Spring Sale at our Store

As you know, The Everyday Woodworker is brought to you by Woodtoolstore.com . We are just letting you fine woodworkers know that we are having our spring sale on right now. Save on woodworking tools like table saws, routers, circular saws, cordless drills, and air tools. Check out our expectional price on this brad nailer.

Now, back to the woodworking tips and tricks.

Starving the Joint of Glue

Years ago, when I first started woodworking, I was often advised that you should not make a joint too tight. A too tight joint would 'starve' for glue. It seemed reasonable that a joint that was too tight would force the glue out leaving an insufficient amount to form a good bond. Plus, it had a good sounding catch phrase, "Don''t starve the joint."

I went years believing this. The problem was that over time experience started to speak against it. I just never found it to be true.

As often happens, just when I was really starting to question this long held belief I stumbled across an article that addressed this very issue. I was in line at my local hardware store flipping the pages of a woodworking magazine, as I often do at the hardware store. It happened to be a copy of "Fine Woodworking Magazine". The article was primarily about testing different glues, but in the process they tested joint fit as well. Their conclusion: starving the joint of glue was a myth. The over tight joints were no weaker than the good fit. Of course, in their test they had all the tight joints the same; milled to scientific perfection. They were not "crazy tight".

I decided to do a more unscientific and much more satisfying test myself. I made a series of joints from snug to insanely tight. I'm talking the kind of joint that can only be called bad workmanship. Several of them broke merely because they didn't actually fit together. None the less I made up a sufficient sample to satisfy myself.

With some creative shop work I rigged up a tester and went to it. Broken wood was flying everywhere! It was fun. It also proved to support the findings in Fine Woodworking Article. Over tight joints were not weaker than snug ones. In fact, they were often stronger. Of course, the over tight joints had a host of other problems, most notably the wood split from the excess pressure of the over sized tenon.

My conclusion: starving a joint of glue is a myth!

Cope and Stick Door Joints

In the world of cabinet making the frame-and-panel door dominates the industry. For good reason, it solves the age old problem of warping and cracking caused by wood movement that one sees in solid wood doors. I doubt there is a need to argue the benefits of this method of constructing cabinet doors. What I do want to discuss is the method of jointing the frame.

In modern cabinet making it has become immensly common to use a cope-and-stick joint. A cope-and-stick joint is made by machining a profile into the stile that both trims the edge and accomodates the the panel. A matching reversed profile is cut into the end of the rail. These profiles are generally made with a matched set of router bits or a reversable router bit. Cope-and-stick joints are easy to workwith, assuming you have the appropriate tools. They are quick to cut once you are set up and provide large amounts surface area for gluing. This makes them very popular.

There is a weakness to this joint, however, that is rarely talked about. In the joint the profile edge funtions as a both a short tenon and a mortise wall. The problem is that this tenon has been cut thin and short with the pressure pushing parallel to the grain instead of against it. This creates a weak spot in the joint. I've drawn up a picture to demonstrate this. A door like this, with hard use will eventually fail.

Does that mean that you should never use a cope-and-stick joint? No, of course not. But you should consider reinforcing it in some way. Either, you can use a plywood panel and glue the panel in (which is odd considering the whole reason for the creation of the frame-and-panel door). Or you can reinforce with dowel or some other such device. I find that long dowels when placed well can actually look good - a bit of a stand out feature on the door edge.

Making Do

Every woodworker wishes he had the New Yankee Workshop at his diposal. If only we all had the budget of a national television series to purchase tools with. Norm Abram has it all! Yet, for the most of us, a decked out workshop is a dream we pursue for a life time. We buy tools one at a time as we need them. In the end, sometimes we just have to make do.

There are lots of tricks that we woodworkers use to get a job done when we don't have the right tools. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Router as jointer - when laminating up panels a good edge is essential. If you don't have a jointer, use your router. A straight cutting bit and a very carefully set fence on the router table make a perfect jointer replacement.

Make a jig - long before I had any panel raising bits for my router I was raising panels on my table saw. I built an adjustable jig to hold the panels upright while I pushed them through a tiped blade. I've found that just about any problem in the workshop can be solved with a jig. I've made jigs for the router, the table saw, the drill press, the rotary arm saw and so many more.

If at long last you finally decide to buy a tool but still have a tight budget, sometimes you can find great deals on the internet. Check out our store at Woodtoolstore.com. Our whole purpose is to supply woodworkers at reasonable prices.

The Home-Made Wood Filler - Use With Caution

From time to time a particular woodworking tip pops up that is okay, but should really be tempered a bit. It is a suggestion that people use a home-made wood filler. The formulation and application are simple enough: mix glue and saw dust (no shortage of that), make a paste, and use it as a wood filler.

Now, this can work. With a fine saw dust you can make a good paste that is easy to work with and fills holes. It is tough and dries fairly quickly depending on the glue. It even blends quite well, assuming you used the saw dust from the wood you are filling.

The problem comes when the filler is in a visible location on a project that is going to be stained. When the filler is first applied it looks good. However, when it comes time to finish your project you will find that your handy dandy home-made wood filler won't take stain! Just like a run-away glue drip.

So, take heed. The home-made filler is fine on unfinished or painted projects, however, hold off on using it on your fine wood stained pieces.

The Cheap Dado Cutter

I have purchased several dado cutter sets for my table saw. Some work great, others are mediocre. What baffles me is the price I paid for them. The price just never seemed justified. I mean really, what are you getting? Usually two saw blades and a handful of chippers that are really only partial saw blades.

So, for years I have debated the idea of just stacking up a bunch of regular blades. If you search around the Internet you can find this issue debated fairly strongly with little consensus. I finally decided to take the plunge and give it a try. I headed to the store and bought a pile of cheap matching blades, went home and fiddled with them for a couple of hours.

My results were great. I got dados that were every bit as good as the ones I make with my professional (and expensive) dado sets. I had all the little cardboard spacers from my pro sets, but I also tried to make a couple myself. It was easy to make fine width adjustments (as easy as it is with the pro sets).

The concern you will find bantered about is that the solid blade won't clear the wood chips like the chipper does and the blade set will get clogged. I found this to be quite untrue. I offset my blades carefully and never had any trouble. I could get clogged blades if I tried. And, doing my due diligence I did try. If I intentionally misaligned the blades and pushed the wood through fast and sloppy, sure enough the blades would have little wood chips wedged in the tight cracks. Lets face it though, the first rule of woodworking is to take your time and do the job right. I have no pity for the woodworker who finds himself in this situation, it is their own fault.

The one thing I would like to mention is that stacking up several blades does let the weight add up. Don't overdo it or you might strain your table saw motor. Also, be warned, with all that mass the blades have more momentum. It takes a lot longer than normal for the blades to spin down to a stop once you have turned your saw off. Pay attention and work safe.

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Old Man Oak

Long have I discussed wood with my father and my father-in-law. In these discussions I have found one thing to be universally true: they love oak. I don't. I really don't like it at all. I have a long list of woods I would rather work with and look at before oak. Frankly, I find it unattractive. Both its color (I'm thinking of the commonly available red oak here) and its overbearing grain put me off.

Armed with this awareness, I went out into the world and probed the opinions of many, many others. I discovered an interesting thing. There is a generational divide in wood preference. People over the age of say . . . 55 love oak. For them it is the grandest of woods. If on the other hand you are orbiting your mid-thirties chances are you would prefer almost any other wood over oak. For the young, oak is like bell bottom pants and polka-dots, the foolishness of a generation gone by.

It is an odd phenomenon. It is strange that something as varied as wood preference would be so strictly generational. I've yet to delve deeply into collective conscious of my elder generation to discover why this is, but I will say this: if you are planning a project, either as a job or a gift, keep the age of the client in mind. You will be surprised how often the age-oak love correlation holds true.