WWGOA LIVE! May 2018

So it's seven o'clock here in scenic Western Wisconsin. And if it's seven o'clock, that means we're going live. So, hopefully we are live right now. And here on my iPad, I'm looking at questions that you folks have submitted. I'm just gonna double check on my phone to make sure that Sam is telling me we're really live.

We are live. Isn't that cool. Technology is an amazing thing. So, we have Sam, who's running the boards, over in her super secret location. Alex is on the camera tonight, wave Alex.

Hi. There he is, waving to me, which you can't see, but he really is waving. And of course we have to thank Titebond, our sponsor, because with their underwriting of what we're doing here, they are allowing this to be live for everybody who's watching. Got a couple of questions already posted. That's really cool.

You know, there's nothing wrong, if you have questions, there's nothing wrong with going onto the landing page, the page that the video is hosted on, and putting your questions on there at noon today, and then Sam approves 'em, and then I look at 'em, and then we answer 'em tonight. So, there's nothing wrong with pre-loading those questions. And here's another good thing to know. If you're watching this on YouTube right now, we're monitoring the questions on wwgoa.com. I can't monitor questions in two places, 'cause I'm just not that bright.

So, if you have a question that you wanna ask, be sure that you're putting it, go to wwgoa.com, and then look for WWGOA Live. And when you click on that, you'll see May, which is this month, and then put your question there, 'cause it's just too many balls in the air to monitor questions on the YouTube channel. So, if you wanna ask a question, be sure you put it on wwgoa.com. All right. Question numero uno, from Dom, says, "A neighbor had a tree knocked down." I'm gonna get comfortable, 'cause, you know, there's an hour of this, and I've already been on my feet since six o'clock this morning.

"A neighbor had a tree knocked down, and I kept a few pieces because I found it intriguing that the core is a deep yellow and it oozes yellow liquid." Alex, I'm gonna say this is alien wood. I don't know. Wow. It's some "Stranger Things," maybe. "I have no idea what type of wood it is, and would love sending you a photo for you to identify it.

Is there a way I can do it?" There's ways to send pictures, Dom, but at the end of the day, I bet myself and Paul Mayer answer most of the questions that come in to GOA, and we get pictures of wood all the time, and that is a horribly difficult, there's just no way to identify it from pictures. You're really better off if you can take a small piece of it to a woodworking club, or a hardwood supplier, or just somebody in your area. And the other thing is, I mean, I've seen a lotta different materials over the years, but if it's something that's particularly indigenous to where you are, there's a good chance I've never seen it before. Uber-bright yellow for the heartwood. I'm already stumped, 'cause Osage Orange maybe, is kind of a yellowish orange, but a photo wouldn't do you any good, and wouldn't do me any good.

So, my advice on this is find somebody local who knows material, could even be a arborist, a tree service, and ask them what they think it might be. That's your best bet. Stan is asking, "I know that dewaxed shellac, followed by liquor," Oh, no, lacquer, "Is your go-to finish. I assume you mix your own shellac. Have you ever done any videos on that?

Any quick tips or preferences?" Alex is gonna entertain the folks at home. I'm gonna be right back. Tell 'em a joke or something, Alex. Well, how many woodworkers does it take to finish a bottle of lacquer? That went great.

All right. Stan, you're giving me way too much credit for being motivated. So, Stan is asking about mixing my own shellac. I do not. I go to the Home Center, or to Amazon, amazon.com, and I order this stuff.

I'll hold it still for you, Alex. The product is Zinsser SealCoat, and somewhere, probably in really small print on that can, it says, "shellac." What Zinsser SealCoat really is, is dewaxed shellac. And I just buy this off the shelf. This is what I use as my sealer. This is the dewaxed shellac I use all the time.

So, question of, have we done videos on it? We've done videos on shellac, and it's actually my friend and contributing editor, Dave Munkittrick is the guy who did that video. When I'm done with this, you know, I always sit down and answer questions after. I'll see if we've got a link to that video on the website. And if you can have a look at it.

Dave has used shellac since forever, and he does mix his own. My use of shellac is poured out of a can and that's it. So, he's a way better resource on shellac. Stan asks, "I think I saw Bessey K body clamps in the background." I do own a bunch of 'em. "I've had a set of JET K bodies for years." I've got a couple of those too.

"I just got two Bessey clamps for Christmas." Well, that's a nice Santa. "And really loved the quick adjust feature. So, I tend to grab them before the JET. I have had two instances recently where I'm edge gluing and the Bessey tended to bow the pieces down. Unnoticeable from the top, but leaves a gap in the pieces on the back.

Have you seen the same? Any wisdom?" I haven't seen that with my Besseys. And I'm gonna guess this, Stan. We're gonna head for the jointer, Alex, just to give you a warning. I'm wondering if it's jointer activity, not clamp activity.

So, let me see if I have scrap wood. I bet I do. All right. This'll be better. All right.

So, Stan, here's what I think is happening. Let me park here and kinda roll out this way, if you'd be so kind. Absolutely. And then just to remind the folks at home, the poor camera person, which is Alex, is not only fighting my kind of marginal tripod, but there's 100 feet of cord that ties him in to the worldwide interwebs. So, the blue one is an ethernet cable.

The orange is an extension cord. So we really need a third person here. Is that the gaffer, Alex? Is that? What is that person called?

Yeah, a gaffer, or a grip, or a utility. There's all kinds of names for that poor person. But anyway, we don't have that benefit. So, that's why the camera moves, whether it's Alex, Ginny, or Krista, are always kinda slow and awkward. So, anyway.

Stan, here's what I think is cooking. I wonder if, when you're jointing your pieces, there's just a tiny, tiny, little bit of a bevel being put under your parts. So, then when they go together, instead of going together dead flat, which is what they would do if they were both at a perfect 90, if there's a little bit of a bevel on here it's causing the pieces to cock just a little. The reason we came to the jointer is so that I can show you how I do this. And I'm just gonna run back and grab my pencil.

All right. Let me joint these pieces. And here's what I'm gonna do. On this piece, I'm gonna put this face against the fence. And then on this piece, I'm gonna put this face against the fence, and then I'll walk through why I'm doing what I'm doing.

Got my earplugs on backwards, sorta. So, anytime I'm jointing pieces that I'm gonna do edge-to-edge to edge-to-edge-to-edge, I pay attention to which face is against the fence, and I typically mark it. When these two pieces come together, which would be like a great name for a song, I think. When these two pieces come together, I want the X up on that piece, and the X down on this piece. And the reason for that is that, if by jointing and holding 'em against the fence, and if the fence is a tiny bit out of square, and I've introduced an angle here, the angle complements, is it complementary angle or supplementary angle?

The angle offsets, and the resulting surface'll remain flat. If there's a little bit of a bevel on these and I put 'em together with the bevel in the same direction on both, it's going to cause the surface to be crooked. Now, Stan, I think what's happening with you, is that, I feel like the clamps are actually holding the pieces flat, and there's a bevel on there, so they're kissing at the top, but they're open at the bottom because you have a little bit of an angle on your pieces. So, a test on this would be the next time, or just do a practice glue up, and you don't even have to put glue on, just joint your pieces, put 'em in the clamps, close the clamps, put a straight edge on top. And if the surface is flat, but you have that gapicity on the bottom, then I'm gonna point to the fence on your jointer's slightly out of square.

And that's okay. Don't pull your hair out trying to fix the fence. Just use this approach of face against the fence, face against the fence. Stagger those faces when you do your assembly. So, try that, and then a month from now, when we come back, let us know how that works.

We'll walk back. I'm gonna pull ya. I'm being a grip for a second there. I'm getting a grip on things. As always, it's nice to know where you folks are watching from.

I'm asking that a little early tonight. I'm gonna do a refresh on my screen here to see new questions. Boy, the weather is so much better than it was. I think it was like as little as three weeks ago or so, we got about 12 or 15 inches of snow, and snow's all gone. It's cool today, but very, very, very sunny.

What a beautiful day. Here we go. Bill says he's in rural Columbia, and needs to know finishing materials available here. Yeah. Sorry Bill.

I'm not gonna be able to help you with that, 'cause I don't know. I think if you can find a local woodworker, ask them. I'm not sure where else to send you for finishing materials available in Columbia, nor do I know, like I said, this ships from Amazon. I have no idea if they would ship products like shellac to Columbia. All right.

John is asking, from the Idaho Panhandle, "Looking to make picture frames out of 3/4 to 1-inch dowels." That's interesting. "As far as I can tell, there are essentially two ways to do this. The simplest way is to rip the dowels, and then rabbet them, but I think they would look better to retain the full round by rabbeting the dowel. I don't quite know how to go about the second way. Any thoughts?" Well, here's what you could do.

I'm thinking while I'm talking. Do you see the smoke coming out of my ears? If I were doing this... So, here's what John wants to do. Let me grab a dowel.

Stay right there. So, here's a 1-inch dowel. He wants to turn this into a picture frame, which sounds like a pretty cool idea. So, in order to receive a picture, this needs a rabbet taken out of it. So, of course, the problem with taking this to a router table would be, how do we stop it from being roly-poly while you're routing it?

Here's what I would do. I would make an end that would fasten onto this dowel, and I'm just thinking for a second, like, do I have something laying here? And I don't think I do, but let me see if I can... I'll drive Alex crazy by drawing on the really glaringly white whiteboard. All right, if I'm up here, tell me what you need.

That's good so far. Okay. So, I would make like stocks that they would put criminals into. If that's a 1-inch dowel, I want this to be a 1-inch hole, but then I want a bolt, or a screw, coming through here, these threads. So that I can tension this.

And I actually make this bottom smaller. All right. So, now, the dowel is gonna go in there, drive those screws and squeeze it. Do the same thing to the other end. And that'll stabilize this.

Now the key to this is that the length of this has to be such that the end is not falling off of your router table. My guess is gonna be, if you're doing this on a router table, you're gonna have to make an auxiliary top, and an axillary fence, that's quite a bit longer than a standard router table, so that this can run the length, 'cause what you'll need to do is you grab it on that end, you make a gizmo like that, you grab it on this end, and then you're only gonna run the rabbet between the two blocks. And in order to make that work, you gotta have enough surface to allow that to happen. I think this would work fine. And it's just gonna take a little monkeying around, and a little trial and error.

But I think that would do it. I think that would stabilize it and do it. If you wanna make your own dowels, and I think we have a video about that on GOA, the alternative would be you start with 1 x 1 stock, you rabbet the stock, then you go back and make it a dowel. And that dowel-making can all be done on the router table. You're not turning the dowel on the lathe.

If you wanna make a 1-inch dowel, you use a 1/2-inch roundover bit, and you cut four times, and with the right setup, you'll end up with a 1-inch-diameter dowel. So, that would be the other alternative is start with square stock, cut the rabbet, then use the dowel-making technique to turn the square stock into a dowel, and Bob's your uncle. So, let us know, John, if that works. It's a cool idea, the picture frames outta dowels, a cool idea. Ken says, "Knowledge is power." Which, who can argue with that?

Right, Alex? I don't know. I don't have much of either. "Best finish for live edge mesquite wood coffee table?" I don't know if mesquite has its own finishing parameters. Like, is there a problem with finishing mesquite?

If there is, then I'm gonna fall back to first coat of dewaxed shellac, 'cause shellac sticks to everything. So, like, as an example of this, if you've ever painted pine, and then later you look at it and the knots are bleeding through the paint you put on, you should have put shellac on first, 'cause it would've stopped the knots from bleeding through. So, if finishing mesquite creates some kind of an issue with other finishes, put the shellac on first, then, for a topcoat on something like a coffee table, if you're really gonna use it for coffee, and drinks, and stuff, durable finish, something in the polyurethane family would be good for that. For all my finishing, I use a water-based crosslink lacquer, is what it's called. And there's a difference between lacquer and products that crosslink, and that crosslinking chemistry gives it a lot more durability.

So, that would be a fine product for this as well. Steven says, "I'm building a bathroom vanity out of veneered walnut plywood. What are some good finishing options to keep water from damaging it?" Same answer. Polyurethane would be good. A crosslink lacquer would be good.

Either one of those. So, Chris is following up from the last couple of months regarding trouble with finding quality sheet goods. So, this was Chris's question, was just about looking for sheet stock. And even when he would go to hardwood suppliers, if I'm remembering this right, Chris, they sold solid wood, but nobody sold good grades of plywood. So, the follow-up is, "I finally found one cabinet supplier in town that would sell me a few pieces here and there, but it's not Baltic birch.

They called it Chinese versus domestic, and they seemed to say the Chinese is better. Could you go into some detail about how to determine the quality of the core material of plywood that isn't Baltic birch. For instance, the plywood at my local lumberyard that sells mostly construction-grade material, and has only a limited supply of cabinet grade, seems to be better. Home Depot core looks like it's made of some kind of compressed particles, while the lumberyard core has grain. Is that a good indicator?

Thanks for the input." So, yeah, I would say seeing grain in the core is a good idea. And unfortunately, I think standing at the lumberyard and looking at it, there's not gonna be much... You're not gonna know much. You're not gonna be able to tell much. So, what happened with me, years and years ago, was buying B-grade, oak-veneered plywood from a Home Center, using it in my cabinet-making classes.

It would often happen that when we would cut our dados, we'd get a lot of chipping in the veneer. So, I thought there was a problem with my really expensive dado head. And in the end, what was happening was the core was marginal material, and it was pulling the veneer. It was chipping. The core was chipping, and pulling the veneer with it.

So, standing there looking at that sheet, I never would have known that, but through experience through using it, I found this symptom. And then also, with that material, it had more voids in it than the plywood that I buy today. So, unfortunately, I think, Chris, like, experientially, what you're gonna need to do, is buy a sheet from each supplier, try it on a project, and then settle on which one is gonna work best for you, which one provides a quality that you need. I just don't think there's a way, that I'm aware of, anyway, to just even ask the right questions, much less stand there and look at the sheet, and know if it's gonna work for you or not. John asks, "Off-topic," which happens all the time in my brain, "What's your tattoo?

Is it woodworking related?" So, I was just describing this to Alex. So, we can go through this, 'cause I have no problem talking about this. Are we there? Almost there. So, this is, my two daughters both have tattoos, and they were after me for a long time that I should get one.

And I said, "No." However, here's the deal. Ginny is the middle kid, very artistic. I said, "You draw me a tattoo that's got these things in it, and I'll consider it." These things being, I taught myself to play acoustic guitar, I'm very proud of that. I'm in a Masonic lodge here in town, so, Freemasons. I'm an avid bow hunter, so I want archery in there.

And then I want my three kids. So, this is what Ginny drew. So, what we have, the outside shape is a broadhead that I use when I bow hunt. And then if you're familiar with Masonic stuff, here, here, here, there, is the square and compass of a Masonic lodge. The vertical lines, there's four of 'em, it started with six, the six strings on a guitar, but the tattoo guy said with the size of the tattoo, those lines would kind of smear together over time, so we limited it to four, so that wouldn't happen.

And then if you look closely, there's a G, and an M at the top, and then another G over here is backwards. So, George is my son, Megan daughter, Genevieve, who does woodworking stuff with me, is the other daughter. And then the numbers, eight, nine, 10, four, seven, nine. Eight is the birth month of my two daughters. They were both born in August.

10, October, is the birth month of my son, October. And then four, seven, nine, excuse me, four, seven, nine, goes with the nine, 94, 97, 99. Those are their birth years. So, it was pretty cool. Like she got kind of a whole hieroglyph of information packed into the tattoo there, really did a nice job on it.

And of course now they're after me, when am I gonna get my next one? Which I'm not, 'cause she covered every base that needed to be covered in this tattoo. Tom asks, "I'm looking to purchase a portable tabletop planer." I added portable. "I'm looking to purchase a tabletop planer. Currently researching WEN versus DeWalt.

Thoughts?" I don't know anything about the WEN. I've got the DeWalt planer. Let's just roll around and do a visual on that. I'm gonna run over here quick and throw these out the way. I forgot.

Two seconds. I own the DeWalt 734. I probably had this, I dunno, at least a couple of years. If I did this again, I would save a few more pennies and get the DeWalt 735. The big reason for that is I think it's got a little more width capacity, but a bigger reason for that, really, is the 735 has two feed speeds.

And the 734 is a single speed. So, why two feed speeds? If you're planing something that's got a lot of figure to it, curly maple, birds-eye maple, highly figured birch, the ability to slow down the feed rate is possibly the difference between getting a piece of wood out the other side that you can use, or you can't use. And what I mean by that is just, there can be a propensity to chip on highly figured wood. And so, if we can slow down the feed rate, we can mitigate that opportunity.

So, like I said, the 734 has served me well, but a little bit of buyer's remorse. I wish I'd bought the 735. In comparison to the WEN, I don't know anything about the WEN. So, the only thing I can say there is the very first router I ever owned, I was about 10, was a WEN brand router, ironically enough. But yeah, I don't know anything about the WEN planer.

Dave asks, "In the market for a router lift, is there one you prefer? And if so, why?" Let's see. You could actually, no, don't, you have casters on this, so, walk this way, Alex. So, just for general edification, let's talk router lifts in general for just a second. For folks at home that might not be familiar with what we're talking about.

I've got three router tables, three router lifts, in the shop. So, here's what we've got going. When I turn this dial, thank you, sir, for being tight. So, when I turn this dial, the router bit is coming up, or going down. What I've got in here is basically an elevator for my router.

And as a general rule with lifts, one full revolution is a 16th of an inch. So, when it comes to finessing the height of the cutter, and a drawer-lock bit like this is a great example of when you really need to dial in the height, carefully, 1/4 turn is 128th of an inch. So, it really gives you really, really fine control. The three lifts that I have in here right now, I've got a Craig, a Woodpeckers, and a JessEm, an older JessEm lift. And honestly, I have no complaints with any of 'em.

Craig just came out with this one, and they did a really nice job on this. It's a fine product, an adapter. They've got a unique adaptor system that allows different diameters of motors to fit in this. So, yeah. I'll show you one more thing, since we're talking about router lifts.

So, keep this in mind. On this one, this is what I'm doing to change the height of the cutter. The other thing it'll let me do, is if I take the insert out, I can raise this enough that the router collet comes above the table. And I can change bits. The JessEm mechanism is very, very similar, but let me show you the Woodpecker mechanism, 'cause it's a little bit different.

I got your cord, buddy. If you just go back, straight toward the table saw, and then you'll end up pointing toward the band saw, but actually toward the router table. So, you gotta go like six miles, maybe seven. All right. So, the reason we're here is because the Woodpeckers table's got a little bit different set up.

This one has got a rapid advance to it. And I'll admit, it took me a little bit to get used to this, but when I'm to the point now where I wanna get this collet above the table, I insert this, turn it. Now it's locked into the lift. I lift, so I can make a rapid advance, and then fine adjustment is done with this dial here. So, big picture, the concept is the same.

Get close to where you wanna be, and then instead of a crank, I'm gonna use this to finesse the height of the cutter. There's a dial right there that shows me my net change, but this allows me to make a rapid advance. So, any of those three router bits are gonna serve you well, and that's my two cents, I guess, on routering. 7:30. We're halfway through it.

Does it feel like half an hour, Alex? Feels like- Feels like a week? At least a weekend. I gotta get some water. So, again, we wanna take a second, and thank the folks at Titebond for sponsoring our lives, and bringing this to you.

Also, if you're not already doing so, keep in mind that you can get the WWGOA newsletter for free. You go to wwgoa.com. You can sign up for that. Also, you can follow us. I had a little brain bubble there for a second.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and then my last public service announcement here, if you're watching this on YouTube right now, I'm monitoring questions that are being posted to wwgoa.com, where the video is being hosted, too many balls in the air to monitor questions at YouTube, and at wwgoa.com, so, don't be offended if your YouTube question's not getting answered, because I just told you, it's not gonna get answered, but if you post it on wwgoa.com, I will get to as many as I possibly can. We got through a boatload of questions last month. Right, I opened my water and I didn't take a drink. Here we go. "Hello from Adena, Ohio, Riverside, California." Bob asks, "Does a planer parallel faces okay?

Do you need a jointer for this, or just a planer?" So, great question. And it's actually, the planer is the tool that will give you two parallel faces. You can stay, I'm gonna just grab a chook. So, on a jointer, if we go to the jointer and we face joint, and then we flip, and we face joint, there's no guarantee that these two faces will end up parallel. On a planer, we run this through, it's feeding on the table, cutting on the top.

Then, if we flip it over and do the same thing the other side, it's still feeding on the table and cutting on the top. So, one of the big difference between a planer and jointer is the guarantee that every piece that comes out the outfeed side on a planer will be at exactly the same thickness, whatever that height is set to, and both feces, both faces, will be parallel to each other. I think it's hard to get feces parallel to each other. I've never seen it, but I don't know. Both faces will be parallel to each other.

You know, you can't laugh at yourself when you're doing live woodworking. The outtakes never seen on "The New Yankee Workshop." Tony says, "Making cabinets for a master closet. When finishing, I start by brushing a primer, then spraying the finish with sanding in between. I can see brush strokes in the finish. Any questions?" Yeah.

Spray everything. If you can. Yeah, if you're already spraying the top coat, I'd spray the primer too. I recently built a bunch of cabinets that got installed at an office. I sprayed the stain.

It's fast. It's easy. It's muy bueno. Michael says, "Have you ever reviewed the Sears router tables?" He thinks they are worthless. I haven't.

I don't know that I've ever worked on a Sears router table. Skipper's answering my question for me. "Complementary angles," and he even spelled it correctly, "Are two angles with the sum of 90. Supplementary angles are two angles with the sum of 180." So, I think when we put the boards together, this is back to when I was talking about the jointer and jointing edges, then we have supplementary angles there, I believe. Steven says, "Greetings from Acworth, Georgia," where I bet it's a whole lot warmer than it is here today.

"Just started taking up woodworking, using more hand tools than electric, and I was wondering if there were good beginner projects that may help me practice useful techniques?" Yes. Good answer. Okay. So, here's my advice on projects, and myself, and other woodworkers who do what I do, run into this all the time. And I've heard similar answers from other people who do what I do.

What you should do is find a project that appeals to you. So, I could say, "You know what, Steven, here's a really cool project that I love." And then, if it doesn't appeal to you, you're not gonna be motivated to do it, to learn the new techniques you need to to make that project. It's gonna be hard for you to light a fuse. So, pick a project that you like, and then look for a plan, or figure out that plan yourself, or whatever it is you need to do, or go to a woodworking store, or go online, and browse plans until something catches your eye, and then do it, then learn the process you need to do to build that. And you're gonna be more highly motivated to learn when you're doing what you wanna do instead of what I tell you, you should do.

So, that's my advice, is pick something that you really, really, really love. Dwayne is in Saskatchewan. "My son made a candle holder from a log, left the bark on the bottom five inches, and turned the rest. What would be the best treatment to seal the wood without damaging the bark?" Well, if the bark is still stuck on, congratulations, 'cause that doesn't often happen. I don't know.

I think any finish that you could put on there. I'm not sure what you mean by "damaging the bark." If you're afraid to like touch it, 'cause it's kind of flaky, then get a finish in a rattle can, get a spray finish, spray polyurethane, spray lacquer, and then you're not brushing a finish on, and wiping off excess. So, that might be a good way to go. Otherwise, something like Danish oil will really soak in. You could lightly brush that onto all the surfaces.

So, any one of those should work okay. Steve is in what he calls, "Very hot Tucson, Arizona." And I don't think the name is Very Hot Tucson. I think it's Tucson, where it's very hot, but that's just me. "Is updating my jointer and planer with helix cutter heads worth the money?" Well, it ain't cheap. I wanna say, you probably know better than me, Steve, something like maybe 3 to 500 bucks to get that cutter head, depending on the size of your planer or jointer.

I have a helical cutter head on the jointer I have now. My last one did not. I can't believe the incredible surface finish that it provides me. So, Steve, I am happy to spend your money, and tell you yes, it's worth every penny, but, you know, I guess there's a lot of "it depends." Are you working with a lot of hardwoods? Are you working with a lot of figured woods?

Are you demanding that surface finish from your jointer and planer? Do you own a surface sander, like a SuperMax or something like that, that you're running all this stuff through there after the jointer and planer anyway? So, big picture, helical cutter head on a jointer, and a plainer, a wonderful addition to the shop, and an incredible surface finish. Andy lives in West Central Minnesota. "I'm gonna build a Shaker cabinet, or we're going to build Shaker cabinet doors.

Best to use 1/2-inch with rabbet, or 1/4-inch center panel. What material is best for painted doors?" I would do, 1/2-inch with rabbet or 1/4-inch? I don't know. I mean, if everything is wood, I would groove the panel in instead of rabbet the panel in. So I would be probably in 3/4-inch stock, with 1/4-inch panel grooved into the center of that frame.

And what material is good for painted doors? Poplar is a wonderful choice. I thought I just had a piece. Oh, it's over on the jointer. Poplar is a great, poplar is a popular paint-grade wood.

And that's good, 'cause it's kind of an ugly wood on its own. Poplar, birch, maple will all paint wonderfully. Of the three, poplar is gonna be the least expensive. So, it's actually yellow poplar is the full name, but that's great choice for paint grade. Tom is in Medford, Oregon.

"John says he is building speakers out of cherry veneer plywood, nervous about corner joints for the speaker box, any chip out caused by the saw blade when cutting the 45-degree angles. Do you have any advice?" It's gonna be huge for you to make sure you're using the right saw blade, and of course, doing a downward cut. So, let's go, let's head for the table saw. Time to roll this out, so you can be just here somewhere looking at the lathe. We got about 20 minutes left, so I'm gonna just throw out there again for anybody that's watching on YouTube, if you have questions, we're not monitoring the YouTube questions, 'cause it's too many balls in the air to keep track of, so, go to wwgoa.com, look for WWGOA Live, click on that, look for the May event, that's this one, and then post your question there, and we'll get to it.

Okay. So, couple things here. Blade selection. To do what you're doing, I would use Okay. I'll just come to you, Alex.

It's gonna be a big zoom. All right. Two different styles of blades here, and we're gonna test Alex's zoom ability in a second. If I hold this very stably, can you come in right on top of the teeth. We've done this shot with better cameras on video so that we can, can you kinda see the tooth on there?

I can't really see it. I can here, yes. 'cause their computers have bigger screens, but I can tell the definition. Okay. So this, the one I'm holding now, not very still, is an alternate top bevel.

And what that means is, a tooth points to the left, to the right, to the left, to the right, to the left. That's alternate top bevel. The alternate top bevel provides a really, really clean cut. The other thing to look at, now when I carefully go this way. This is an 80-tooth blade.

So, the teeth are quite small, and this what's called the rake angle, the teeth are pretty darn close to vertical. So, there's very little hook. There's very little lean forward on this tooth. Okay. Keep all that in mind.

Alternative. This one is a triple chip. And if you pause this, like not now, cause we're live, but if you watch this later and you pause it, look at the teeth, and the one right there that my finger's on, it looks kinda like a tombstone, flat on the top, the corners are off. A triple chip would be okay for what you're doing on your speaker cabinets. The alternate top bevel would be a better choice, but if we go this way, similarly, 80-tooth, so, the teeth are small, very little hook angle.

We don't want an aggressive hook. All right. So, that's the blade lesson. Now, on the saw... My saw has a left tilt.

Always feels like it takes forever to get to 45 degrees. So, with this left tilt saw, when you're cutting your speaker parts, we wanna be sure that we're cutting those with the outside face up, the cherry veneer up, so that we're down-cutting through, and that's gonna really help minimize the opportunity for that to chip. Then, if you stay where you are, I'm gonna grab a visual aid, and we'll do one more . And just to buy a little extra insurance, what I would do is lay this out, figure out where that cut is gonna go, and then, right where the cut is, put a piece of masking tape on there. and press that down good under your cherry veneer.

And that's also gonna help just kinda hold the grain together to minimize the opportunity for this thing to chip on you. So, blade selection is huge. Go with an 80-tooth, no matter what, and either an alternate top bevel, or a triple-chip grind, not an aggressive tooth, so, a very shallow hook angle, and then cut on the down, make sure you're cutting on the downside. So, you're cutting through the face veneer, with the face veneer being up for all your cuts. And then the last thing, put a piece of masking tape on there to buy a little anti-chip insurance.

If you just stay there, Alex, I'll come your way. Refresh my screen. So, it's interesting. PBS has a new woodworking show. Have you seen that?

So, now it's "Rough Cut with Fine Woodworking." So, it was "Rough Cut with Tommy Mac," previously, and now it's "Rough Cut with Fine Woodworking," and Tom McLaughlin, which is ironic, that they're Tommy MacDonald, and now Tom McLaughlin. But anyway, Tom McLaughlin is the host on there now. How'd you know it's not the same person? He looks very different. Oh, okay.

So, this is a cool answer. So, Domingo is the one who asked the question about the yellow tree. Steven answered, "Tree is possibly a maple. Apparently they have a yellow sap when they're about to bud. This is also the time to stop drawing sap if you're doing maple syrup." That I know.

I've done maple syrup a bunch of times, and if you continue to get sap for your syrup when the tree is budding, it gets really, really bitter, really gross. But the yellow part, I've cut a fair number of maple logs, I've never seen 'em yellow inside, but I haven't seen every maple log out there. So, I don't know. Scott says, "I recently acquired some butternut. Wondering what might be a good use for it?" I'll show you a cool use.

Here's a cool use. So, my friend George Johnson, really my substitute father, carved this. Butternut is a wonderful carving wood. It's a soft wood. If I press hard on this with my thumbnail I could easily leave an impression in there.

Because of its grain pattern, some people call it "poor man's walnut," not that the color doesn't have a walnut color to it, but the grain pattern is similar to walnut. So, if you build a piece of furniture, and you stain it with a walnut-colored stain, it'll look like walnut when it's done. So, carvings, and then just general furniture use would be fine, but keeping in mind it's a pretty soft wood, so it wouldn't be a great choice for like a tabletop, 'cause it's gonna look used pretty fast. Paul says, "I downloaded the SketchUp tutorial. Once I started it, SketchUp had moved from the free desktop version to the browser version.

Browser version seems less functional. Any suggestions on which product to get? The old free desktop version is no longer available. Is there a plan to update the tutorial?" So, yes to updating the tutorial, but I don't know when, and we've run into this before, Paul, but as recently as like in the last week, SketchUp 2017, the desktop version, was still available as a download. So, I think it's gotten harder to find, but when I sit down to answer questions tonight yet, at eight o'clock, I'll look for that.

And if, or when, I find it, I'll put the link here in the answer to your question. Steven asks, "What are your thoughts on a parallelogram jointer versus a standard dovetail way jointer?" Let me see if there's anything else here at the table, so I should answer before we move. Okay. Let's go to the jointer again, Alex. You shoulda wore your steps counter, you're getting your 10,000 steps in.

Making me feel a big sick with that move. All right. Hard to avoid. So, one of the things... I gotta think a second.

I wish I could get past, I can't. Can you see like here, the relationship between the cutter head and the casting? There you go. Yeah, that's good. Okay.

This is a parallelogram bed. When I change the height of the infeed side, if you look really, really closely, the distance from that edge to the cutter head, I unplugged the machine, the distance from there to the cutter head is always the same. If this was a dovetail jointer, as it slides down the dovetail ways, this distance increases. So, there is a consideration where, on a dovetail bed jointer, as I'm increasing my depth of cut, I'm creating a bigger gap between this and the cutter, which creates a greater likelihood that a piece of wood could get caught in there in a really dangerous way. So, that's one consideration.

Probably a bigger one is that on parallelogram jointers, so, now if you're a little more over here, there's four posts in here. I can use these posts if I need to, to dial this up, down, rack, bloop, bloop, bloop. So, if it ever got to where this table was not co-planer with the outfeed table, there are four pillars in each, and I can dial those up and down to gently twist this into a position where they're co-planer again. So, that adjustability is probably a bigger deal than the gap. It'll let you micro-adjust the planer, or the jointer, later, if you ever needed to.

And that's a pretty good consideration. So, I've had, until this one, every jointer I owned was a dovetail jointer, dovetail way, and they were fine. The last one I had, it went out of parallel, and it was just, it was our fault, our video fault, because we moved that jointer in my old shop a thousand times, literally, and frequently by lifting from the tables. And so we just tore stuff. Once it was out of parallel, it was really, really, really difficult to get it back, where on this machine, it would be a whole lot easier.

John says, "I built three bathroom vanities. My wife has asked for some mounting system on the cabinet doors for small boxes, baskets, or plastic containers. I have some pegboard, but looks yuck. I scavenged metal scraps, and magnets with small metal baskets. Are there other options?

Will I need a third hinge to handle the weight?" Third hinge? I don't know. 'Cause it depends on how big the doors are. If there's any doubt in your mind, add the third hinge, because why allow the doors to sag over time? If there's any question at all about the stability, throw the third hinge on there.

I like your idea about metal strips and magnets, and you could even put, so, could you fasten just the metal strip to the door, but then incorporate the magnets onto the thing that you wanna put on the door? Rare earth magnets are crazy strong, and you can use CA glue, cyanoacrylate glue, to glue 'em to objects. I don't know, I think that's a pretty cool option. Are there other options? Probably.

You know, another thing that'd be worth doing is just looking at a place like Woodworker's Hardware, sells a ton of hardware related to cabinets, and there might very well be commercially made gizmos designed to hang on the inside of a door that are just purpose-specific for what you're trying to do. "What router brand and model number would you suggest?" Mark says. There's a billion good ones. I mean, and I'm not trying to be sarcastic, but Milwaukee, DeWalt, Makita, Porter Cable, Bosch, most of which are in this building, are all great. I'd say there's a question of, do you want it to be a handheld router, or a router table router?

If it's only gonna be handheld, you could go plunge base. If it's gonna be a router table router, you really wanna stick with a fixed base, because of its ability to adjust for height. But, yeah, as far as specific brand and model number, there's a lotta good ones. At here, at Woodworkers Guild, we don't do tool tests. Other magazines do.

So, if you really wanna research this, a good thing to do would be look for a magazine that has tool-tested routers in the price point, or category of router, that you're shopping for, and see what they say. And typically, the way that works is that they will evaluate, whatever, 15, 20 different routers, and then give you a best value, and best overall choice, out of that tool. Tom in Oregon says, "I see what looks like a storage or glue station behind you. Are there plans for this on the GOA site?" So, I think you mean my cordless drill station, maybe? It's behind you now, the severed hand.

Is that thing still here? Yeah . That's when Ginny was here. She's got my strange sense of humor. So, well, let's do this.

Let's point in this direction, so I get this right. How you doing with that cord, Alex? It's perfect. Good. Never get rid of it.

This is included, if this is the one you mean, Tom, this is included in a class that hasn't posted yet. The class is gonna be about shop storage solutions. So, actually, I'm the bottleneck on this. The edit is in my computer waiting for me to look at it. So, I'm gonna say, in the next 30 days, this, and other storage stuff that was built for that class, will be online.

If you mean this one, I only just developed this in the last 30 days. This is gonna be available online for platinum members starting in like June. The cordless drill station. William says he's in Riverside, California. "With regard to router lifts, Rockler just introduced a new model with two lift sockets, one for rapid advance, another for fine-tuning." That's a cool idea.

Alan says, "Love the information. Great site. Keep up the good work. Just now getting my shop together. Videos and articles have helped in decision-making." That's great to hear.

It's nice to hear that feedback. You know, I love teaching, and my real history is teaching high school, teaching adults, and of course, in those environments, you get feedback all the time. And I still do that. I'll travel next weekend to Des Moines to teach for "WOOD Magazine," but when we do this teaching, when we do videos, when I'm online like this, there's no immediate feedback. So, it's always very nice to hear those comments.

Frank is in Kodak, Tennessee. Rodrigo says, "What table saw would you buy if you had $1,000 as a budget?" I do not mean to be sarcastic, or a schmuck here, but I would save a little more money, and I would get a SawStop. SawStop makes great saws, the brake mechanism could save your finger, or your hand, someday. This isn't an advertisement for SawStop, I just think with that technology available, it's worth... If this is gonna be a hobby, you're gonna pursue woodworking, it is something, the SawStops really merit a really, really good look, and save your pennies until you can get one.

Chief Flip says, "I'm getting small divots at the end of my planer cut. I've made adjustments in and out, but still have the issue." So, small divots, I think he probably means snipe. And it depends on what kind of planer you have. So my planer that we looked at earlier is a benchtop, or what some people call a lunchbox planer, and there's no adjustment on those. There is a cutter head lock, and what that cutter head lock does is just what it says.

It locks the cutter head in place so that it can't rock up and down when you're feeding your material. So, if your planer has a lock, use it. If you're using a larger planer than that, a bigger stationary-type planer, those typically have adjustments on the infeed and outfeed rollers, where can adjust how much tension they have. And usually the snipe problem, with those planers is from not having enough tension on infeed and outfeed rollers. But you gotta be real careful, and make the same adjustments left and right, and make the adjustments in really small increments 'cause it's easy to go too far, and then especially, a serrated roller on the front, on the infeed side of the planer, will start leaving marks in your material that the knives won't take out.

So, with those machines, I would definitely look at the owner's manual, and research from the manual how to do those infeed roller, outfeed roller adjustments, and go from there. On benchtop planers, outside of making sure that your table is dead flat, there's just not a lot you can do there. And Chaz Junior 1 is watching in Tennessee. All right. It's eight o'clock.

I did one last refresh here, but we are actually out of time. I'm gonna give this one second to catch up. So, while this is playing catch-up, while my iPad is catching up, once again, thanks to the folks at Titebond for underwriting these lives for you, and keeping these coming free. And thanks to you for tuning in. This is always a lot of fun.

Doesn't the hour go fast, Alex? It did. Absolutely. Did it really? No, I just woke up- Okay, he was taking a little nap there while he was not moving the camera.

So, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for posting all your questions. And I will sit down now and start following up on any questions I didn't get to. And then we will see you in a month. So again, these events are always the second Thursday of every month, 7:00 p.m., Central Time.

And the only exception to that is if I'm teaching on the road. What are we in now, May? So, June, I don't know what the date is, but I don't think I'm teaching on the road in June, so we should be okay. The other live event we're doing now, if you haven't already seen it, is live on Facebook on the WWGOA page on Facebook. That's 11:00 a.m., every other Thursday, every two weeks.

So, one was today at 11 o'clock. The next one will be two weeks from today, at 11 o'clock, on, and on, and on, you get the system. Other than that, anything else from you, Alex? Any parting wisdom? Knowledge is power.

I learned that today. Very true. All right. Sam is gonna shut us down. Thanks for Sam being behind the boards, and making all the magic happen that we don't get to see.

Thanks for Alex behind the camera. Thanks for you for tuning in. See you in a month. Thank you, George. This is the part I never know what to do.

If you just reach up and turn off the camera. On this side of the camera there's a power button, and-