, so it's been stored bark-on in a controlled environment. Therefore..."

"Yes?"

"Therefore, this tree was grown in a high crevasse on the southern slope of Mount Washington in New Hampsire, elevation between 2500 and 3500 feet. Protected from the axe by its inhospitable location, it was eventually felled sometime in the 1830s or 40s and floated onto a sea barge. The ship carried it down the coast and around into New Orleans. It was being shipped upriver to St. Louis when the ship sank. The load of high-grade timber sank in the anaerobic mud of the alluvial plain. Your agents recovered the lumber in the early 1990s, then spent at least three years slowly drying it before milling."

"You're just guessing about St. Louis."

Potemkin shrugged. "But I'm right about the rest. Or at least I'm close enough that I think we can dispense with any further tests of my knowledge of exotic woods. I assume you cut this slab with a hand saw?"

"That's correct. A band saw would not have provided sufficient control."

"Mr. Waterview, my appointment is for sixty minutes. Now that we've spent eleven of those minutes establishing my bona fides, I would like to see the materials I came for."

"What exactly did Mr. Thompson tell you about our wares?"

"Mr. Thompson is a fellow enthusiast, Mr. Waterview. He told me that you had something... special."

"We have many things that are special, Mr. Potemkin. Rare and precious woods. Black-hearted bubinga, tiger maple, sparrowwood, purple mojanga, ironwood, Ainu fir..." Mr. Waterview trailed off as his customer held up a hand.

"Please. Any of these I could acquire on the open market. Mr. Thompson referred to, as he put it, 'the wood that sings and cries'. He was rather poetic in his phrasing, but I believe you know the material he's referring to."

Mr. Waterview's face darkened. "I will admit some surprise that Mr. Thompson was so free with his description. We pride ourselves on the... discretion of our clients."

"He was under some duress. I confess that I obtained the information from him as part of an exchange. He needed something from me and gave me the information as payment, along with the letter of introduction which you received."

"And what could Mr. Thompson have needed from you so badly that he was willing to break a confidence?"

"One of my kidneys. He was dying. Now he isn't. May I please see the wood that I came here for?"

Mr. Waterview studied Mr. Potemkin, his face contorted into a strange, scowling mixture of anger and admiration. "What do you intend to make with it?"

"That is not your concern."

"I believe that it is, Mr. Potemkin. This wood must be handled very, very carefully. Men have died through careless treatment of it."

"Careless men are incapable of learning the wood exists, Mr. Waterview. Twenty three minutes of my sixty have now passed. May I see the wood, please?"

"As you wish."

Mr. Waterview led the way through the shop, past display cases and wood racks, through a door at the far end. In an anteroom, he took a set of keys from his pocket and opened an intricately carved and inlaid chest made of a thousand glowing woods, each of the rarest and most precious kind. Within the large chest was a small box. To this, Mr. Waterview fitted a small brass key, taken from a chain around his neck.

Within the box, on a bed of red crushed velvet, was a piece of wood the size of a deck of playing cards. Deep, claret red-purple, the wood had an aroma of earth and hair and sadness.

Mr. Potemkin studied it, hands at his sides. After long minutes, he reached out and drew a finger along the wood. The room was filled with the whispers of children as they softly sang themselves to sleep. He looked up at Mr. Waterview. The proprieter reached down into the chest and picked up a curved drawkife. As he moved it close to the wood, the voices began to whimper.

When the blade touched it, they screamed in terror, begging voices frantically pleading for mercy from the cold, cold steel.

Mr. Waterview put the knife down and the screaming faded to a haunting whisper.

"Are you prepared to work this wood into whatever it is you plan to make, Mr. Potemkin? Are you truly prepared for this?"

Mr. Potemkin looked down into the box.

"How much can I get?"

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This story continues with "On Bended Knee", based on next Friday's A to Z Challenge post, "K is for Kneepads"

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E is for Exotic wood

For my other posts about woodworking tools, follow this link. And don't miss the #FridayFlash story based on this post is "Exotic Wood"

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 E is for Exotic wood

Nothing can match solid hardwoods for beauty and purity of grain. Take a fine piece of twisted old cherry, birdseye maple, or burled walnut, burnish it and give it three or four coats of a slow-setting polyurethane finish. Flames will dance in that wood, as warm as a kiss and as deep as a goblet of rare wine.

The wood pictured here is bubinga, a dark hardwood from Africa. Its grain is so dense, the wood almost sinks in water, like ironwood. Bubinga has a fascinating double-check end grain. When cut on an angle to the grain line, these make waving lines in the wood, like the frozen traces of a seismograph during a world-ending event. After finishing, the color of bubinga is reddish brown, like a piece of hot, heavily buttered toast on which someone has poured WAY too much cinnamon sugar.

Sadly, though, such woods are expensive as hell. As you can see from the picture, I paid $3.80 for that one 18" piece of bubinga, and that was several years ago. What is a lover of woodgrain beauty to do if he or she must construct furniture on a budget? And if using sustainably harvested wood is as important as the grain pattern?

I say unto thee: veneer plywood. And yet again I say unto thee: veneer plywood.

Label me a heretic if you will, or (even worse) a woodgrain apostate. The reality is that the difference between a $40 piece of wood and a $400 piece of wood is $360. That marginal cost would buy daddy a lot of Happy Meals, if you know what I mean. So, we bend our expectations to match the limitations of reality.

Please understand, I'm not talking about knotty, construction grade plywood. A 4' x 8' sheet of top quality hardwood plywood with a veneer of cherry, red oak, white oak or maple will give you some very nice results if you're careful with it. The grain pattern is never as nice as with solid wood, but the color and flame is there.

The secret is that you don't have to be entirely in one camp. With a bit of judicious craftsmanship, you can artistically incorporate solid wood elements into your plywood construction pieces. Accents, trim, panels and inserts will have such interesting grain that they draw the eye and fool the casual observer into thinking that the entire piece has interesting grain. You may find this hard to believe, but I've seen it done brilliantly. I've even done it myself.

I use the bubinga here to make slips, plugs and inserts that dress up my larger pieces. I also have blocks of red maple, pin oak, American holly and other dense-grained woods for the same purpose. In addition to the regular plywood, pine 2" x 4"s, etc., my reserve wood storage area has lots of odd chunks and pieces of exotica, some of which are split but still have the bark on.

All of these woods shine with unborrowed light. I save them so they can lend their beauty to the pieces in which they find a home.
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For my other posts about woodworking tools, follow this link.

Follow this link to read another blog in the A to Z Blogging Challenge!

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The #FridayFlash story based on this post is "Exotic Wood"

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D is for Drill press

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D is for Drill press

There's nothing particularly exotic about a drill press; just about any well-equipped workshop will have one. In the pantheon of tools, the drill press is one of the elder gods, one of the essential foundations upon which the world rests. Others in this class are the table saw, band saw and miter saw. Some would argue that the lathe and surface planer deserve equal place, but I'd call them more specialty tools.

But I digress.

When you first start out working with wood, you need to do two things: a) take hunks of wood apart, and b) put hunks of wood together. The degree of precision and artistry with which you do these things is driven by your enthusiasm, your time invested and your tools. Of these, the skill that comes with experience is by far the most important. It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools. A true master can do more with a pointy rock and a pocket knife than a newbie wood butcher could do with all the tools in the world.

For anyone first starting out, it is a mistake to spend a lot of money on fancy, professional-grade tools. Why? For the same reason someone who decides to take up guitar should not go lay down four grand on a slick, sexy Fender. First off, after getting into it, you might not enjoy the hobby that much. It's a stupid shame to have a great instrument collecting dust in a closet after three half-hearted months. Second, since you don't know what you're doing, you might misuse that tool, or break it, or ruin it or otherwise screw it up through sheer ignorance. Third, anybody first starting out doesn't have the skill necessary to use a really good instrument to its fullest extent. All the qualities that make it great might as well not be there.

If the tool is really good, then it knows what it's doing better than you do. Until you become a better craftsman, you'll just be wasting that tool's time. Get it?

When I first started out, I got the same drill any other newbie woodworker did: a cheap Black and Decker from Sears. As my experience and skill level grew, I found that I had reached that sweet spot where I was being limited by my tools. I've long since upgraded my hand-held power tools several times: drill, circular saw, jig saw, etc. When you are limited by those hand-held power tools, though, you start moving into fixed tools.

The drill press pictured above is the first one I bought. I picked it up at a garage sale for $45. Unlike modern drill presses, this one has an exposed belt system in the back. There's no way this would be allowed in a modern tool, but I've arranged the area around it to keep it clear. In a modern drill press, there would be a variable speed control, possibly even with a slick foot-pedal activator. This one has a belt that goes on one of three pulley wheel combinations connecting the drive shaft of the motor to the drill shaft. Drill bit speed is controlled by moving the belt among the different pulley ratios: big to little is "fast"; middle to middle is "medium"; little to big is "slow".

A few years ago, I wired a light underneath to illuminate the work area. I also took some magnets from an old hard drive and glued them to the underside of the work plate. That was to catch metal shavings from when I drill out metal parts. Aside from the different jigs I've built over the years, accessories include drum sander bits, rotary cutter bits, and various slide-locking visegrip stages to hold small pieces that I'm working on.

One feature of this drill press that has saved my fingers a few times is a friction-fit chuck shaft. The chuck (i.e. the locking vise that holds the drill bit) isn't fixed to the drill shaft, but is instead held in place with a finely machined, tapered steel shaft-and-rod assembly. When the bit hits something it can't drill into or if the dumb-ass operator is impatiently trying to get it to drill faster than is safe (as sometimes happens), the drill does not stupidly go on doing the master's bidding. That would result in a shattered bit, with high-velocity shrapnel flung in all directions. Instead, the resistance of the seized bit breaks the friction fit in the chuck shaft. The net effect is that the motor keeps running, the drive shaft keeps spinning, but the drill bit itself stops instantly.

I've considered getting a newer one, but this one suits me. Only rarely has this drill press been unable or unwilling to do what I asked of it. For most of those, I realized on reflection that I'd been asking it to do something dumb.

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C is for Clamps

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C is for Clamps

I know, I know: you can never have too many clamps.

The thing is, clamps are like lawyers. When you don't need them, even just a couple are too many, cluttering up your life and getting in the way of getting things done. But when you're in a spot where DO need them, it always seems like you're desperate to have a few more on your side to get the job done properly, and you wish you'd spent the money to get them!

I have more clamps than what you see here. The long clamps with the deep jaws (pictured to the left) are perfect for bookcases. I have a bunch of shallow jaw pipe clamps and bar clamps, too. They range from little 2-foot shorties to 6-footers. For anything longer than 6 feet, I set one clamp against another to extend the reach out.

Fun fact: if you reverse the faces on a pipe clamp, you can use the clamp as a spreader. Instead of pushing IN, the faces push OUT. This is dead useful for working with bowed, warped or racked wood. Set some clamps pulling in, others pushing out and reshaping wood is no problem. New lumber is usually square, but old wood has more character. You just have to persuade it to do what you want.

I generally pick up my C-clamps, D-clamps and other small work clamps at garage sales. On a recent project, I used every single one of my C-clamps (in the picture above) and wished I had a dozen more. I was building some shallow-frame cabinet doors for a bedroom facelift. I'd trimmed out some oak veneer plywood for the backpanels, using a trick I came up with a number of years ago. I set my table saw to a 45-degree angle and just a 1/16 depth, enough to score the surface of the wood. Multiple passes on 1" spacing turned regular 1/4" plywood into light beadboard - same look, at a fraction of the cost of the professionally milled stuff.

The problem was that those panels were very thin. The frames were made of 3/8" red oak strips. I tried using a biscuit joint on the corners, but even my thinnest biscuits - the #0 variety - left me without enough material to get a good joint. I had no choice but to rely on glue joints exclusively. The key to making glue joints secure is to use the glue properly and to clamp it evenly and well. I set the pieces, taped them closed with sacrificial gorilla tape, then used a clamp at each corner and two on each side, to give minimum distance between clamp points. When you multiply that by three doors, the number of clamps needed adds up. It took every clamp I had, but the doors turned out great.

To reiterate: you can never have too many clamps.

Final thoughts on clamps: My clamps are stored overhead, out of the way but easily accessible. Those fast-release one-hand clamps are cute, but they don't grip as hard as I'd like. I always feel like I'm going to break them when I really crunch them down. Also, I don't have any strap clamps, because I don't have enough call for them. For the kind of irregular clamping that you'd use straps for (like repairing chair legs), I use twisted rope clamps or block the piece into a jig with wedges.

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B is for Biscuit cutter

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B is for Biscuit cutter

To join two pieces of wood together, you have only three options: use a glue joint (lap, half-lap, tongue-and-groove, angle groove, etc.), use a securing device (peg, wedge, block, screw, or a nail of some kind, such as a smooth-shank, ring-shank, wire-shank, grooved, twist, etc.) or shape the wood to lock against itself (dovetail joint, half-dovetail, mortise and tenon, etc.). Really strong joints use several of these methods, working together. There's an old woodworking adage: "the nails are just to hold it until the glue dries".

The biscuit joint is a combination of all three of these methods. They are amazingly strong, tight, seamless joints, with no nail heads to hide, no complex cuts to make, resilient to flexure stress, and no fears of failure of the joint later on. When made properly, biscuit joints are so strong that the wood itself will crack and fail before the joint does.

Before I talk about the biscuit cutter, let me tell you about the biscuits. No, I don't mean the kind of biscuits you bake to a golden brown and slather with butter and jam. The biscuits I'm talking about are oval-shaped pieces of dried and compressed wood shavings (on the lower left in the photo). In a biscuit joint, two matching slots are made in the pieces to be mated. Wood glue goes onto the faces of the joint, into both slots and onto a biscuit. The biscuit is slipped into one slot, the other slot is lined up on the other side of the biscuit and the joint is clamped shut.

When the glue is dry, the joint is as solid as a rock. The biscuit absorbs moisture from the glue, expanding into both sides of the joint, adding LOTS of mechanical advantage to the grip. It not only holds the mated faces together, it prevents the joint from flexing, either laterally, obliquely or torsionally. The biscuit is completely hidden inside the joint, so there is no nail head to hide, no countersinks, slips, plugs or Dutchmen to add. Furthermore, since the biscuit is made of wood, you can drill through it during subsequent steps in construction, if need be.

Biscuit joints can be made at any angle. The biscuits themselves come in various sizes, suitable for projects from small to large. The DeWalt biscuit cutter pictured above has a big, scary blade that spins inside the housing. When it's pressed against the work, the blade plunges into the wood, cutting a perfect slot. Tiny teeth engage as it's pressed, which keep the face from slipping as the blade bites in. The front fence can be adjusted for angle, cut orientation, depth and height of cut, depending on the orientation of the joint you're making.

I love my biscuit cutter. It's one of those specialty tools that, once you finally buy one, open up entire new worlds of woodworking capability.
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A is for Allen wrench

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A is for Allen wrench

Allen wrenches (also known as hex wrenches or hex keys) are hexagonally shaped tools that fit into screws and bolts with hexagonally shaped holes. The advantage of a hex hole vs. a slot or Phillips head is that the six sides give more surface area for the tool to grip, while the hole prevents the tool from falling out. This makes hex-head screws and bolts ideal for applications where you really need to tighten it down hard, with fine threads that give lots of gripping surface area. The Torx wrench is a further refinement of this concept, with a hex-star shaped tool. I have some of those, too.

Sets of Allen wrenches can be loose, individual keys or they can be fold-out as part of a set. They can have long handles, L-shaped or T-shaped handles. They can be metric or imperial, since the size of the hex hole can be set in fractions of an inch or in millimeters, depending on the source. Using the wrong size Allen wrench won't move the screw - it'll either strip the hex hole into a round hole or it will strip your Allen wrench smooth, depending on which has the harder steel.

A machinist needs Allen wrenches a lot more than woodworkers do, since hex bolts are rarely used to hold together wooden furniture.1 So why would a woodworker have Allen wrenches? Many power tools use hex bolts for blade adjustment, blade replacement, adapter and fitting connections, etc.

More information on types of holes, with advantages and disadvantages, can be found here.

1. IKEA furniture is held together almost exclusively with hex bolts, but IKEA furniture isn't made of wood - it's made of sawdust, glue and lies.
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