That's how it works... you do something small and simple, (normal people do birdhouses or something, you stepped that up a few notches), then you get a sense for it, learn from your mistakes, and shed a bunch of fear of the unknown. Then you realize, "huh... that wasn't really all that hard..." and go on to something else. All the while you gradually become less and less shitty at it until you kind of start being good at it. And somewhere along the way you tend to become addicted to tools and shit. Welcome to the club!
Thank ya thank ya. Most of my desired projects involve woodworking. I dream a lot about things I want to build. See, logically I know that's the process. Personally I find it hard to finish a project at times because deep down I am a perfectionist and when it isn't turning out the way I envision, or I encounter situations I did not anticipate, or whatever wrinkle that turns up, it often takes the wind out of my sails. I heard something a month or so ago that stuck with me. Just FINISH your project. It doesn't matter. No one is perfect with their first thing-- woodworking, painting, sewing. When you complete it, you will have something you can look back on and say yes, I did that. And that provides a level of satisfaction that will lead to more successful projects. The corners required some finessing, but I got it to where I was satisfied. And then I painted (which in the past has lead to tears. I hate painting... but find that its ok with a brush. I HATE rollers). DONE. And it feels so good.
I am jealous, shit keeps getting in the way of me finishing my shop so i can actually start wood working again.
Have no fear, you will NEVER stop fucking things up. Every single project I've done has had something go wrong with it. You then have to learn how to adapt and fix the problem and carry on. Very, very rarely does it mean throwing it away and starting over... usually it calls for a slight design change, or some other adjustment. Keep the desire for perfection, but don't let it get the better of you.
Sound advice! Good to know that even the experts fuck it up on occasion. I am learning that just because plans change doesn't mean plans are ruined.
There's youtube tutorials for everything. And a ton of really skilled craftsmen on there who upload their stuff. You can really go down a rabbit hole on there, and the tutorials make the super-difficult-looking stuff fairly easy if you just follow it... I was talking to our carpenter at work recently about this, as he's largely self-taught and I'm kinda the same way. He said on a day to day basis the most valuable tool he has is his phone, because of youtube. If he doesn't know how to do something, he can just YT it and there's an answer no matter how obscure.
I've had a small pile of maple 1x4 and 1x2 laying around since I built my wife and I a new bed back in November, and on Sunday I decided that I could probably make a small chair out of it for my 2.5 year old daughter. So, using no plans and kind of figuring it out as I went, and using just what I had in the garage for tools and hardware, I built a very quirky little chair. The seat is kreg joined with 18 screws and solid as hell. There are some additional supports that join the seat to the back, since screws alone wouldn't be strong enough. The front legs were kind of a bitch since they're at some wonky angle that I ended up eyeballing. Surprisingly, I had to do almost no sanding to get everything flush, and the chair sits nice and level. It's strong enough to support me without bowing, so it's plenty sturdy for a 27 pound kid. This weekend we're going to get a bunch of paints and let my daughter go Jackson Pollock on the thing to make it her own. Looking at it straight on, it also reminds me of Sam Eagle. Spoiler
Gave the new cutterhead a workout for the first time. Zebra, purple heart, and oak. Super impressed with the finish and the insanely reduced noise, but man dies it draw more power. Popped the breaker 4-5 times while trying to figure out the max cut I could take. I think it’s due to the increased knife engagement per RPM due to the increased knife length due to it being (more or less) curved rather than straight across. Still worth every penny. Now I just have to replace an old worn out drive belt for the cutterhead. Amazon has two of them showing up tomorrow.
Just installed my new JessEm feed rollers for the table saw. I’ve had them for years on my router table and figured I’d give these a shot when they were on sale at Busy Bee. Man, they work great. No more featherboards for me.
It's pretty small, all things considered, and I've been pretty specific about what I've been investing in... but yeah, it's a lot of fun to fuck around in. I have this far-off glimmer of a concept of slowly morphing woodworking from a hobby to some sort of retirement gig.... in case my retirement fund doesn't fill out like I'm planning it to.
Well there’s your problem... One of these is not like the other. Swapped in the new belt and it’s like a new machine. Go figure.
And one more piece of the “upgrade the old rather than buy new” planer saga... The factory hard stops for the thickness planer were out by a fair bit afterI installed the helical cutterhead. I found this at the local Busy Bee and just installed it. I’ve tried 5 different cuts and am now within a few thousands of the indicated thickness. Colour me impressed.
Finished off my Mother's Day Gift for next weekend. Combination of zebra, purple heart, and walnut. Pretty happy with how they turned out... very simple, not at all perfectly aligned or with a symmetrical pattern, but I like it that way. These were, for the most part, scraps from the Christmas presents I made my sister and her friend. The zebra and purple heart were really hard to work with, as they seemed to be forced dried too quickly, which results in the wood binding up. That meant that every time I cut a strip the strip just warped all to fuck right away. Needless to say it was hard to be anything near precise with cuts. Most of these boards were the result of tons of glue, brute force, and lots of strong clamps.
Do you have a drum sander or did you just YOLO it with your new surface planer blades and hope you didn't destroy it?
I attached some sacrificial pieces on the ends and used the new helical cutter in the planer. Very, very small passes, and next to no end tearout... didn't even really need the sacrificial ends to the boards. I tried it once to see if it would work and was very surprised at how incredibly well it did work so kept going. No way in hell it would have worked that well with the old 3-knife cutter. Then I just sanded the fuck out of them with my new sanders, while watching some Netflix. It's crazy hard wood, and took a long time to sand down to the 180 I wanted.
My community shop has a "no planing endgrain" rule, and for pros that do it in their own shop I've only ever seen them take suuuuuper shallow cuts and put a giant warning up front like "don't try this at home."
When I first finished my cedar deck table there were deep knots that weren’t properly filled before I applied the spar varnish. That meant there were deep pockets of varnish that slow cured and off gassed much later than the surface and caused bubbles and blisters. They eventually popped and allowed water in and that caused some wood damage. Fun. This weekend was the first time we had enough dry weather that I could sand it down and refinish it. After using some quick-cure CA glue to fill in the gaps. Turned out pretty well I’d say.
Fucking hell. As you can see in the previous post, I'm being lazy and refinishing my deck table while it's still on the deck. That's because it's fucking heavy and a bitch to move into the more controlled environment of the shop. Needless to say it's going well... I've been sanding and varnishing the table in the open without problems so far... I've been using a very high end spar varnish (Epiphanes) and have been diluting it with about 50% mineral spirits so that it goes on thin and dries fast. Just means it'll take many more coats to build up the film I'm looking for rather than doing it all at once and let it dry for hours/days. Well, everything was going great until last night when, out of nowhere, a huge breeze came up for not even 5 minutes. It knocked some sort of weird shit out of the trees over the deck and dropped all sorts of shit on the table. The finish was just tacky enough that it stuck but didn't sink into the finish, so now I have this lovely finish on the table: I'm hopeful that I can lightly sand it and then refinish it yet again, but we're just heading into a bit of a wet spell where it's raining off and on for a few days, and I'm heading out of town on business for a couple of weeks... so yeah, not the end of the world, but not exactly going to plan either. Still, it's coming out great, so I can't really complain.