WWGOA LIVE! July 2018

So I guess we're gonna do a live stream out of the shop. I know there's already some questions posted here, and technical difficulties have been resolved, so everything looks good, if I can get into my iPad. Here we go. All right. I'm refreshing here.

I'm not refreshing, my iPad's refreshing. Richard from Houston, Texas says, "Is it necessary to alternate growth rings "on edge-to-edge panel glue-ups?" So here's what Richard is talking about, and honestly, this is the way, many moons ago, this is the way that I was taught to do a glue-up, which is, so edge-to-edge, doing a panel, that the annual rings, the growth rings, on this one like this, this one like this, this one like this. Now, let me talk about the rationale behind that first, and then I'll tell you whether or not I do that. If we take a board, and it's got annual rings, it's got growth rings in it, if a board is gonna cup, it will cup in the direction opposite the growth rings. So where these rings are going this way, this board would want to cup up.

So the premise here is that if this cups up a little bit and this cups down a little bit and this cups up a little bit, they'll all kind of offset each other and the resulting panel will be relatively flat. In the world of practical experience, what I have found is that I don't do this, I don't pay any attention to annual rings at all. But part of what's really key with that is that your material is stable. So what stable means is if it's wintertime and the stuff is stored, your wood is stored where it's cold, you bring it in the shop, you let it acclimate to heat and humidity in your building before you start working with it, that it's been dried and it's been dried for long enough that it's really effectively dried. So the bottom line is if the material is stable, what I do is go for the best face of the material regardless of the growth rings, without paying any attention at all to the growth rings.

Carol says, "What's the best material "to build modern dressers to make it cost effective "and not looking cheap?" Last dresser I built was actually for Jenny, the camera lady, and I used plywood. I used veneered plywood for the case and then solid wood for the face frame and solid wood for the drawer fronts. And I would say that's a pretty common approach. It's cabinet making, you know, it's like the same way your kitchen cabinets are made. So if I were doing that again tomorrow, I would do the exact same thing.

Bob says, "I use a jointer for edges and a planer for face. "When would I use a jointer for face?" So let's head for the jointer, Jenny. Give me a second to collect myself, and I'm gonna walk over this way and grab a stick of wood, and I need a push pad. Tyler's about to be in the frame. It's okay, there can be more than just me in the shot.

All right, so what I did is I grabbed a, this is a piece of red oak, and this is a great example for face joining, a great reason for doing this. So on this board, it's got just a little bit of a cup in it this way, a little bit of a cup. So to guarantee that I get this board dead flat, the best way to do this would be by face jointing. Jenny, could you roll this way a little bit so you're looking more straight on to the jointer, if you'd be so kind. Would you like me to gaff those carts for you, or are you handling it?

I got it. She's getting there. This thing is really heavy. The camera is on a new, not even a tripod, a new roly-poly thing in the shop. The old tripod, it tipped over a bunch of times.

It was just an accident waiting to happen. It rolled easier, but this one's heavier but more stable, but it sort of rolls harder. All right, so face jointing, what I'm gonna do is, just like the name says, I'm gonna put this face-down on the jointer, use a push pad, not your hand, to control it, make a pass over the jointer head, and it's gonna look like this. So part of the question there was why would I face joint, there's a planer sitting right here, why not just send it through the planer? And the answer to that is that, especially when a board's got a cup in it like this one had, it's possible that when it goes through the planer, the in-feed and out-feed roller on the planer are gonna push this board flat, take the cup out of it, plane it, and then when it comes out the out-feed side, it springs back up.

So in the perfect woodworking world, when you want to get a dead flat face, you would do that on a jointer instead of a planer. The next step, once we have this face flat, is then you go to the planer, and with the face you just jointed down on the bed, you plane the other face to make them parallel to each other. Now, that being said, before I owned a wide jointer, this is an eight-inch jointer, I did a lot of planing to get flatness on the planer, but now that I've got a jointer that's capable of face jointing bigger material, I face joint here all the time. It really is the best way to get a dead flat face, is to face joint instead of plane. And you just stay here, Jenny, I'm gonna grab the iPad.

We'll look at questions, and then we just need to be in this part of the world still. What's happening in the project world for you folks? You doing anything exciting? Phil asks, "When staining, the odor is strong "and stays even after it dries. "What would help to remove the odor?" Well, I'm not sure.

I mean, you're right. I think any finish that you use, they often have a really strong smell to them. But generally once it flashes off, once it's completely dry, in my experience, the smell goes away. So maybe with your stain, one of the things to make sure of is that you're wiping excess off so that it has a chance to thoroughly dry. I'm assuming if you're staining that you're top-coating over it, and that would certainly seem to seal in any smells.

So I guess my big thing with staining would be make sure you're wiping off excess so that the stain has ample opportunity to dry, and that should eliminate smell. Rick asks, "I have a dead Elm tree "that's being taken down next week. "I have an opportunity to have it milled. "My question is, is this a good wood to work with, "or are there projects this wood is better suited for?" I have a chainsaw-based sawmill, and I have milled a lot of elm, I love it. Jenny, could you grab the bowl, nope, you're too far, you're gonna need to stepstool, though.

It's the bowl third shelf up, yeah, unless Tyler can reach it. Now one more to your right. One more, one more to your right, that one. So I've milled a lot of elm. Thank you.

This is a bowl I turned out of helm, and what I like about it is heartwood versus sapwood, there's a nice color contrast between the two. It's a pretty hard wood, elm is, so it's got good durability. It's, if I remember right, a little funky to work with, because if you've ever split firewood, you know that elm is stringy, so it can be a little hard to get it planed perfectly smooth. But I like it a lot. Given the opportunity to mill your tree and boards, I would definitely do so.

Cedric asks, "What hearing protectors do you recommend?" I love these things. These are ISOtunes PRO, so here's the deal. They, like other hearing protection that goes inside your ear, you roll these in your finger and you push them in. Once they're in, you have 27 decibels of hearing protection, and that's great. Most stuff in the shop runs at about 105 decibels.

You want to get below 85 to be safe. So these will get you there. And the other thing I really like about them is they Bluetooth connect to my phone. So when I'm working in here and there's noisy stuff running, I'm actually listening to Pandora or Spotify through these, and then if my phone rings, I can answer my phone and talk through these. And then the other thing that's really cool about them too is they've got a noise canceling feature.

So I can be talking on the phone and running like a shop vacuum to be cleaning up, and it'll knock out the shop vacuum, but you'll still hear my voice. So it's really, I like them a lot. ISOtunes PRO, when I sit down later and answer questions, I'll put a link for these there so you know where to find them. "I'm making a picture frame using butt joints. "Is there another way to check for squareness "other than measuring diagonals?" Howard asks.

Well, measuring the diagonals is good, but you can also just put a square in the inside corner and eyeball that. Make sure that if you've got those two pieces like this and you put a square in there that it really is square. So that'd be a good alternative. Jeff asks, "Have you ever used space balls," not the movie, "which are," he goes on to explain, "small foam balls to keep the panel "of a raised panel door from rattling "inside the rails and styles? "Have you used them and do you recommend them?" Yeah, I use them all the time, every time I can make a raised panel.

Actually, I packed them to take them, I'm teaching in Indiana next week, let me see if I can find, I'm taking them with me, let me see if I can find them. Yeah. So they're just like he describes them, they're tiny little foam balls. How's this for little? I'll try to hold still.

About a quarter inch in diameter, and look, when I squish it, they're squishy. So these go in the groove, the same groove that the panel is gonna go into, and then when the panel shrinks, these are making up the difference between the bottom of the groove and the edge of the panel. But when it expands, they're foam, so it can push them open, and then they expand when the panel shrinks, on and on and on. So yeah, every time I do a raised panel door, I use them. David says, "Hi, George." Hi, David.

"I have been watching you build some project videos, "and seeing you use what appear to be drywall screws "to join two pieces of wood. "Am I correct in what I'm seeing? "I've always heard they're the wrong thread "and not strong enough for woodworking." Yeah, they're not drywall screws. Let me look here. Yeah, let's spin, Jenny, 'cause the screws he's talking about are over there, and I'll retrieve them.

Yeah, come this way, and then uber zoom on that screw, if you please. All right, David, this is the screw that I use. So this is, it's a flathead wood screw, and it does, you're right, it looks like a drywall screw, but it's a wood screw. Part of the way you can tell is the shank is open there and threaded there. So that's part of what makes it a wood screw, you always want to make sure you have an unthreaded part of the shank.

And then on these, another great feature is there's a little thread cutting tip on it. So right in the tip of the screw, it's got a relief right there, and that thread cutter helps it drive into the main piece. So screws like this are available on Amazon. The great thing about this question is it drives home the point, pun intended, of using the correct screw. Don't use drywall screws to put stuff together.

This workbench in front of you, there are a boatload screws in this screwed and glued together, and this is the screw that's holding everything. Before we march on, Jenny's reminding me we need to thank our sponsor, Titebond Glue, who underwrites the cost of our lives, and makes it free for you folks. It's raining like crazy. In fact, it's raining cats and dogs. And I can tell because when I was outside, I stepped in a poodle.

I got one laugh. All right, I'm refreshing a page here so I can see questions. So if we have a technical issue, if the power goes out, then we're gonna be in trouble 'cause I can't live stream without electricity. All right, Tim says, "We use steel wool." Sorry, Tim, the iPad refreshed again. There we go.

"We used steel wool when finishing "in shop class many moons ago. "I've seen several finishing videos, "and never seen you use or suggest it. "Is it no longer considered a good idea?" Part of what is a problem with steel wool is the advent of water-based finishes. So if any of the steel wool residue, if any of the steel wool remains on the material, on the wood, and then you top coat it with the water-based stuff, the steel wool is gonna rust and that's gonna show up in your finish. So I think too, with just the growth of synthetic materials like Scotch-Brite, I use Scotch-Brite pads, uber-fine pads, when I'm scuffing between coats, and I find that those work great.

So it's not to say, "Would steel wool work as well?" I mean, I'm with you. I built a really nice table when I was in junior high, I finished it with shellac, and used four ought steel wool between coats, but I couldn't tell you now the last time I used steel wool 'cause I just stick with the super-fine Scotch-Brite pads. So it's not bad, it's just not as commonly-used today. Nancy says, "My husband died "and left 20 sheets of OSB in the garage. "Can I use them in place of plywood when making things?" Not so much, Nancy.

Like if you're talking about making a dresser or a cabinet, OSB just doesn't have the structure of plywood. And then the face of it, I mean, I guess if you're okay with how the face looks, you're okay with how the face looks, but of course, it's got the big flakes on it. It's not a material that you could veneer over 'cause it's not a smooth substrate. So it's really, OSB is a construction material, it's really not a woodworking material. David says, "Sweet shop, George." Thank you, I love this shop.

I think this is year six in here for me, and I love this space, I love being here. Gus says, "Hello, beginner here. "I'm wondering what tool you would choose "to purchase first: miter saw "or a small portable table saw?" A table saw, 'cause you can cross cut with a table saw, but you can't rip with miter saw. So you'll get a lot more bang for your buck out of a table saw than you would out of a miter saw if you only had one of the two. Hello, Mark.

He says he's a rookie from Houston. Don says, "It looks like a new workbench." So let's, Jenny, let's show him the workbench, because I'm pretty proud of this. It is, Don, so my other kid and I, George, built this like two weeks ago. So here's the workbench tour. It's a plywood base.

Let's see what you're looking at, the bottom, okay. It's a plywood base. On this side, it's open shelving, that's for portable power tools. The top is two layers of 24-millimeter. which is an inch, give or take, the top is made up of two 24-millimeter layers of four by eight Baltic birch plywood.

Dog holes, 'cause then there's a vice on each end. So give me a little zoom out, if you'd be so kind, for the bench top. There we go. I've got one vice on this corner and then another vice on the opposite corner. And then it's on casters, but it's a heavy bench.

Let's see if it's easier for me to spin or Jenny to move. Full of drawers on that side, so lots and lots and lots of storage. The casters I put on here are the Rockler workbench casters. So when this needs to be down on the ground, like if I was gonna hand plane, like I would ever hand plane, but I guess people do that, if I wanted to do something where the bench needed to be rock solid on the floor, I can kick this down, and then the legs are on the ground or on the floor. But in between, it gives me the mobility to be able to move it.

And then the other thing, the thing I just did this week, let me get back where I was, is I put these Rockler T-tracks, come on, I put these Rockler T-tracks into the surface, and there's all sorts of different stuff that it'll accept. So that's pretty cool. There's lots and lots of accessories that'll go into that T-track, including Kreg hold-downs. So when I'm putting the pocket holes together, I can do that here on this big bench. Yeah, I'm very proud of it, I like it a lot.

and it's so much bigger, this is a four by eight; my old workbench was 36 by about 82. So I built a kitchen table about a month ago, and I did most of the assembly on a four by eight sheet on sawhorses, and that's when I really came to realize a bigger workbench, a four by eight workbench, would be a better choice for me to have in here. Yvette asks, "New woodworker here, "what's the most cost efficient way "to incorporate dust collection in a shop?" Well, I don't know about cost-effective. I mean, dust collectors are expensive, and it's important to understand dust collectors and shop vacuums are not the same thing. Dust collections have high air flow, low vacuum; shop vacuums have high vacuum, low airflow.

So for most woodworking tools, you really want dust collector, not shop vacuum. You know, I haven't tool-tested any of their stuff, but Rockler's got a lot of nice products where you can get a small dust collector and move that from tool to tool so you don't have to do piping. So it'd be worth going on the Rockler site and just search dust collection, and see what you see. But at the end of the day, a good dust collector is an expensive purchase, but very worth having. Dust, well, anything, but especially wood dust can have a cumulative effect.

So a lot of people will say, "Well, wood dust doesn't bother me." Well, maybe it doesn't bother you today, but the more of it you breathe in, the more likelihood there is that you could have a reaction later in life. You could generate, you could develop an allergy to dust even though you don't have one today. So you definitely want to protect yourself. Marty asks, "When jointing, do you put more pressure "on in-feed or out feed-side?" Both, you gotta share pressure. You don't want to concentrate in one spot.

Let me look at this, and then let's go back to the jointer, Jenny, just so we can do this. We'll do a little jointer technique operation here. All right, edge-joining a piece. So the question was hand pressure, and what you really want to do is share that pressure between both hands. Even though a jointer is designed to produce a straight edge, if you push more on one end than the other, you may not get a straight edge.

So a couple things here, thumb on top of the piece, hand on top of the piece so we're actively engaged on that top edge, and then push across the cutter head in one fluid motion. Try not to stop, because that can telegraph a little blip into the edge and won't be perfectly straight. And if you can then come in, zoom a little bit, there you go, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom on the work. So trying really hard to share that pressure between the two ends is the way to go. Bob asks, "I'm making a sleigh crib slash bed "out of red oak.

"It has many mortises and tenons "as well as a dozen or so dowels. "For both techniques, "how much extra room should be allowed in the holes "for excess glue and to ensure I don't bottom out? "I have three-inch tenons and 5/16 dowels." I'd go a 16th of an inch beyond. So a half-inch-long tenon goes in a 9/16-inch-deep mortise, and I would do the same with your dowels. Matthew asks, "Could I glue a piece of wood over an area "that's already had glue applied before and has dried?" No, because you won't have adhesion.

The glue has to have the opportunity to absorb into the wood. You need that porosity in order for the glue to stick. If we're talking about yellow glue, white glue, like typical woodworking glues, it relies on that porosity of the material in order to get a bond. So you're gonna have to clean the old glue off. Sue asks, "I have an old worn out wood trellis "that's got a great tint to it.

"I'd like to put some blue into it "and build some frames for needlework projects. "Never made frame before, never stained blue before, "keeping wood and gray tint. "Advice?" Well to get blue, you can use aniline dye, and aniline dye can be mixed with either water or denatured alcohol. Water's a little bit better choice 'cause denatured alcohol flashes dry so quickly, it's a little hard to control. So you can mix aniline die with water and use that as a stain.

And I would, I mean, you gotta do some experimenting, so that you know what happens. Anilin dye is a highly, highly concentrated tint. You guys stay here, I'll be right back. This bottle of dye would dye like 80 billion gallons of stuff. Just a drop of this in...

You know what, Jenny? Could you look on the sink in the break room and see if there's a glass, like a Mason jar in there, and if there is, fill it with water. A drop of this in a fairly small volume of liquid creates a pretty intense color. So you're gonna want to experiment with a couple of things. One is how much of this to use in the liquid, and then additionally, when you're applying it, then how much of the liquid to put on?

So Jenny brought us a water thing. Oops. This is black. So let's do this. Give them some contrast.

Do you want to go to the workbench? I think we'll be okay. All right, ready for this? Are you ready for this? Now I've got it on my finger, it's gonna be on there for months.

All right, one drop. How about, Jenny, throw me a spoon or something, please? Thank you, very nice. All right, look at how dark that made that just with one drop in there. So back to where we're going with this, experiment, be very conservative with the addition of the dye to the liquid, and just keep trying it on things besides your finished project.

Okey-doke. Mike says, "Hi from Seattle. "Met you at Weekend with Wood." Well, thanks, Mike. Yeah, that Weekend with Wood event is wonderful. Wood Magazine does such a good job.

I spilled some of the aniline dye on the floor. Jenny's trying to clean it up for me. And boy, does it stick. I'll need a solvent, I'll wipe it up later. I think I made it worse.

Well, you spread it around. It's kind of like modern art on the floor now. Rodney says, "I have 150-plus-year-old barn wood board, "15 and a half inches wide, six feet long, one inch thick. "I'm making a bench. "How much sanding needs to be done to get a rustic look?" Well, I think as little as possible if you want rustic, right?

You just want to maybe sand it a little bit, so if you sit on the bench, you don't get slivers in bad places. Yeah, so I would do, if it were me, I would do as little sanding as possible just to keep it rustic. Bill asks, "I'm making wood puzzles "that require a precision of 2/1000s of an inch "for good results. "Any advice?" Measure twice, cut once. Be really careful.

I don't know what advice, like, I don't know what tools you're using. So very careful setup, two test cuts. If you don't already own one, get a digital caliper so that you can measure your stuff to three decimal places. All right, refreshing the screen. The rain's stopped, mostly.

So while this is refreshing and we're bringing up more questions, once again, thanks to Titebond for sponsoring us and underwriting our live events, bringing this to you. Do you hear the thunder? We need the rain, so this is okay. Doug is in Williamsburg. I'd love to get there sometime.

"Love the teaching you do. "You seem to have wide dust collection ducting, "even your flex ducts. "Have you modified exhaust on any of the power tools "to make the diameters larger, and do you recommend this?" No, so it's like these drops, this is all four-inch stuff. The port on my jointer, the surface sander behind us, the planer behind me, my table saw, my band saw, all my big tools have four inch ports on them and I have four inch drops. So a question of should you expand it if you can, well, dust collection is a case where bigger is better, so you'll get more air flow through a four-inch port than a two and a half.

So if you have the opportunity to open it up, sure, that'd be a good idea. Boyd says, "Love the table you're talking from. "What are the basics of construction?" We'll flip around and I'll show you. Let me do Darren's question. "What Scotch-Brite pads do you use between clear coats?" Ultra fine.

And I don't think there's a grid on them, I think they're just called either very fine or ultra fine. I clear coat with Aqua Coat water-based lacquer, and in between coats, it just takes the lightest of abrasion to knock down any nibs, nubs, there usually aren't many, so yeah, just super fine. All right, let's walk around, and then maybe back out a little so we'll see if we can show him how the bench was put together here. Let's come in on a leg. It's gonna be hard to see because, of course, everything is covered by the bench itself, but the structure down here is all three-quarter inch plywood.

It's sort of the equivalent of AC plywood you'd get at a home center, but it's a better version of that. I got this stuff from a hardwood supplier. It was about $45 a sheet. So the legs are L-shaped. They're four inches on this side, four inches on this side, glued and stapled together.

And that L-shape, I think, is part of what gives this thing a lot of strength. There is, then, there are rails on the bottom, also four inches wide, that then join to the inside L of the leg. So what's cool about this is that a lot of surface area for glue between the outside face of this and the inside face of this. Same thing going in this direction, there's another one there. So imagine, then, just a big rectangle of these one-by-fours that connect all the legs.

On top of that, there's a sheet of three-quarter-inch plywood that decks that whole thing. And then in the center, which would be impossible for you folks to see from where you are, there's a mid-wall that goes vertical. The reason I wanted to do that was so that it would prevent racking in this direction. That's kind of a big stabilizer that ties everything together so that this whole thing can't twist. And then on the ends, so I'll pivot so you can see, on these ends, I put a silent plywood panel inside the L's.

Same thing, that's gonna prevent racking in this direction, and then it also provides a surface out here that I can hang stuff on, as opposed to just leaving this open. And then open shelves on this side, drawer boxes on the other side. That's kind of the 200,000 foot view, I guess. And honestly, I had probably a dozen people ask if I'm gonna have plans available, and I don't because I just built the thing out of my head. I knew I wanted it to be four feet by eight feet, and other than that, I was making it up as I went along.

So I don't have a SketchUp on this. "What do you think of the idea of using lumber "from shipping pallets and woodworking projects?" Sure, a lot of people do it. It's a very popular thing. We did a video clip on disassembling pallets, and holy buckets, is it a pain. It's really hard to get pallets apart.

So that's probably the biggest problem, is you're working really hard to get that free wood. But I know people there are people who love it. So it's fine, and typically pallet wood is air-dried, not kiln-dried, so it's gonna have a higher initial moisture content, which means it will be more prone to expansion and contraction. But if you keep that in mind when you're doing your projects with it, you'll be fine. "What type of finish can you use "when turning out bowls that make it food safe?" You can use, there are bowl turner's finishes.

So Behlen is a company that makes bowl turner's finish. and that's non-toxic. Mineral oil is non-toxic, that's what I put on cutting boards too. Doesn't put a lot of luster on the bowl, but it's a non-toxic finish. You can get mineral oil in the pharmacy department of a grocery store.

So those would be, they're like the safest bets to make completely sure that you're food-safe when you're done. I'm sure there's other products out there, but those are the two I've used the most. Jack says, "What's your favorite finish "for furniture items?" My recipe is a base coat of dewaxed shellac, which is Zinsser SealCoat, and then a top coat of Aqua Coat water-based lacquer. The deal with that is that I love the water-based lacquer except for two things. One, it's really, really, really clear.

So when you spray that directly on wood, you don't get the amber tone that we've kind of become acclimated to from lacquer and varnish-type finishes. The other thing is, because it's water-based, it's gonna raise the grain. So what I started doing was a base coat, a seal coat of Zinsser Sealcoat, of Zinsser dewaxed shellac. That imparts a little bit of amber. It seals the wood so that when the Aqua Coat, the water-based stuff, hits it, that Aqua Coat, the water-based, is never touching the wood, it's only laying on the SealCoat.

The reason I go with the Aqua Coat over the SealCoat is that shellac doesn't have a lot of durability, it doesn't have great water or alcohol resistance, and that's what the Aqua Coat brings to the table, it's much better to the table, literally, much better wear resistance than shellac is gonna have. So a base coat of shellac, top coat of Aqua Coat. Jim says, "I also got stuck "with a couple of dozen OSB boards. "What can be done with them other than firewood?" Roofs. I know people who have used it to, like in a shop or a garage environment, used it to sheet walls instead of drywall.

So yeah, I don't know. I mean, as I said earlier, I wouldn't recommend building like furniture with it. So put a thing on Craigslist that says "Free OSB", and maybe somebody will come and get it. Antler Man says, "George, you're a very good teacher." Thank you. "Were you a shop teacher in a former life?" Yeah, so I went to school to be a tech ed teacher, a shop teacher, and I did teach a little bit of high school and middle school, and then I fell into adult education, more like what I'm doing now.

But I knew when I was 11, when I was in middle school, that I wanted to be a shop teacher, so I've been really focused on this for 46 years. So thanks for the compliments. Harry says, "I'll be cutting down a couple of apple trees. "Is apple wood any good for woodworking?" Apple wood is beautiful. It's really, really nice.

Bowl turners love it. However, it's very prone to cracking. So when you cut it and you mill it, and of course, as soon as the tree is down, the sooner you can turn that into planes or bowl blanks or whatever you're gonna do, the better. In other words, don't let it dry in log form. Cut it into useful stuff.

Once you have that useful stuff cut, then seal it and carefully stack it someplace so that it's gonna have the opportunity to slowly dry. I don't have any bowls in here that are turned out of apple wood, but it's a very, very pretty wood, but very prone to cracking. Dev asks, "Is there a good way to prep "wood-turning bowl blanks from a log without a bandsaw?" I've got an electric chainsaw. Tyler, would you want to go get it? It's on top of that brown cabinet.

It's a Poulan kind of ugly lime green thing. And what I love about the electric chainsaw is that it didn't cost that much money. I wanna say it was under 100 bucks. He may have got more than he bargained for over there. Did you live?

No one died in that experiment? My arm! It was the Hammond chainsaw massacre. Thank you. So electric chainsaw, less expensive than a bandsaw, and I like, because it's electric, I just use it right here in the shop, and it is amazingly powerful.

Maybe we'll end tonight with, we'll drag a log in here and run the chainsaw a little bit so you can see how it cuts. So yeah, I would do this, and you can't cut a round bowl blank with this, but you can make an octagonal and get it close to round. So it's pretty effective. Eric says, "What's the best way to keep laminate plywood "from splitting on the cut edge?" Get better plywood. If it's blowing apart, that's a problem with the plywood.

And I don't see it in my cabinet-grade plywood, but I see it every once in a while in like BC plywood, if I'm using that material for some shop project or something. Hector says, "I just finished a maple hall table "with high-gloss poly. "Any way to tone it down because the wife unit "is complaining it's too shiny?" If you scuff it with really, really fine Scotch-Brite, like ultra fine abrasive, you should be able to knock the gloss down a little bit. Carol says, "What's the best way, "in your opinion, of doing drawers?" It depends on what you want and what you want to do. So I don't think there's a best way.

Of course, dovetails are great, block miters, or not block miters, draw locks are great, rabbeted draw locks that you can produce on a dado head or a router table are great. The drawers in this bench are simply butt joints stapled and screwed together 'cause it's a workbench. So there's no one good way, it just depends on what tools you own and what tools you want to get for making drawers. Real simple level, just a rabbet on the corners with glue in the rabbets is very strong. Hang on.

Douglas says, "Do you ever use the transition plane "you have on the shelf behind you?" I'm gonna say no because I don't even know what a transition plane... A common joke with this is that many of my hand tools are behind a pane of glass, and a sticker says, "In case of emergency, break glass." So transition planing, I wonder what that is. For awhile, I was collecting planes, and that's why they're laying around the shop, and then I realized I was never using them and it was kind of foolish to just collect them for the sake of collecting them, so I stopped that. I'm gonna get a Gatorade. One of the things about this time in the show I commonly ask for is where are you watching from?

I always find it very, very, very interesting to see where you folks are when you tune in for this. Let's see I can take some of the rasp out of my voice. Myron says, "I'm having trouble keeping stain color, "even on large or multi-piece projects." It can be difficult. One of the things to make sure of, it's amazing how sanding affects stain color. So make sure you're sanding all the pieces exactly the same way, then that's a huge step toward getting the color more uniform.

And then from there, the other thing that'll affect it is, the stain goes on, if on this piece, you wait a minute and wipe off the excess and on this piece you wait two minutes to wipe off the excess, you're gonna have a different color. So when you're applying it, don't apply it to too big an area, especially when it's warm like it is now, it was 92 here today. When it's warm out, the stain is gonna dry faster, so as you work your way across and you're wiping off excess, you're gonna have different tones across the piece. So it's all about consistency, consistent sanding, work a small area so that you can work it while it's wet, and make sure that you're doing the exact same thing to every piece. Richard says, "Why do I end up with a triangle "when I pass a piece of wood across my jointer "after a few times?" I don't know what you mean by a triangle.

Well, okay, they're making triangles. I know what a triangle is. Just making sure. There's a smart aleck in every crowd. The right approach on a jointer is the marriage between a jointer and a table saw.

So my jointer's there and my table saw's there. So what you should be doing, and maybe this is just a procedure thing, joint an edge so that this edge is nice and straight. Then you go to the table saw, this edge goes against the rip fence, and you rip the opposite edge. That makes sure that the two of them are parallel. And then, back to what we were saying earlier, consistent, uniform hand pressure, front and back, don't lean on one end or the other, consistent hand pressure, make a pass to clean off the saw marks, and those two edges should remain parallel.

So as a first step, just make sure you're following that procedure with a cooperative relationship between jointers and planers. David says, "Let's visit the canoe in the background. "It's a Leroy Gibbs thing." Do we know who Leroy Gibbs is? Oh, from "NCIS". Okay, and how does a canoe figure in?

I think he built canoes. And solved a murder in the canoe. There was a murder in a canoe. I'm the least pop culture person. In addition to the least hand tool person you'll ever meet, I'm the least pop culture person you'll ever meet.

We can look at it. Well, if we go in that direction, I'll talk about it. We'll do that at the end along with log cutting. Gardeau says, "Howdy from Iowa." I'm not, nevermind. "How does one get alanine dye off their skin?" Well, we can do an experiment.

You're in just the right spot, Tyler. Right over your head to your right. Oh, you don't want to cut it off? No, I'm not gonna. He's grabbing a knife.

The blue can, I think, is denatured alcohol. Yeah. So if you would be so kind as to bring that, and then do we have a paper towel left from our earlier experiment? Let me grab a paper towel. Do you want a rag?

Nah, I got towels here. So I think, well, we're gonna find out in this science experiment, I think that denatured alcohol is a solvent for alanine dye. If my skin burns off right now, it's not. All right, there's the alanine dye. Are you in the right spot?

This is so exciting. Well, it's lighter. It's migrating onto the paper towels. I think the other way to get it off is to like let those seven layers of skin wear off, if you like go work on the car, and then that'll wear off, or it'll get so covered with grease, you won't care. Yeah, I think if I kept picking away here with the denatured alcohol, I could get most of it off.

Now, the real answer is wear rubber gloves when you're working with aniline dye, which I didn't think of before. All right, that was a good science experiment. Doug says, "Jacksonville, Florida. "I'm in need of a paint sprayer "for finishing furniture cabinet stores. "Do you have a recommendation for the best sprayer?" I spray paint with a Fuji turbine-based HVLP sprayer all the time.

I've sprayed and miles and miles and miles of stuff with latex paint through that turbine-based sprayer. So that would be mine. Ed says, "When my dust collection bag gets full, "I've been using the sawdust as mulch around trees. "Is there a way I could make logs out of the sawdust "so I can burn them in my fireplace?" Well, yeah, so like one of the coolest things I ever saw at, this is a big-scale woodworking show, more geared toward commercial shops than home hobbyists, was a machine into which you fed wood shavings, and it would put them under a significant amount of pressure, like 80 gazillion bazillion PSI, and then it would form them into bricks. And what would happen is that it would squeeze the chips so hard that, I'm gonna say the tannins, but I don't think that's right, the stuff in the chips would get squeezed out of them and act as a glue to hold them in this briquette form.

So could that be done? Yes. On a small scale like we do, I don't know how you would execute that 'cause it's 80 bazillion gazillion pounds of pressure. So there are machines. I think the least expensive machine they sold was 50 grand.

So you could pony up and get the machine. Other than that, on a small scale home shop basis, I'm not sure how you would pull that off. I use, not really fine sawdust, but shavings, like from my planer and jointer. I make fire starters out of them by mixing them with wax. Pour that, pack an egg carton full of shavings, pour wax over the top, and then I use that as a fire starter in a fireplace or when I'm camping.

Jane says, "I saw the boat in the background. "Are you doing a video series on building one?" Well, let's point in that direction, 'cause a couple people asked about the canoe canoe, and I'll tell you the story. And then we'll come back this way and see if we can mess with the electric chainsaw. All right, so here's the deal. Aren't casters are a wonderful thing?

So at the end of the day, I'm like the luckiest guy ever to have a friend like AJ Moses. You might've seen some of AJ's articles on WWGOA. He's also done some videos with us. So unfortunately, sadly, like the nicest guy in the world, AJ, moved from the Twin Cities area to Boston, and there was some stuff that he just couldn't move. This was one of them.

So AJ started this about seven years ago. This is as far as he got. And then he passed it along to me to finish it. So let's see, Jane's question was, "Am I doing a video series on it?" I'll for sure shoot content as I wrap this thing up, but of course I don't have the starting steps because it came to me on the strong back with the forms just like you see it here. Everything is here.

The cedar strips, the finish, the ash to make the gunwale on the top, the thwarts, the seats, the resin is over on the other side of the shop, the fiberglass matte, so everything is here to finish. So I was just talking to a guy today. I'm trying to ballpark how much time it'll take to get this done. And my schedule being what it is, what I'd kinda like to do is just sequester myself in here for like five days and do nothing but work on this. 'Cause I think if I try to pick away at it here and there, I'm never gonna get it done.

So anyway, you'll see stuff on this as I go, but it won't be a comprehensive how-to because we missed the whole thing with the forms and the strong back and the starting point. All right, let me get this side of the shop, and then we need a couple things. If you pivot around, Jenny, I know I've got logs right outside the door. I hope I'm not overselling the cool chainsaw. All right.

That's to help me not cut into the floor. I'm coming back. All right, so here's what I'll do. I'll run the chainsaw. We're probably pretty close to eight.

I'll look quick and see if there's another question or two I should answer, and then it's probably good night Gracie from there. All right. You're on the log, Jenny? Yep. Here we go.

This is maple, I think. Pretty impressive performance for an electric chainsaw. Yeah, that's maple. All right, one last look here. 7:58 on this thing.

Refresh. So did you hear about the ships that ran into each other? A red ship and a blue ship collided, and everyone was marooned. You can't laugh. Where are you even getting this?

He subscribes to like a special dad site. Tyler laughs, Jenny rolls her eyes. All right. Sorry, my iPad is slow tonight. Got any more jokes?

I have a lot more jokes, some I can't tell here. All right. Did that one. John Gat says, "Burning OSB is terrible." Yeah, I wouldn't burn it. It's full of adhesive that you're gonna give all sorts of icky stuff into the atmosphere.

Timothy, "Member here, I'm setting up a new shop. "Does the club have help "or do you have suggestions for arrangement?" Upper right-hand corner of the WWGOA.com site, there's a little search banner there, and I would just put in there shop setup or shop layout. There's stuff on the site about work triangles and just some other general information that could help you out. Gary's in the Philippines, that's cool. "I work with slabs mostly.

"I have two tables on my list. "When I get to leg attachments, "one is a bit over four feet long "and the other is nine feet. "I want to route in the legs from left to right, "but they'll be three panels wide. "Will it depend on grain direction?" Yeah, so you've gotta be very careful, especially on those wide slabs, about allowing them to expand and contract independently of your leg system so that everything can move. We're gonna do this as the last question, and then we're gonna let everybody get out of here.

Carol says, "What's your take on Japanese handsaws?" I love them. So the hand tool jointery that I did, I learned through Peace Corps overseas. I was a woodworking teacher in Africa, and because there was no electricity at the school, everything was done by hand. So the dovetails I cut, the mortise and tenon joints, all that stuff was all done with a Western style push saw. When I came back, somebody introduced me to pull saws, and I have never gone back to Western style push saws.

I find the Japanese pull saws are way easier to control, better cut quality, and just everything about them for me works a lot better. So I'm a huge advocate of pull saws. All right, that is it, eight o'clock. Thanks to Sam who I was telling somebody earlier is like the great eyes behind the curtain over in running the board off camera here. Thanks to Jenny and Tyler who did a joint cooperative effort in running and gaffing the camera tonight.

Thanks to all of you for tuning in. I gotta think a second, second Thursday of every month, so I think we're clear for August. Somewhere in August, I go to IWF, the big show in Atlanta, but I think that's much later in the month, so we should be okay to be back here about a month from right now. Thanks for tuning in. See ya.