A very versatile and functional tool, it is a table saw, horizontal boring machine, drill press, disk sander, and lathe.  There are several additional attachments available for the system: band saw, scroll saw, planer, etc.

Several years ago my father-in-law purchased a ShopSmith from his brother-in-law.  At the time he did not have space to store it so he allowed me to keep it for the winter, this discussion was in the fall, and in the following spring he would take it back.  Well, that has been a few years now.

This ShopSmith was built back around 1978.  The tool came with band saw and scroll saw attachments.

You can read more about the history of the ShopSmith tool system. 

The beauty of this system is that the system is that they have kept the interface to the attachments and the motor the same.  So, you can use attachments that were built twenty or thirty years ago with your system!

The Mark V model 500’s table was very small and the fence left much to be desired.  I built a bathroom vanity with it and I felt I was reaching the maximum of what the table saw could handle (stock wise).  My father-in-law and I decided to purchase the upgrade kit to bring it up to the Mark V model 520.  The 520’s table and extension tables make it so much easier to use and handle larger stock.

The biggest draw back to the Shop Smith design is cutting 45 degree bevels.  In order to cut the bevel the table tilts to a 45 degree.  Ok.  Now try ripping a 12” wide cut down the length of a 4×8 sheet of plywood.  Not fun.  I have contemplated it and altered my project’s design.

The project in question was kitchen cabinets.  One of the projects that I built with the ShopSmith was an entire set of replacement kitchen cabinets.  More on this in a future post.

The unit is solidly built with retractable wheels.  This makes so much easier to move around the shop.  The wheels are deployed and retracted via foot levers.  Interestingly enough the designers chose to have two different heights that you can raise the ShopSmith up by.

Tip: To make the stock slide easier across the table, wax the table with a good quality floor wax.  Follow the instructions on the container.  It makes the stock slide much easier.

The motor is powerful enough to cut through a variety of hardwoods.  The quality and type of saw blade will significantly impact the cutting performance.  I have cut red oak, white oak, mahogany, birch, and other hard woods quite easily using a 30 teeth 10” carbide tipped saw blade.

For the home wood worker, this is a good tool that gives you a wide variety of tools with a relatively small foot print.

I typically work alone in my wood shop.  Often when I am cutting long stock and sheets of plywood I need a helping hand.  For Christmas my wife gave me a nice set of three adjustable folding metal roller stand.  They are nice, but they have a significant draw back, tipping over.  If the stock dips a bit lower than what the roller stand is set for, the stand will be pushed back and knocked over.

This is a huge problem especially if a long, 8 foot or more, stock is being run through the table saw.  More than once I have messed up a cut because the stock hit the roller and did not go on the roller rather knocked it down.

Norm Abrams from The New Yankee Workshop has an interesting design for a roller stand in the ‘workshop helpers’ episode.  His design has four rollers on the stand.  The stand’s base is as wide and deep as roller head.  It is designed to be constructed out of basic materials that are available at your local home improvement store.

I will be building at least one of his roller stands.  Now, where will I store it in the wood shop?

Making a picture frame is a nice small scale project that allows you to showcase your talents while framing a beautiful picture.

There are a variety of different techniques to build a picture frame, from using off the shelf molding to milling your own molding.  The first picture frames that I built I used off the shelf lip molding.  It works, but the choices of wood types are pretty limited.  At my local home improvement store carries molding made from white pine and red oak.

Building picture frames out of scrape wood helps me reduce the scrape wood pile.  I only have so much space in my work shop! 

A little over a year ago I built a collection of three simple picture frames for my wife’s birthday.  I took a picture of each of our children’s face.  The picture is just the face of each child.  I saw that on Extreme Makeover the Home Edition show.  For one family, Ty hung in the master bedroom a set of close up face pictures one for each of their children.

The picture frame is a simple design.  It is 2” wide with a rabbit grove 1/4” by 1/4”.  A 1/4” depth allows me enough space for the glass, matting, picture, and backer board.  Depending on the species of wood I typically use glazer points to secure everything into the frame.  This technique works well for softer woods and once you put the picture in you are not planning on changing it.

The first set of frames that I made for my wife’s birthday, I build them out of reclaimed purple heart.  It was the first time that I worked with this wood.  My Delta bench top planner chewed through it fairly easily.  Granted I was taking of 1/64” per pass!  However, cutting the rabbit with my stacked dado head cutter…. That was a challenge.  It took several passes to mill out the rabbit.  My dado head cutter is not the greatest, more on that in a future post.

My joinery for the frame itself is still on the low end of the skill set.  My main method is to nail the joint with 18 gauge brads.  I have contemplated using biscuits in the joint.

Most of my picture frames are variations of 2” to 3” by 3/4” thick. 

Some other variations of the frame that I have done are:

• Rounded over the outer edge of the frame
• Chucked a ‘V’ bit into the router and run a series of groves parallel to the long side
• Put a roman ogie edge on the outside of the picture frame and also on the inside.
• Shadow box

Take a look at the tools and router bits in your shop and use your imagination.  I think you will be very pleased with the neat new ideas that you can come up with for picture frames!

Oh, by the way, my wife loved the pictures.

For Christmas, several years ago, my wife gave me a DeWalt 12” compound miter saw.  It was a wonderful surprise.  This was the third major power tool that I added to my home shop.  The first is still ‘wintering’ over and the second was air compressor and 18 gauge brad finish nailer.  More about these tools in a future post.

Right out of the box this tool is ready to go.  Well, just about, you need to install the blade and store the wrench.  The wrench is stored on the left hand side of the base on the back side.  The wrench is kept in place by a unique spring locking mechanism.   

Changing the blade is fairly straight forward with a little caveat you need to partially remove the blade guard.  It takes about two minutes to change out the blade.  Tools required changing the blade wrench tool and a long handled, big, slotted screw driver.  Pull the retractable blade guard all the way back.  On the left hand side a slotted screw will be exposed.  Loosen the screw just enough allow the blade guard to slide up.  Now the blade nut is exposed.  Use the supplied wrench to remove the hex head blade screw.

The saw is nicely balanced and fairly easy to carry.  It is a little bulky.  The cutter head can be locked when it is all the way down.  On the hinge there is a little lock on the left hand side.  Push the cutter head all the way down and push the button in, and let go of the cutter head.  On the top of the cutter head is large D handle that makes carrying the saw quite easy.

This miter saw is a solidly built machine that wants to chew wood and lots of it!  The trigger is on the inside of the large D handle that you use to lower the cutter head.  The trigger is easy to engage. The blade reaches the full RPM within 1 second.  When the trigger is released a powerful electric brake stops the blade within 2 seconds!  This is very important safety feature.  I would never consider purchasing a miter saw that did not have this feature!

The saw feels solid and does not shift or move when cutting stock.

The motor noticeable torque when it starts.  When you start the saw the torque from the motor and blade will lift the cutter head up a bit.  When cutting I bring the blade down close to the material and then start the saw.  You can also start the saw with the blade all of the way up and then lower it down to cut.

The saw comes with a forty teeth blade.  The blade is good for rough cuts such as framing.  I strongly recommend that you purchase an eighty teeth finishing blade for your trim cuts.  The eighty tooth blade makes very clean smooth cuts.

Tip:  To reduce tear out from the blade put masking tape around the cut point.

The saw will cut up to 6” wide stock.  Anything wider will require two cuts and flipping the stock.  Another option would be to step up to the compound sliding miter saw.  However, it is significantly more expensive.

The saw’s bevel gauge is constructed out of stainless steel and has stops for the common degrees.  The stops are indents where the slider locks into place.  On the degree adjusting handle is a large knob that allows you to lock in the degree.  A nice thing about this design is that it allows you to dial in a 1/2 degree off of one of the preset indentations.

Overall this saw has exceeded my expectations.  Over six years and 1,000 of cuts on both blades it has worked flawlessly.  If you are in the market for a miter saw I highly recommend considering this model.

I have a DeWalt Heavy-Duty Plate Joiner Kit model DW682K since 2003. It is a very nicely balanced tool.  It is a little bit on the heavy side, but what do you expect from DeWalt!  It supports cutting slots for #0, #10, and #20 biscuits.  It comes with a 6.5 amp motor gives it plenty of power.  I have cut biscuits into a variety of hardwoods, red oak, white oak, mahogany, birch, and never been able to bog down the motor.  When the motor starts up it produces significant torque and has a tendency to move the tool if you are not holding on tightly to the big D handle.

The unit is very well made.  The fit and finish is excellent.  The cast aluminum fence system with its rack and pinion adjustment with lock down screws is easy to adjust and does not ‘drift’ during operation.  Fence adjustment is smooth and very easy.  On the right hand side is a depth scale with red triangle for the 3/8 depth.  Easy to read and accurately set the depth.

The blade drift can pretty much be controlled by adjusting two ‘anti-slippage’ pins out with a screwdriver.  These pins grip the wood and resist the blade drift tendency.

I have not yet had to remove my blade.  It does come with a blade removal tool.

It comes with a blow molded case.  It is a tight fit to get the tool, power cord, and dust collection bag to fit into the case.

The tool will spit out a significant pile of shavings.  The dust collection bag leaves much to be desired and I typically do not use it.

In the past I used it just for joining board together to create a larger single board, a typical use.  I was talking to a fellow wood worker a few months ago and he mentioned that he uses his biscuit joiner to join cabinet bodies, fixed shelving, and just about anything else he can cut a biscuit slot into.

So, when I was building my daughter’s dresser / storage bed.  The drawer body is a simple butt joint that is glued and nailed with 18 gauge brads.  I decided to install biscuits to increase the joint strength.  The boards join up so that the brads nails are at 90 degrees to the pulling and pushing force of opening and closing the drawer.

Biscuit joining looks easy and after a little practice is easy.

Tip: Always cut all slots with the face side up.  This will prevent minute imperfections caused by variations in wood thickness.

I finally developed a compelling reason why I needed a [tag]bench top planer[tag].  I gained access to some used rough cut mahogany lumber.  So, naturally I need a planer to clean up the lumber and dimension it.

I looked at review sites and bench top planer shoot outs.  Finally I came down to the DeWalt 13” and the Delta 13” planers.  Both planers have many great features.  Ultimately it came down to a financial issue.  I just could not afford the DeWalt.

Out of the box there is very little post assembly required.  Install the handles and check the in feed and out feed tables.  Then you are ready to start planning.It uses double edged disposable knives.  It comes with a knife wrench and knife holder.  The knife holder is a four inch wide strip of plastic that has a flexible magnet.  The knife holder works fairly well in lifting the knife out of the cutter head and positioning it back into the cutter head.  Included in the box is a piece of Velcro (hook and loop).  The manual recommends that you stick it on the under side of the out feed table and stick the knife holder to it.  It provides a pretty handy way of storing the knife tool until you need it.

Changing the knives is fairly straight forward process.  The first time it took me about 30 minutes.  Between reading the instructions and fighting the somewhat over torqued screws.  The knives are held down by seven screws.  The screws on either end are more of a pain to loosen due to the limited turning room for the knife wrench.  You have about a quarter turn worth of space before you have to reset the wrench.  In order to change the knives you have to raise the cutter head three to four inches up.  This is a pain when you are in the middle of a planning job.  I typically am planning seven to ten boards at a time.  If I have to stop part way through to change out the knives, it takes a few turns to get the depth set correctly to resume where I left off.The knives are fairly durable, until you hit a nail or enough dirt or other hard contaminates on the surface of the lumber.  I made the mistake of not checking one of my boards for nails and planed a nail.  I realized my mistake after I saw something shiny on the board.  Tool late the planer knife has been damaged.  The good thing was this damage was localized to about 1” from the right hand side.  I used the rest of the blade until it as dull and needed to be changed.

The planer does not come with a dust chute, it can be purchased separately.  I highly recommend that you do purchase one!  The shavings exhaust port blows the shavings directly on to the out feed table.  The dust chute dumps the shavings off to either the left or right hand side. 

I also recommend that you have a two stage dust collector to pick up the shavings as the planer will product a large volume of them.The wood comes out very smooth and requires very little to no sanding.How much can it handle in a single pass?  Well it depends on the type of wood you are planning.  Soft woods you can go up to 1/8 of an inch per pass.  On hard woods I typically take off 1/32 per pass, especially if you are planning a 13” wide hard wood board.

For years my dust collector was the shop floor, shelves, tools, etc.  And the dust removal was a big broom and dust pan.  There are several problems with this method the most important is that the dust can lead respiration problems.  In one of Norm Abram’s books he talked about his early days when his wood shop was setup in the basement of his house.  He used the floor as the dust collector.  After sometime he started to develop serious sinus infections.  Ultimately he tracked it back to the amount of saw dust in the air while he was working in his basement shop.

My next evolution of dust collection was to purchase a shop vac.  They are nice for vacuuming up dust from the floor.  However, they don’t really scale well when collecting dust from running tools.  One of the biggest draw backs to the shop vac is its limited CFM.  They just don’t suck enough and the filter clogs up quickly.  With my shop vac I was able to cut 24 linear feet of 3/4 plywood, then the filter would clog up.  I would have to stop cutting empty remove the filter and clean off all of the saw dust that has collected in the filter.

A little tip I picked up at my local home improvement store is wrap an old T-shirt around the filter.  It will act like a pre-filter and collect the large dust particles.  When the shop vac is turned off some of the dust will drop off of the T-shirt and should give you more run time between empting out the shop vac.  The T-shirt will reduce the CFM of the shop vac.

A little over a year ago I finally got a Delta ShopMaster AP400 single stage dust collector.  I chose this unit over the competitors for its performance and price point.  I needed a compact design, good CFM, mobile.  Eventually I will install air ducts so that the collector does not need to be mobile any more.  Before I can do that I need to redesign the layout of the shed.  The Delta ShopMaster AP400 has a 650 CFM.  The CFM is on the lower end of the units that are available but is enough for me running one tool at a time.

A single stage dust collector has one bag that will collect all of the dust.  Emptying out the bag is a bit of a pain when you have to deal with the clamping band and positioning it correctly on the dust collector. 

How do I convert my single stage dust collector into a two stage?  Buy a metal trash can.  Don’t get a plastic trash can for two reasons.  First the suction that the can will be exposed to will most likely collapse the plastic can and will reduce its usefulness.  Second, is static electricity.  Having large amounts of dust rubbing against the plastic walls will build up a static electric charge.  In the can you already have fuel (the saw dust) and oxygen all you need is a spark to start a fire.

Buy a 30 gallon metal trash can and a dust collection hood.  The hood is designed to replace the trash can’s metal lid.  The dust collection hood is made out of plastic and has two ports, on mine they are 4 inch in diameter.  What you are going to do is put the metal trash can with dust collection hood in between the shop tool and the dust collector.

Shop tool –> metal trash can –> dust collector

What the metal trash can becomes is the first stage in a two stage dust collector.  It will collect all of the larger particles. And finer dust will then pass on to the dust collector and in to its bag.  A side benefit to this design is that it will extend the life of the dust collector’s impellor (fan blade).

I got my trash can at the local ACE hardware store and the plastic dust collector hood from Wood Crafters.

I recall have seen an episode on New Yankee Workshop where Norm was building some shop furniture.  As he emptied out his existing shop cabinet he had a wheel barrel full of routers!  I think he said he had over 20 routers!  When working on a project with a router, don’t change bits, he changes routers!

Typically follow this concept with drills out of the three cordless drills that I own, I have one that works.  Augh!  The other two the battery packs have died and it just isn’t worth having the battery packs rebuilt, especially when these drills are a 7.2 and 9.? volt Roybi drills.

When I am installing hardware such as drawer rails, handles, hinges, I will chuck the drill bit into the corded drill and the driver bit into the cordless.  It is a pain to switch the drill bit and the driver bit out!

Unfortunately my 14.4V Skil cordless drill’s battery pack has died.  This was a nice set that I had received from my in laws for Christmas a few years ago.  It came with a dual battery pack.  The dual battery packs worked great use one and charge the other one.  In the last year the batteries started to hold less and less of a charge. 

I am still able to use the cordless drill as a corded drill via an adapter that Skil made for the 12 and 14.4V cordless tools.  It is a transformer / battery charger that has an adapter that plugs into the battery port on the cordless tool.  It works quite well and gives me a decent amount of power.  The cord length is quite nice at over twelve feet long!

I am eyeing the Dewalt 18V cordless drill.  I have read and heard good things about the drill.  Several of my wood working friends have them.  I am thinking Christmas gift….  Hint to my wife!

My wood shop is a home built 16’ by 12’ shed with a barn style roof in the back yard.  A nice size building; however, over time I wish I had a larger space.  I just completed building my eldest daughter’s dresser bed (storage bed) and it was a fun dance to move parts around the shed, out of the shed and back during assembly time.  Who wouldn’t want a larger wood shop with more tools?!

The shed has a 3’ x 4’ horizontal sliding window on the south wall and a set of double doors on the north wall.  I build the door opening wide enough so that I could rip a 4×8 sheet of plywood on the table saw.  The table saw is positioned so that I am standing outside with the sheet of plywood and the cuts end up in the shed on the roller stands.

Electricity.  I have been told that I over energized wood shop.  I have a 60 amp feed coming into to a sub breaker box.  Yes, that is a bit much, but I had the breaker and the spare amperage in the main breaker box, so why not make it available?  I have four circuits in the shop with the following layout:

            20 amp for the left wall outlets

            15 amp for the over head lights

            15 amp for the right wall outlets

            15 amp for the window outlets

My father asked me why do you have a separate circuit lights?  That is over kill.  My response, was how would you feel if you are in the process of ripping a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood and the breaker trips and the lights and the table saw lose power?  Oh by the way it is eight o’clock at night in the winter!  Not a good feeling.

The other comment my father had was I had too many outlets.  Let see I have three on the left wall, three on the right wall and one on either side of the window for a grand total of eight.  I told him you can never have enough outlets.  There are still times when I have to get the extension cord because the tool’s power cord will not reach an outlet!

With the barn style roof I was able to incorporate some ‘attic’ storage space.  On the left and right hand walls runs a two foot wide shelf the length of the wall at 76” from the floor.  On the southern wall is a four foot wide shelf.  Currently the ‘attic’ is filled with a collection of things, such as metal folding chairs, shop smith components, old 1×4 cedar fence pickets, blow up swimming pool, and some other stuff.

The shop needs thorough cleaning, reorganization and purging of stuff.  But that is for another post.

Welcome to the wood working hobbyist blog!  I will be posting about wood working for the weekend wood worker, tools, trends, and other interesting mussing.