Tabla de contenidos para April 2018 en Woodworker's Journal

There really is MORE ON THE WEB! We do our best to pack as many interesting projects and articles as we can into every print issue. Unfortunately, there’s a limit to what we can fit on these pages. The good news is we’ve got unlimited space on our website. As you flip through the pages of this issue, keep an eye out for the More on the Web banner (pictured, right). It’s your cue that there is additional content waiting for you online at woodworkersjournal.com. It could be a video, additional tips or a downloadable plan. All you have to do is jump on the website and click the Current Issue box on our homepage. That will take you to the latest More on the Web videos, articles and plans.…

JenWoodhouse.com Jen Woodhouse is a performing songwriter who also has a great eye for design. She loves to build projects and share them on her website, The House of Wood (The DIY Life of a Military Wife). Most are furniture and decorative furnishings, but she also throws in a few workshop projects, such as this mobile worktable with storage shelves that doubles as an outfeed table. Her projects are designed with the DIYer or beginning woodworker in mind, and she offers downloadable PDF plans for most of them. The projects are archived on her website; her Instagram and Facebook pages are the best places to keep up with her latest work. JimmyDiResta.com Jimmy DiResta has been making things for over 40 years. He’s a true jack-of-all-trades, with an infectious love…

Woodworker’s Journal editor Joanna Werch Takes compiles each issue’s Stumpers responses — and reads every one. In the December 2017 issue, we presented a mystery tool belonging to Paul Fell of Pleasant Hill, Iowa (see illustration, photo, at right). The responses were divided into two camps. One said the tool was a lighter for an acetylene torch. The other said it was an ice cream scoop. Generally, those two things do not go together. We could really empathize with the response from Teresa McKinney of Fort Worth, Texas, who said “it is a spark maker. My grandfather, born in 1898, had one.” She also said, “Grandad was quite a jokester and always stole my biscuits, so he could have been kidding me.” But Chet Lawrence of Campbellsburg, Kentucky, said he…

FULL PROJECT PLAN ONLINE Subscriber exclusive: Find more construction drawings and complete instructions for this project online Summertime’s coming, and with this chair and table combo, the sitting is easy! Traditional, low-slung Adirondack chairs are an enduring favorite among woodworkers, because their casual styling makes them easy to build. But, once you sit down in them, getting up and out again can feel like you’re stuck in quicksand. That’s why these taller, barstool height chairs are gaining such popularity — they have the laid-back, slatted styling of their ground-hugging cousins but with much better ergonomics. We’ve designed ours as a set, with an upper and lower table that bolt between them for even more versatility. But, feel free to make just one chair or two — with or without the…

As the author of several books on woodturning, the designer of a lathe (the Conover Lathe, no longer in production) and a founding board member of the American Association of Woodturners (I’m member #004), it might be an understatement to say that people frequently ask my advice about lathes. They always want a simple answer, like “Buy an Acme Model XJ4, as purchased by Wile E. Coyote in the Warner Brothers ‘Road Runner’ cartoons." It’s not that simple. What you need depends on your budget, space and turning goals. Do you want to do mostly spindle turning (creating a cylindrical object)? Or faceplate turning (using a metal disc, the faceplate, to attach wood to your lathe so you can turn an item that can’t be secured simultaneously on the headstock…

ONLINE VIDEO! Gluing up a strong panel depends on three things: flat and square stock, edges that form tight seams and proper clamping pressure. The first two factors can be assured if you spend time jointing and planing your material carefully before you open the glue bottle. Then, spread glue on both contact surfaces of each joint, and apply clamps uniformly along the panel’s length to distribute the clamping pressure evenly.…

ROCKING THE SPRING THING ... Here in Minnesota, even though snow in March can be waist-high on a tall editor, it is still the month we start looking forward to the big thaw. Regardless of where you live, it would be a great time to start building our cover project: the Tall Outdoor Chair Set. It took a bit of convincing to get me on board with putting a twist on the classic Adirondack chair design, but at the conclusion, I was forced to admit that the chairs are pretty awesome (they’re also much easier for old-school dudes like me to get into and out of). Another article that I would like to draw your attention to is our Track Saw Jig. Track saws have been gaining popularity, and I…

Sponsored By Pencils Make Handy Mini Stickers I saw short sections of green logs into cutting boards for gifts, and they need to be stacked to dry after I cut them. Rather than cut up a bunch of wooden stickers, I’ve discovered that pencils are much more convenient. They’re uniform in shape, long enough for logs up to about 7" in diameter, and their octagonal profile prevents them from rolling and shifting the stack. Marty Mandelbaum Mount Sinai, New York Crosscut Sled Dust Shroud I made this long dust shroud from scrap plywood and 1/8" acrylic to improve dust collection on my table saw crosscut sled. Scrap blocks, attached to the fences of my sled, enable the shroud to slide up and down for slipping workpieces underneath, without allowing the…

If you do your woodworking in a small home shop without space for a full-size table saw, a track saw can be the best answer for making precise rips and crosscuts on plywood panels or even on hardwood. (I can’t count the number of times my Triton Plunge Cut Track Saw has saved me from hiring help or calling a friend over to assist in exchange for pizza and cold ones, once the work is done.) The only downfall is that, due to the positioning of the track/fence on top of the workpiece, you need to reset angles and measure each and every cut. That can make precision a challenge. With this jig, I wanted to create a solution that allowed for swapping out material without moving the track, and…

ONLINE VIDEO! Mirror glass is easy to cut to size with an inexpensive glass cutter. Here’s how: thoroughly clean the mirror and the surface you are going to be scoring the glass on. Dust and dirt can cause a bad score line and break. Use a straightedge to guide the glass cutter to score the top of the mirror in one pass. You will hear a soft crunching sound as the surface is scored. Then, with gloves and eye protection on, flex the mirror along the score line gently to snap it cleanly in two. Practice this first to get the hang of it.…

Q When building cabinets, I frequently assemble my stacked dado blades to cut a “near” 3/4"-wide dado. At this point, I can no longer use the arbor washer that came with my saw and have all threads in the arbor nut engage. The big question is, is it safe to secure a blade without using a washer? The main observable difference is that I must hold the outer blade securely to prevent it from turning and possibly contacting the teeth of the adjacent chipper blade. Dave Zemple Sunnyvale, California A Seems like you are maxing out the dado capacity of the saw, which has a short arbor shaft. Most saws today have a maximum dado capacity of 13/16", and not having an outer arbor washer could allow the stack to…

My gratitude and appreciation for living in a place where I have plenty of clean water inspired the design of this small wall shelf. When you take a moment to ruminate on it, water is the most abundant and beneficial substance on the planet! Few sounds are as soothing as running water, and perhaps that’s because all living organisms depend upon it. So, every time I see this wall shelf, or think about the process of making its rippling circular shapes, I will remember how fortunate I am to have clean water to enjoy and conserve. I’ll also recall how handy it was to have a circle-cutting jig for my compact router — I used it extensively to shape this project’s single-piece back panel and to cut out the outermost…

While dust collection isn’t woodworking’s most riveting topic, few of us will argue against its importance for both a clean shop and long-term respiratory health. Trouble is, most conventional dust collectors are louder than we’d like them to be, and their efficiency at capturing the really fine, harmful dust is dubious. Harvey Industries intends to take dust collection a quantum leap forward with the GYRO Air G700 Dust Processor. (They’ve even included windows atop their turbines.) Its silver, twin cylinders on top are where most of the machine’s high-efficiency separation happens. When dirty air enters the G700’s 6" inlet, it passes through two levels of separation. First, an internal double cone slows down the air so that heavier debris and dust can drop down into a preliminary separation container. Then,…