Tabla de contenidos para June 2023 en Woodworker's Journal

I’ve always advocated that you can never have too much light in a woodworking shop, whether you’re 18 or 88. And now that my glasses have bifocals, I think the same tenet could be made for magnification — you can never have too much. If you assemble tiny pen components, struggle to find a knife line when you’re scribing dovetails or could occasionally use a larger view when tightening those tiny hinge screws, this Magnifying LED Work Light should help. It features a bright, 60-LED light with a 7-ft cord set, so you won’t need to feed it a regular supply of batteries. The 4"-wide x 65⁄8"-long, 3-diopter magnifying glass makes objects appear 75 percent larger. An 18" gooseneck gives this work light plenty of “reach” into a bench or…

Recently our Weekly newsletter asked readers to share favorite projects they’re built. Here are two that caught our eye. See many more examples at woodworkersjournal.com. Under the “Weekly” header, click “Feedback” and then scroll to “Favorite Woodworking Projects” and “Even More Favorite Projects.” Mesquite Masterpiece This project started more than seven years ago when I was learning the sawmill trade from a mentor of mine. When I said I wanted to make a dining table someday, he said, “Let’s go pick out a log.” We slabbed a mesquite log and started kiln-drying it that day. It sat in storage until this year when I finally got around to building the table. It is live edge, 15⁄8″ thick, around 42″ wide on average and 124" long. Lee Summers Via the Internet…

When pigments are used to color wood, they work the same as if you took a handful of ordinary mud and just wiped it over a board. What is left behind clinging in the grain is the coloring. If you wash off the mud, away goes the coloring. It’s just that simple. Pigments do not actually change the color of the wood, they simply add or contribute their color to it. The good news about pigment stains is that they are very easy to control, since they do their job by laying on the wood and in the grain spaces. Also, pigments are very lightfast. After all, they are just dirt, and dirt doesn’t bleach much. Tim B. Inman The Art of Classical Furniture Finishing Red Rose Press; ISBN: 1434837394…

With the exception of perhaps Baltic birch plywood, no other mass-produced plywood (or other composite sheet material for that matter) looks good with exposed edges. Those mismatched plys, little voids and blemishes are distracting. So, we typically try to hide the edges of plywood as elegantly and seamlessly as possible. The usual choice for that task is wood veneer edge tape with a pre-applied adhesive backing. When the veneer species of the tape matches the face veneer of the plywood well, it’s thin enough to hide the edge plys without also looking “applied,” and it makes for a convincing bluff. But the thinness of the veneer and the limited strength of the adhesive often causes the veneer to eventually peel off on its own or become easily damaged through normal…

Dealing with a number of niggling problems with chest lids has been a work in process since the first chests were built. Initially, lids just sat on top of the chest. But where would you put them when you needed to get at what was inside? When hinges came on the scene, they solved one problem but created others. Now lids had a place to go, but they could swing too far back, harming both the hinges and the lid. Chains and control-arm stops were the next solution, but they had problems, too. The control arms poked into the chest’s contents, and chains easily came loose, got sandwiched under the lid or caught on what was being stored inside. Then there was the problem of closing the lid. Free-swinging hinged…

In this survey, we asked woodworkers what types of outdoor projects they have built and what species of wood they use for this purpose. 1. Which of the following outdoor furniture projects have you built? a. Adirondack chair 11% b. Bench 24% c. Picnic table 17% d. Porch swing or glider 8% e. Lounge chair 3% f. Outdoor furniture — not Adirondack style 11% g. Side table 15% h. Other 6% i. I don’t build outdoor furniture 5% 2. Which of the following other types of outdoor projects have you built? a. Birdhouse 26% b. Birdfeeder 16% c. Plant stand 20% d. Lending library 2% e. Mailbox 9% f. Garden border or raised garden 23% g. Other 5% 3. Which of these woods are your preferred species for outdoor lumber?…

Mix Small Amounts of Epoxy by Weight I use a lot of two-part epoxy in my shop, and I buy it in small bottles. For these epoxies to cure properly, it’s crucial to mix them in a 1:1 ratio, and guessing wrong when squeezing out a dollop of each can lead to lengthy cure times or improper hardening. To solve the problem, I keep a small postal scale on my bench that weighs down to 0.1 gram. I squeeze what I need into little paper cups and weigh them. This way, I can be certain I have a perfect ratio of resin to hardener before mixing them up. Bill Wells Olympia, Washington Leave Sanding Discs in the Dust I bet you, like me, have struggled before to remove adhesive-backed sanding…

Bar clamps are essential to woodworking for all sorts of assembly tasks, including gluing up panels, door frames, casework and drawers. Now Rockler offers three new Parallel Bar Clamps to add to your clamping options. Available in 24" (item 86908; $39.99), 36" (item 85569; $44.99) and 48" (item 84700; $49.99) lengths, their jaws remain precisely parallel with one another to help prevent assemblies from distorting, bowing or lifting under pressure. Heavy-duty steel bars and 2"-wide jaws enable these robust clamps to produce up to 1,000 lbs of clamping pressure. A 31⁄2" throat depth expands their versatility, and so does the reversible sliding clamp jaw, which turns the clamps into spreaders. Ergonomic handles with rubber overmolds, nylon jaw caps that prevent marring and a removable foot at the end of the…

Sixty-seven guessers took aim at Ken Gatto’s February mystery tool labeled “Bullock.” And that branding was a dead giveaway for many. “It’s a Leach Pattern Saw Set No. 1, produced by Bullock Manufacturing in Springfield, Massachusetts, reports Sim Galazka of Crozet, Virginia. “These date back to the early 1900s,” adds Robert Good-man. “I have three of them and use them!” says Steven Woughter. “As a (handsaw) blade is filed to sharpen it,” explains Dave Wozniak of Green-field, Massachusetts, “the pattern sinks down into the blade, truncating the existing set.” Floyd Koppenhaver continues, “These were used to reset the teeth.” “The screw in front holds the blade in place and determines the width of the set, while the little ‘half parrot’ thingy pinches the tooth against the hollowed-out anvil to create…

Early last February, I was one of about 35 media guests invited to Festool’s U.S. headquarters in Lebanon, Indiana, to try out recent and yet-to-be-launched tools. Interestingly, only one of them was corded. I am not including pricing here, as this “Recharged 2023” event was a preview, and pricing was not yet determined at that time. Even though Festool’s new tool releases have been stymied during the pandemic due to supply chain interruptions and computer chip shortages, there are some interesting new offerings, and here are a few of the standouts. CSC SYS 50 Cordless Table Saw I finally had the chance to lay hands on this much-rumored cordless table saw, which has been out in Germany for some time. I was not disappointed, and in my mind the CSC…

A drawknife as a roughing tool with a spokeshave as a finishing tool are yoked partners that, like a team of oxen, can get an incredible amount of work done. If setting up power tools for a job feels pokey, you might find that this hand tool duo is often just as fast with minimal setup required. These tools were used by a variety of trades for creating round stock (wheel spokes, chair spindles, pegs for post-and-beam building), stripping bark from logs (black ash for basket splint and hickory for seat caning strips), trimming the edges of leather strips and creating curved and radiused edges, to name a few. Drawknives Drawknives consist of a 5"-to 14"-long knife blade with a tang at each end that is bent at slightly less…

Sometimes the challenge of trying a new technique compels whole project designs, and that’s what happened in a roundabout sort of way with this Floating Bedside Shelf. I wanted to see whether the edge V-groove router bits, shown on page 48, can be used to wrap solid wood trim around the edge of a curved shelf as well as a straight one. The short answer is yes, they can! Quite elegantly, actually, as you can see in the curves of the purpleheart shown above. But here’s the kicker: doing that will involve making three very precise templates to guide these bits around those curves, primarily so the purple-heart hugs the edges of the plywood shelves seamlessly. And if you’re willing to test your template-making skills, this alternating, double-shelf project is…